I built an AI shorts factory — preview before paying, first short free (solo founder, just launched)
I built an AI tool that cuts viral shorts from any YouTube video — and delivers them to Telegram before you pay
Hey IH 👋
I'm Sergo, solo founder from Austria. Spent several months building Viral Machine and launched it this week on Product Hunt.
The problem I kept seeing: creators and businesses waste 3-5 hours per week cutting shorts manually. Editors are expensive. Results are inconsistent.
What I built:
→ Paste a YouTube link (or upload a file)
→ AI finds the best moments automatically
→ Auto-crops to 9:16 vertical (TikTok/Reels/Shorts/LinkedIn)
→ Burns in karaoke subtitles via Whisper
→ AI dubbing in 32 languages via ElevenLabs
→ Delivers watermarked preview to your Telegram
The key differentiator: you see the preview BEFORE paying. Don't love it? Don't pay. First short is always free.
No subscription. No software to install. Just a link.
Tech stack: FastAPI + PostgreSQL + Redis + Celery + FFmpeg + Whisper + Claude AI + ElevenLabs
Current status: just launched, first users coming in. Looking for feedback from the IH community — especially on pricing model and positioning vs OpusClip.
Would love brutal feedback 👇
The preview-before-payment model is an interesting product decision.
What convinced you that people should choose Viral Machine over an established tool like OpusClip because of how they buy it, rather than because of the quality of the shorts themselves?