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Clypcraft - Please help me evaluate

Idea threads

Andreas Thiel

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Hi,

mentioned the idea a while back with a focus on brandability and got no feedback (https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...ft-solidindie-daredevelop-markupclips.103865/), now I would love to hear some opinions regarding how others feel about the need for what I have in mind.

The starting point for this was technological - I am pretty sure that Headless Chrome (a webbrowser for automation through programming) can be used to create awesome consumer products.

I then realized that videos are somewhat eating the text / audio online world and offer a lot of convenience in many areas. Puppeteer / Headless Chrome has the potential to do pretty much that: turn other content into an image sequence that can be turned into a video.

Now I struggle with the Grade My Business Idea survey (Grade My Business Idea: Business Ideas and Opportunities Rated Fast). An initial take: GradeMyBusinessIdea.com: Information Video Creator (Results)

Basically, I think I could address the following categories of use cases initially with varying degrees of effort / difficulty:
  • making something consumable as a video that can currently only be consumed as text or audio (really tricky because of credentials / session handling)
  • sharing content / ideas / data that you have as a video or animated images (somewhat tricky because users would want to upload and edit gigabytes of videos)
  • creating assets for video creation (very doable)
There are several things I want the SaaS solution to be able to do eventually:
  • Creating slideshows of photos and videos with effects (transitions, blending, magnifying glass, 3d warping etc.)
  • Media lanes (images or videos that scroll along a lane, potentially with fancy 3D distortion effects)
  • Transparent image sequence export for overlays in other video editing software
  • Moving one element over the screen over time (Filmora lacks such a feature and requires you to do that manually)
  • A widget editor for HTML to Video, supporting basic HTML tags with CSS layout, but also SVG creation and 2D/3D Canvas
  • 3rd party integration (API that allows services to integrate Clypcraft features, but also integrating other APIs) - here data from fitness or weather apps could be aggregated in videos
  • Community features (initially users would get their own editors and dashboard, eventually people should be able to publish videos Youtube style). The widget concept could also be created in a way that besides video, the widgets could also be used for blogging, message board and messenger features
  • Interactive videos (as an alternative to Powerpoint)
  • Making text playable, for example turn an RSS feed article into a video and add speed reading theory (highlight blocks that can be processed at one glance)
  • Turn a 3D model into an isometric SVG graphic (might turn out to be tricky)
  • Creating skill acquisition videos like for music or language learning (but then I would have to sell a different kind of product, not the video creation solution)
I suppose the one thing that I could do right away is a widget editor / viewer that gets crawled by Puppeteer to create image sequence snapshots that are then turned into videos.

I think that use case might not be powerfull for bootstrapping, but I am not sure.
What do people here think? What would a video creation helper need to be able to do to be interesting at around $5 per month.

I would love to sell a SaaS subscription directly right away. One idea is creating a youtuibe channel for videos created with the SaaS solution to get exposure. Currently I am thinking: "music". For example I could visualize scales or songs on different instruments.

Any input would be awesome, I am currently 100% paralyzed.

My big picture gut feeling is:
  • Creating a product for content creators limits the addressable market painfully, but might be a reasonable first step
  • Creating a consumer product that many people are interested in that turns something into a video has a lot of potential but is hard to pull off initially
  • For some reason I like the idea of offering message boards or a messenger service where users can share (playable) widgets - that seems like a powerful concept
 
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Last edited:

Mammoth

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How could you explain your idea in one paragraph? In one sentence?
What would be your 30 second pitch of this idea to someone?

Does your ideal customer know all of this jargon that you've used? Or can you simply explain how your service would solve their problem?
 

Andreas Thiel

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How could you explain your idea in one paragraph? In one sentence?
What would be your 30 second pitch of this idea to someone?

Does your ideal customer know all of this jargon that you've used? Or can you simply explain how your service would solve their problem?
That's the thing. Depending on where I go with this, the pitch would have to be different.

For content creators:

People have an idea of what video editing works like.
Currently most tools focus on combining recorded clips into a longer video and maybe putting subtitles in there somehow.
I want a more design focused (what you see is what you get) video editing tool - think "information graphic animations".

Not sure what an effective pitch could look like or even what the killer features would be. I know what I would want personally, but that is far removed from what normal people are looking for.

For consumers:

I am a little lost there. I think this is years away.

