SoVisual.co
Create social media images in seconds.
While SoVisual.co had a lot of potential, I just couldn't get the MVP to gain the traction it needed. Fortunately, in my search to improve the product, I stumbled down a rabbit hole and founded Magai.co. You can follow my ongoing journey there or follow @Magai here on Indie Hackers.
As I explained in my last update, video editing is not my jam. But it is necessary to showcase what your product does, and so after mastering the Screen.Studio app, I decided to go a little deeper and add background music and subtle sound effects.
The results are... 😍
👉 AI Assist Quick Demo
👉 Basic Quick Demo
Since Screen.Studio doesn't do audio or allow for clipping/trimming from the middle of a video, I had to pull the final video into Premier Pro for that.
Audio was all sourced from Pixabay (who knew they started doing audio?!).
Keeping things simple is key for me. So they're not the most sophisticated videos, but they get the job done in a way that isn't awful. At least I think so. 😂
It's important to give people a real demonstration of what your product does. This is especially true with SaaS products.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when I visit a landing page for a SaaS product and after digging through a seemingly endless amount of copy and abstract mockups I have yet to see an actual image of the product interface.
Show us the effin' thing in action!
Well although video editing is not my jam, I managed to make the very first demo video of our new AI Assist feature in action. And it is 😍 thanks to a little app I discovered this morning called Screen.Studio.
Full demo in less than 60 seconds.
And I never thought I'd say this about creating app demo videos... but I can't wait to make another one!
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Yep. I absolutely love to see demo videos before spending any more time on the site.
The first thing I do to see if the product would work for me is to see it in action rather than the supposed benefits it offers.
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For me it's also about whether or not I'll enjoy using it. I'm a bit of a UI snob, so if a product is ugly, I probably just wont use it no matter how much functionality it provides. I'll choose an inferior product with a superior UI/UX 99% of the time.
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100%
And this applies to non-web products too.
There's been a trend going on right now with a lot of physical products to follow apple's design UI.
Essentially, they want to put as few buttons on there as possible for the "aesthetic" which makes it take much longer to use the product than if it were just left as is.
Example would be the toaster my family bought.
It has a fancy screen and I have to press a button THREE times to be able to select how long I'm toasting something.
There's a whole smorgasbord of options on the screen for toasting bagels vs bread vs frozen and a whole lot of others (never understood why that needed different settings) that I never use.
It's terrible. I would prefer a rusty old toaster that's a fire hazard over this overengineered trash.
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haha! That's hilarious. Simplicity is always better in my book.
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Funnily enough, all the Apple UI trends technically creates products that are more "simple".
The problem is, this "simplicity" comes at the cost of use. I have to do more work to make the same action because there is less complexity and less buttons; I have to press the same button 3 times when beforehand, I could have just pressed the third button once.
The useless options like "bagel" and "frozen" are a different issue with UI entirely.
I love ranting about this stuff haha. Nothing can be solved for physical products unfortunately, but I do hope there's an app that comes along that allows you to customize an overlay that allows you to interact with other apps.
Or maybe I can create it myself?
Unfortunately (fortunately?) I'm already focused and tied myself to another startup with someone else, so can't do that :)
Shameless plug, but my current startup is an AI API and you can see more of it in the pinned tweet on my twitter: https://twitter.com/TheRealEtch
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Oh, cool! 2 problems:
- The discord link in your pinned tweet doesn't let me join
- The link to your site in your Twitter bio leads to a blank white page
Just what you needed... more things to fix, right? lol #StartupLife
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Thanks!
The discord thing is certainly odd. I seems to work for me and others. I'll send it here: https://discord.com/invite/DsJXxcMmkC
As for the website, it's not up yet :)
The waiting list one certainly will be in the next couple of days though! So you can stay tuned for that.
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That's really cool, Dustin. I'll have to check it out. I know that I need to do a better job at creating demo videos - as a customer I certainly find them valuable.
I'm not sure where you're at with SoVisual.co and having paying customers, but if you ever get to the point where you think you'd benefit by having a partner help you with this or other products, I'm currently building MicroPartners - a platform that helps product creators find and form business partnerships with professionals that have the skills to help turn their products into recurring revenue.
I've abandoned more than one product myself, in the past, so I'm trying to help others break the vicious cycle!
Good luck!
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Thanks @tylerewillis! Definitely check out screen.studio. It's actually made creating demo videos fun for me.
As for the partnership thing... my last successful SaaS product was with 2 other partners. When I exited in 2020, it pretty much put me off having partners ever again. lol
SoVisual.co is backed by a couple passive partners who helped with seed capital. But that's about all I'm willing to entertain at this point. I think what you're doing is awesome though! There definitely needs to be a place where fellow founders can connect, build relationships, and find co-founders. I'm going to go check it out just to see!
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It was an unassuming conversation via Twitter DMs that led me down a rabbit hole on the day before Thanksgiving.
After 4 hours, several tutorials, and a few YouTube videos I had the first working AI-powered text generator for SoVisual.co! After that, it was just a matter of integrating it into the site for people to start trying.
While users were testing it out, I was already working on the Image Generator portion, which only took a few more hours of tweaking and testing.
And as of now, all paid SoVisual.co users have access to our brand new AI-powered text and image generators right inside the template editor. 🔥
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Okay service, but needs some work. How is it different from Canva?
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Canva is for people who want to spend time designing.
