Over the last few months, I’ve been exploring creator tools and meeting with some of the founders building them. Here are my observations:

1. The gap is narrowing for creators of all types
   • The common refrain from founders building in this space is that there is a gap in offerings for those who are professional users and willing to pay for premium services such as Adobe Premiere Pro, and everyone else. How can we democratize the creation of high quality content at scale?
   • In some cases, founders decided that simply repurposing content into short from video is the solution: Vidyo.ai, HipClip, and Wisecut 
   • In other cases, startups like Descript and HipClip are making the editing process itself so simple and intuitive it is like editing a google doc.
   • For other markets like India, simply having a tool that doesn’t require high compute power was another opportunity: Illusto – is trying to solve this problem for Indian users with a barebones video editing tool
2. SMB owners are also wannabe creators
   • While we think about individual creators and influencers as those most in need of creator tools, SMBs are a significant market that startups are targeting with new creator tools
   • SMBs face significant resource constraints to creating short form video content, such as lack of time, expertise or dedicated personnel – but they are most in need of low cost, high efficacy solutions for marketing and customer acquisition. Which makes tools like Mojo, Zoomerang, Wisecut and Descript highly relevant for them. These tools not only have simple steps for high quality video creation from template marketplaces to auto-generated content, some like Mojo and Descript also enable team-based collaboration to edit videos or templates. 
   • Glia cloud is already working with thousands of SMBs in Taiwan – these business owners don’t want to spend time or be highly involved in the video creation process
3. Many of the founders are trying to solve specific creation pain points they have faced themselves
   • Wisecut founder Ivo Machado has spent most his last 15 years career in video editing and post-production making this an area he is intimately close to. He founded Wisecut with his brother Vicente to automate video editing processes using AI
   • Denis and Artem founded HipClip because they were frustrated by the lack of easy options to repurpose content they had created, such as podcasts, into blogs or webinars they could share with others.
   • The founders of Twelvelabs were ML scientists and engineers who met in the Korean military, and built a video-search system there, before seeing the opportunity to scale what they did there commercially 
4. One of the biggest wow moments was seeing video that I could touch and manipulate
   • One founder showed us a video of a tube of peanut butter, that you could squeeze out by sliding your finger down the tube on the screen
   • It also captures a emotion, so the person in the video may smile or frown depending on how you interact with it.
   • It’s not hard to imagine future use cases in brand marketing, industrial sectors, healthcare or education
5. AI is everywhere in content creation
   • This goes without saying given the recent explosion of generative AI (Dall-E, Lensa, ChatGPT etc) we are at an inflexion point in generative AI 
   • We are already seeing it in video editing with RunwayML which has some of the most impressive suite of editing capabilities. I also really liked what KLleon and Wombo are building to create avatars and realistic facial animations 
   • Voice synthesis is another area that is making huge advances. Resemble and Aflorithmic are making it easy to clone your voice, or someone else’s. Podcast.ai has already recreated an eerily believable interview between Joe Rogan and Steve Jobs. There are ownership and ethics issues to solve, but this is clearly a space that is evolving rapidly.
   • Which also means that startups are investing to scale their AI research teams – if you’re thinking about a new skill to learn, there is no better time for AI than now.
   • Sequoia’s Sonya Huang has shared a good market map of the genAI landscape, and here is a more comprehensive map from CB Insights (subscription needed)
6. While the overall macro environment is dire and softening, there is still funding available for great creator tools
   • Descript raised a $50M Series C round, RunwayML announced a $50M Series C round at a $500M valuation, and TwelveLabs raised a $12M in funding in a seed extension round. 
   • Signs that web3 money is now pivoting to generative AI? You bet!
7. Overall, I was really impressed by the creativity and energy demonstrated by all the founders I had the opportunity to meet with.
   • The word “storytelling” came up numerous times in our conversations. I like that founders aren’t just building tools to create content, but are empowering others to tell stories in richer ways
8. The common refrain today is that everyone is a creator, because we consume and post content on social media platforms.
   • But the truth is that there’s never been a better time to be a creator with all the fantastic tools that are being built and the rapid advances we are making in AI. Soon we will really all have the power of the best creator tools at our fingertips. Who wouldn’t want to be a creator?

Come across any interesting creator tools recently? What do you think of the potential of generative AI for creation? Share your thoughts below! 

Source: Dall-E. A robot pondering the future of creator tools, digital art.