Former Microsoft employee gets $4M from Accel to build AI tool for product demos

Product teams often have tons of screen recordings and screenshots that end up unused. Video production using these screen recordings is time-consuming and expensive. That's why two former Microsoft Employees began to build facean AI tool that makes it easy to create instructional and product videos from screenshots and screen recordings.

The startup was founded in 2023 by Priyaa Kalyanaraman, a former product manager at Microsoft, Snap, and Waymo, and Purvanshi Mehta, a data scientist and project manager at Microsoft.

Kalyanaraman, who has worked on PowerPoint and Microsoft Designer, including adding artificial intelligence capabilities to those products, said she has seen a lot of demand from enterprise users to add artificial intelligence assistants to business creation.

“I wanted to start doing something to design agents for everyday people that would help them communicate better. But I was on a visa and starting my own company was a challenge for me. I made it during a hackathon We built a small demo and put it on Twitter (now X), and Replit’s Amjad Masad saw it and expressed interest,” said Kalyanaraman.

Mehta is also building his own content personalization project. A mutual friend introduced the pair, and they decided to build a tool for video storytelling because they felt the tools were flashy and ineffective.

Lica raised $4 million in a seed round led by Accel, with participation from SouthPark Commons, Village Global, and angel investors including Replit CEO Amjad Masad, former a16z general partner Balaji Srinivasan, and Replit President Michele Catasta.

Aditya Agarwal, managing partner at South Park Commons, who has worked at companies like Dropbox and Meta, said that traditionally, people would build a portfolio of files and slides to express their ideas. Video development, on the other hand, is expensive and time-consuming. He believes Lika is filling that void.

“The vast majority of the time, we use a combination of documents and slides for presentations because these are artifacts that anyone in the organization can produce. To create the videos, we go to different agencies upon request. We don’t create for Video of a lot of communication, internally or externally, because that’s not feasible,” Agarwal said.

The pair first started working on a model that allows you to process any type of multimodal input and predict action sequences and product-specific media based on it. However, the company decided to focus on video first, targeting prosumers and teams such as product, customer success, and sales.

This startup has a tool that helps you create product videos or explainers from screen recordings. Lica can automatically add transitions, background music and effects. The company's editing tools give you the freedom to add sections such as manual narration text. You can also use prompts to guide the AI ​​assistant to provide specific voices for videos, such as “Create teaching-style videos in Gen-Z languages.”

After the video is generated, you can also edit the voice-over, subtitles, language, style and music through prompts.

“A lot of people don’t know what they want from a video. This can lead to multiple time-consuming iterations until they get to the final video. We give you an AI assistant that acts like your video producer, The work is fast,” said Kalyanaraman.

The founder notes that the tool also understands design aesthetics well. In the event that the user enters an unusual design or color choice, the tool ensures that the final product looks pleasing and not offensive.

Mehta mentioned that the AI ​​assistant has two models: an orchestrator, which puts together different parts of the briefing, including choosing the best narration voice, and a layout generator, which handles how different parts of the screen recording or text work. displayed on the screen. The company uses a mix of open-source and closed-source models in other parts like message generation.

Lica currently has a free tier that allows you to create 10 videos with a limit of 3 minutes each and 3 downloads per month. You can pay $49 per month to generate unlimited 10-minute videos and get 10 downloads and access to branded templates.

While the startup's current focus is on product and tutorial videos, over the next few months Lica will be looking to adapt its AI assistant to accommodate more formats of video, such as marketing, presentations, social media and investing Recommended by readers.

Lica may not have direct competitors, but companies and startups often use anything from Zoom calls to screen recordings to create basic videos, e.g. loom Come polish it. AI-centric startups such as D-ID and synaesthesia The avatar has been used for instructional videos or internal messaging.

Accel's Sameer Gandhi believes the startup has a perfect combination of team quality and product approach.

“Lica is unique in that it combines advanced AI capabilities with intuitive design in one platform, allowing users to maintain creative control while benefiting from AI-assisted features. Coupled with the team's generative AI and product development background, we believe they are uniquely positioned to address key market needs that are not fully captured by other solutions,” he told TechCrunch via email.