Runway started by helping filmmakers — now it wants to beat Google at AI

The comparison isn’t lost on Runway’s founders. Valenzuela says the startup’s lack of Bay Area “standardization” gives them an edge. Not only do they have diversity of thought, he contends, but without Silicon Valley ties, they had to be scrappier, lacking the war chest many of their peers have access to that would have insulated them from the need to generate revenue early.

And according to Michelle Kwon, Runway’s chief operating officer, the company isn’t in a rush to raise more funds, even as compute demands increase with scale.  

“Their background has led them to be early, to be right more often than not, and to build a culture that moves incredibly quickly,” early investor Michael Dempsey, managing partner at Compound, told TechCrunch. 

For Valenzuela, that culture starts with how he sees the world in the first place. He spends whatever free time he has — not much, as a co-CEO and new father — reading books, including the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra, whom he describes as the antithesis of Pablo Neruda: less formal, less academic, holding a view that poetry belongs to the people rather than to rules. 

“Rules are just rules they invented,” Valenzuela said. “That’s a driving force of how we do things at Runway. They say Silicon Valley is here and that’s where the startups are. Why? Those are just made-up rules. Scrub them all and start again.”