SoVisual.co is for people who have better things to do than spend 20-30min designing one graphic. It's for busy makers who hate the overhead of traditional design tools.
I've been a professional designer for 14+ years... and even though I could teach a masterclass on Photoshop, Canva, and a few other professional grade design tools. But they're not tools I'd recommend for scrappy startup founders, people building a personal brand, or freelancers (such as writers, developers, or other professionals whose core skill isn't graphic design).
SoVisual.co makes designing social graphics as easy and fun as using a meme generator.
Hope that clarifies it.
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And we're live!!!
Years of struggling to find a solution for social media marketers.
Years of banging my head against a wall.
Years of road block after road block after 🤬🤬 road block...
Our new app is here!!
It's a humble beginning to something that will completely change the game.
Our first priority is to help people create great looking social media images FAST.
Whether it’s for your business, your blog, clients, or just because you love creating visual social media content.
When you don’t have 20-30 minutes to fuss with complex design software, SoVisual.co is your new best friend!
This initial launch gives everyone free access to try the app.
However, we’re also offering limited time launch packages with special “Perks” for those who want to support our continued growth.
And I’m the most excited about the Founding Member package... for those bold enough to become one of our Founding Members, you’ll be the ones shaping the future of the entire industry. You’ll also get some fun perks:
- Limited Edition Gold Coin
- Limited Series NFT drop! (Which pairs with your coin!)
- Bonus access to our next product, Social Remix (coming very soon!)
And it’s more than just a product, we’re building a community of creators. People who want to create, connect, and thrive in the creator economy.
If you’re a creator, it would mean the world to me if you gave SoVisual.co a try today. Try it for free. Or grab one of our limited time perk packages.
And if it’s not for you, I’d love for you to share it with 2 people who you think it might be interesting to.
This is only the beginning! Let’s goooooooooooo!! 🎉🚀🙌
I've been sitting on this idea for years and finally decided to bring it to life in the simplest way possible.
It started as an internal means of generating content ideas for dozens of clients. It then evolved into a possible product that I would sell in the form of a "swipe file" or other simple document that just lists out ideas.
Eventually the grand plan is to make this more intelligent and build it into our core product down the road. But for now...
Say hello to Social Media Idea Generator.
Just visit the link, and your first idea is waiting for you. Not inspired? Click the "New Prompt" button and a new social media idea will be generated instantly.
These are based on my 10+ years working with hundreds of different clients. And I'll be adding new ideas regularly.
So for those who are stuck on "what should I post on social media today?" help is here.
After being 100% ready to crowdfund I was approached by a friend who had been following my journey. He wanted to hear my "pitch" and see if he could help.
So I gave him the phase 1 plans for both Social Remix and SoVisual.co.
He loved the ideas. And had no issue with the equity I was offering. This was great news!
A couple weeks later, I had reached out to a trusted group for investor contract advice... and long story short, I had a second investor committed within a couple hours.
So now we have 2 investors in this with us. And things are moving. This was such a blessing in the midst of what seemed like roadblock after roadblock.
Now we have more than enough funding to get through phase 1 of both projects, with a little left over to spend on marketing.
Man, what a ride. 2020 ended with a giant vision, and finally landing on some partners who could help me execute it. And it seemed like things were finally going to kick into high gear...
Until they didn't.
And after months of back-and-forth, a few proof of concept conversations, and a whole lot of wasted time... we realized the partnership wasn't going to work out.
I wanted to build a game-changing, giant f*cking business. They wanted another side hustle.
Nothing wrong with that. But it was clear this was just going to be a repeat of my last business that took way too long to exit.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't furious and a little sad. But this changes nothing about my grand vision for SoVisual.co. In fact, it's only helped me to clarify a lot of stuff.
We're setting out to completely change the world of design. And it might take a handful of baby steps to get there (SocialRemix.co being one of them). But we'll get there.
A couple months ago I had an idea about the evolution of the product. Without divulging too much, I'll just say that it's the most ambitious idea I've ever had for a product. So ambitious, I didn't really have a clue as to how we might get there.
So for weeks I thought through MVPs and different iterations that would help us gradually step-ladder our way to that big, hary, audacious product idea.
This idea would require levels of development--even at the simplest MVP level--that I'm incapable of. So I called in a dev company to consult on it. After signing a couple NDAs, I presented the two phase idea to them so they can get me an estimate.
And then I waited.
[insert gif of someone waiting here.]
Seemed like it took forever for them to get an estimate back. But finally, they did.
The price tag for the MVP was definitely something far beyond what I could fund myself. I wasn't surprised. However, it was significantly lower that what I thought it might be...
So it got me thinking. A lot.
And after weeks of mulling it over in my head, I decided I'd look into possibly getting some investors involved, and exchanging equity for the needed funds to pay for development.
I sent a simple tweet--half-joking... and had 3 offers within 2 minutes. Haha... not surprising.
While I still haven't made a decision of whether or not I definitely want to go down this route, it's widened the realm of possibility to bring this idea to life.
This was a big deal for me. I've been a fan of Jay Baer and the Social Pros Podcast for a long time and to be invited on as a guest was such an honor.
I didn't think that Jay and Adam would want to talk about our product the entire time, but that's basically what happened. Very cool conversation about visual marketing in 2020, and found a kindred spirit with Adam when he realized SoVisualco is very similar to an advertising business his father had in the 70's!
For any interested, here's the episode: https://dustn.xyz/socialpros
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