The vision for this is that people who want to learn a language get a video daily that shows translations of texts, has audio and explanations / further examples for how expressions in the text can be used.
It could turn MIDI files into a visual video that shows which notes to play on the instrument etc.
It could take fitness tracker data and visualize progress over time in a video.
Would love to come up with a doable MVP that takes me in that direction, but I don't think there are low hanging fruit to be found.
 

Mammoth

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You say “I want a more design focused video editing tool”. Have you confirmed that other people want this?

If you know what they do want, what’s the most simple form of MVP you can build to test the idea?
 
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Andreas Thiel

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You say “I want a more design focused video editing tool”. Have you confirmed that other people want this?

If you know what they do want, what’s the most simple form of MVP you can build to test the idea?
Two week vacation is ending. I wanted to make significant progress working towards a tech demo or even MVP. Instead I got nowhere trying to find an angle in the functional realm. I just have vague ideas of how I would tackle some of the solutions (rough technical concepts).

I am hoping for impulses regarding the functional side of things because right now I am really just drowning in despair.
 

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I think you need to kill/archive 80% of your ideas just so you can focus on the ideas that interest you and for which you know there are potential customers. The more choices/opportunities you have the harder it becomes to make a decision.

I don't make SaaS but I subscribe to some and they cost a lot more than $5, so I'd aim higher in terms of that. When I see something priced at $5 a month it feels like a nuisance and like the software is made with low effort. Ability to execute one function flawlessly rather than having many mediocre features, is always better. This is a drawback if you offer many 'widgets' but none are essential.
 

Andreas Thiel

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I think you need to kill/archive 80% of your ideas just so you can focus on the ideas that interest you and for which you know there are potential customers. The more choices/opportunities you have the harder it becomes to make a decision.

I don't make SaaS but I subscribe to some and they cost a lot more than $5, so I'd aim higher in terms of that. When I see something priced at $5 a month it feels like a nuisance and like the software is made with low effort. Ability to execute one function flawlessly rather than having many mediocre features, is always better. This is a drawback if you offer many 'widgets' but none are essential.
The reasoning for $5 is that I can only hope to create something that people find valuable "as is". I can't provide support until I can do this full time, I won't be able to quickly add a feature they would like to see etc. So in the beginning that needs to be a no brainer deal for as many people as possible - mass market rather than high end.
A one trick pony priced like one of the more expensive Netflix tiers or even higher leads to certain expectations. No way I can deliver, then.
 
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Mammoth

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Taking action will cure your despair.
Thinking & analyzing more will prolong it.
 

Andreas Thiel

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Taking action will cure your despair.
Thinking & analyzing more will prolong it.
That was the plan but now I see no options for even a vague fuctional concept.
 

Andreas Thiel

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Aug 27, 2018
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More out of desperation, rather than conviction I will try to commit to the following roadmap so that I don't procratinate just because I don't have an actual plan :arghh::
  • June: Work on Widget Viewer and Widget Library
  • July: Work on the Worker Node that turns HTML elements in the Widget Viewer into image sequences (and those into clips)
  • August: Work on Registration, Login, Payment Processing (and the Customer UI in general)
  • September: Work on a Widget Editor
  • October: Work on media management (allow user to upload images and video clips into a virtual file system)
  • November: Work on "Media Widgets" that can present the media in fancy or straightforward ways
  • December: Launch Beta - not sure if I need a proper distinction between Beta and MVP in the roadmap, but I suppose initially I'll aim for:
    • Version 1.0.0+: Beta
    • Version 2.0.0+: MVP
    • Version 3.0.0+: 3rd Party Integration Release
    • Version 4.0.0+: Community Features Release
I am still mostly lost regarding the simple pitch, but my main inspiration currently is the Bootstrap framework examples page (Examples). I just have to assume that a page that shows examples of what an editor can produce, can make people interested in the product.

"Increase Production Quality" is maybe the closest thing to fulfilling the "point out benefits rather than features" rule for a landing page that I can come up with right now.
I'll try to show rather than tell with example clips of what Clypcraft can produce.

I started the founding process for a UG (Unternehmergesellschaft - a company with limited liability). While articles said that up to revenue of 12k Euro per year I could outsorce the tax aspect for less than 75€ per month, most tax advisors that I wrote to say they either can't take on any new clients or they charge a minimum of 150€ per month, even if there is zero revenue and zero expenses. One hour of consulting is 190€. Maybe that is reasonable, but it is really painful for me.
I am pretty close to "game over", financially speaking, after speculating on Flippa and flushing one third of my net worth down the drain.
 
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