Video Presentations with AI
Status: Defunct
Ani and I bootstrapped Quinvio AI in late 2022 with a simple goal: to make creating video presentations effortless.
Our idea was to build a web platform that transforms content into video presentations using AI, no filming, no expensive production, just AI avatars, voices, and automated styling.
The problem
Creating good video presentations is painful. You need to brainstorm content, write scripts, design slides, do voiceovers. Each step takes time. Each step costs money. Most small teams can’t afford it.
We were building an interactive video platform at the time. While making product videos for it, we kept hitting this wall. The tools sucked. The process was slow. There had to be a better way.
The solution
Quinvio automated three core parts of the video creation process:
- Content scripting
- Visual styling
- Data integration
You’d input your content. The system would suggest scripts, generate scenes, add AI presenters and narration. Multiple languages. Everything automated.
Some examples:
- Turn a product website into a pitch deck in one click
- Convert a long blog post into a 2-minute social video
- Generate animated presentations from spreadsheet data
The tech stack: ffmpeg for video processing, LLMs for content generation, Preact for the editor.
The results
We built the MVP in less than two months. Launched in February 2023 on Product Hunt.
Three months later: 12K+ users. Thousands of video minutes generated. 50%+ monthly revenue growth.
Six months later: 25K users. 500+ paying customers.
We spent zero on marketing. 70% of traffic was organic. AI influencers featured us. Tool aggregators listed us. The timing was right, everyone wanted AI tools. Especially marketers.
Then growth stalled.
The challenges
We were a team of two. Both engineers. Both startup enthusiasts. But video processing at scale is brutal. ffmpeg is powerful but unforgiving cost-wise. Managing AI API costs while keeping subscriptions affordable was a constant balance.
The interactive video editor was our differentiator, built on web stories with embeddable widgets. That part took longer than expected. Every browser handles video differently. Edge cases everywhere.
The lessons
Building fast matters. We validated the idea before iterating it. MVP first, features later based on real user feedback.
The market was bigger than we thought. Generative video was growing at 18.5% annually. Online presentations at 9.5%. We positioned for startups and nailed specific use cases instead of trying to be everything.
Product-market fit shows up in the numbers. When 70% of your traffic is organic and revenue grows 50% month-over-month without ads, you’ve hit something.
Entering a hyper-competitive and capital intensive space as bootstrapped, may not be the best of ideas.
The takeway
Quinvio proved something I’d suspected: when you automate tedious work, people pay for it. Not because the AI is perfect. Because it saves them time they’d rather spend elsewhere.
But what did Quinvio mean? Quick Interactive Visual Information Output.