People are now much more inclined to watch videos than read texts. And it’s not just about TikTok influencers and YouTube bloggers—there’s money to be made from companies that have been forced to adopt video formats for showcasing their products and training their employees. Here are examples of different platforms that can be emulated to start earning in this field.
The Essence of the Project
Guidde is a platform that makes it quick and easy to create video documentation. It can be used to train new employees on how to use corporate cloud services, explain to users how to work with your developed service, publish answers to frequently asked questions in this format, and solve other tasks where it is necessary to show and explain to someone the sequence of actions performed in the browser.
There is no doubt that showing is much more effective than making people read documentation. However, creating clear and appealing videos is not so simple. You need to first record the screen, then edit it, break the recording into separate steps, add explanations using text blocks, arrows, and voiceovers — and this requires time, effort, and certain skills.
With Guidde, it all becomes much easier.
Guidde includes a browser extension that records the original sequence of actions. All you need to do is press “Start” at the beginning of the recording and “Stop” at the end.
In an ideal case, this is where the work on creating a finished video can end, because Guidde will do all the rest of the editing and polishing of the resulting screen recording for us 😉
The platform’s AI engine will automatically break down the recorded sequence of actions into steps, generate their descriptions, highlight the necessary interface elements (buttons to be pressed, fields to be filled), and even zoom in on the part of the screen where the actions are taking place, if necessary.
Guidde will also automatically generate a voice explanation of the action sequence. All you need to do is choose the desired voice for the voiceover. By the way, you can choose any language for the descriptions and voiceover from those supported by the platform.
If there is something you do not like in the automatically created video, the platform has a simple but powerful editor where you can add additional blocks, images, effects, or insert extra scenes to the screen.
The finished videos can be used anywhere — send links to employees or clients via email or messenger, embed them as blocks on websites, or in documents.
You can create 25 trial videos for free, after which you need to pay. The subscription cost for the platform is $20 or $44 per month for a single video-creating user. The $44 plan includes automatic voice-over and statistics on views and clicks of the created videos. If you need integration of the platform with corporate employee identification systems and additional features, there is a corporate tariff, for which you need to contact the startup directly.
It’s cool that Guidde has made a special tariff for startups that have raised less than $2 million in investment, have been in existence for less than 2 years, and have fewer than 20 employees. For the first year of using Guidde, they can get an 80% discount, and 50% for the second year.
Currently, the platform has about 500 corporate clients, who together have brought ‘tens of thousands’ of users from among their employees to the startup. The platform’s revenue for the last 12 months has increased sixfold.
Guidde has now raised $11.6 million in investment, which is a significant increase compared to the $4 million they received in the two previous investment rounds.
What’s interesting
The startup Tango, which since then has turned into a platform very similar to Guidde – and last summer raised a new $14 million in investment, thus increasing the total amount of investment in the project to $19.7 million.
A similar technology is used by the startup Walnut, which I wrote about back in 2020 – but for creating interactive demonstrations of cloud services during their sales. Since then, it has raised $15 million in investment in 2021 and $35 million in 2022, bringing the total investment in the project to $56 million.
The startup DeepHow, which I wrote about in May, also uses AI to create training materials from recorded video raw footage on a similar principle (automatic division into steps, explanations, voiceover) – but to solve the unexpected task of training industrial workers in the techniques of working on manufacturing equipment. They have raised $23.1 million in investments.
Another unexpected application of similar technology was demonstrated by the startup Augmend. They offered developers a simpler way to create documentation for their code and its use cases. The developer simply needs to record and verbally explain a sequence of actions on the screen, and the AI engine of the platform will analyze this recording and place it in a centralized knowledge base with convenient search tools. They’ve only raised their first round of investment but already secured $2.2 million.
Ideologically in a similar direction is the startup Videobot. This startup decided to turn the chats that hang in the corner of many websites to assist visitors into video chats. It has also only raised its first round of investment but immediately secured 2 million euros.
However, so far the images of video chats predominantly show “talking heads.” But if we’re talking about websites for developers of cloud services, they can’t do without demonstrations of action sequences performed in the service. Therefore, they will inevitably face the task of either creating their own platform for video demonstrations or integrating with other similar platforms.
Where to Run
I can reiterate the conclusion from a recent review that one of the hottest current topics is “video + AI + B2B.”
That review was dedicated to the startup Oxolo, which has learned to automatically generate video clips with narratives about products from links to their description pages. These clips can be used for advertising, embedding on their own websites, and for other marketing activities. This startup raised 13 million euros in its very first round of investment.
Video is devouring the internet, people are increasingly preferring to watch videos rather than read texts. This is a powerful trend that can now be used in very different ways, some of which we’ve seen in today’s examples. It’s quite clear that there are still many ways to transition from texts to videos.
This should become the main and common direction of movement—developing platforms for creating video clips in places where text stories and explanations were previously sufficient. Specifically, in the B2B sphere, where you can find clients with high-value transactions, regular tasks, and long-term service use.
Where can and should texts be replaced with videos? Considering the powerful trend towards the growing popularity of videos—this is a question not just for a million, but for a billion 😉
About the Company
Guidde
Website: guidde.com
Last round: $11.6M, October 31, 2023
Total investment: $15.6M, rounds: 3