"I'd insist to not star Adam, because it is somewhat distracting from the message of my startup. He is basically everywhere, and it sort of gives me a strange (but negative) sensation of devaluation of the startup. Am I the only one who feels this way?"
That seems like a very inside baseball concern. I really doubt your typical consumer has any memory of the actors in a typical consumer web product video. I mean, going through this list, I've seen a lot of these videos over the years and didn't realize they were all made by the same people until it was pointed out here. I'd also venture to guess that he appears in a lot of them to cut the costs of the video. More people involved in making a video means higher costs.
Re: cutting costs, that's not a consideration at all. On-camera talent usually accounts for less than .5% of one of our projects' total budgets. There are probably more people involved behind the camera than you'd expect. And it can actually be quite a bit costlier to have me on camera, while I'm directing as well (and I can be a real diva).
commando.io is a server management tool. I would imagine it's fairly likely that a nontrivial percentage of their customers (developers) pay attention to startups.
> "I'd also venture to guess that he appears in a lot of them to cut the costs of the video."
I'm nearly 100% positive is it intentional that Adam stars in most of the videos, and it not due to cutting costs. It is calculated marketing and probably a requirement by Sandwich. Their clients: Ebay, Groupon, AirBnb, Square, Coin, Warby Parker, Jawbone, and Lyft can afford to pay for an actor or actress.
That seems like a very inside baseball concern. I really doubt your typical consumer has any memory of the actors in a typical consumer web product video. I mean, going through this list, I've seen a lot of these videos over the years and didn't realize they were all made by the same people until it was pointed out here. I'd also venture to guess that he appears in a lot of them to cut the costs of the video. More people involved in making a video means higher costs.