Vlad Andriescu
Videobolt is a marketing tech startup, a SaaS platform that helps professionals create videos faster. They have reached $1.5 million in annual recurring revenue and over 1.2 million users.
The founder of Videobolt, Momcilo Stojkovic, has experience in graphic effects studios and also worked on the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean".
We're in the era of video content across all platforms. For this reason, content creators, creative agencies, publications need fast templates. It's the world where you can design in Canva, where templates exist for Power Point presentations, Excels, videos. Here comes Videobolt. A platform built by experienced people that can help creators get everything done faster.
Most of Videobolt's customers are small and medium-sized businesses, as well as various types of creators and freelancers. Videobolt uses thousands of quality video templates so that they can be edited very easily afterwards and allows non-technical users to customize the work flow.
For exampel, Videobolt helped a client make 760,000 videos in just 2 weeks for a single client. We talked with Videobolt founder Momcilo Stojkovic about his journey from video designer to startup founder.
You can invest in Videobolt on the Seedblink platform here, with tickets starting at €2,500.
Momcilo has worked at major video effects studios such as Canada's MPC, which has contributed to major Hollywood films. His passion for visual effects started with "Smallville", a series about superheroes. Then he made a short clip, uploaded it to YouTube and got millions of views. It all started 15 years ago.
“I always loved superhero movies and it was just a passion from there. I liked having bigger and bigger challenges as an artist", says Momcilo for start-up.ro.
Why is Videobolt useful?
Momcilo started Videobolt somehow out of a need of his own. He had started automating himself tasks that were repetitive.
“ I would write my own scripts and tools that extend the VFX software I was using in order to cut down my workload, or achieve something I couldn't without automation. Once I was in Canada, working at one of the foremost VFX studios, this turned into a highly regarded skill where I developed many specialized tools that would end up being used in productions throughout the company", explains Videobolt's founder.
So, necessity taught him. To make his work easier he made simple tools and later developed them, their value being seen in the company. From here to a business was not long.
Momcilo even laughs and says he could almost have automated his entire career in Canada. And after that moment he started selling templates on marketplace platforms.
"There would be so many little requests for changes or customizations that customers would ask only because they didn't know how to use the software." explains Stojkovic.
The perfect scenario for Videobolt
Videobolt's creator says the startup is very useful for those managing a social media channel. „On Monday you publish a nice slideshow that summarizes the event you threw over the weekend, on Wednesday you make an announcement using one of our "promo" templates (that you customized to reflect your brand), on Friday you use one of our openers to fully brand the new episode of the company’s podcast and you end the week with an exciting stomp video that summarizes your company’s results in the past month", he explains.
This multi-format scenario is essential and templates help content creators, agencies and social media people avoid starting from scratch.
"If you're a larger company or even an enterprise, within a week you can send out a video memo and not do a horribly long email or personalized video messages to your customers," he explains.
Basically, Videobolt offers numerous templates, just like if you were using Canva for static graphic design.
Momcilo doesn't believe that video editing will replace that work of the creator. No software will do it.
“Editing a video is still a matter of human understanding, communication and even empathy, and those concepts don't automate well. However, video is now used so regularly that speed is also becoming an important factor", explains Stojkovic.
But there were technological challenges. Customers expect a certain type of result and Videobolt had to be created around Adobe After Effects, a software that was not built on the same ideas as the Serbian startup. “Forging this bridge ourselves has truly made us world experts in video automation and there is really no easy way to replicate most of the work we've done”, says Momcilo. This is also important because it will be very difficult for anyone to replicate Videobolt's work.
The market is complex. It's worth $3.2 billion, and cloud-based solutions account for a third of that amount. Videobolt's potential is estimated at $300 million in this market, especially since users are from 174 countries, most of which are from the US, Canada, UK and Australia. In 2019 Videobolt had 300,000 customers, and today it has reached 1.2 million users.
Talking about the competition, Momcilo believes that “most of these services are based on creating very simple videos. This is very good, but it also helps us. People will want more. Videobolt is dedicated to those more complex videos”
“The videos we have like intros, lyrics, visualizers and are crafted by talented designers in software that takes years to master. There's no avoiding the time and care it takes to create these, and the service industry for creating bespoke motion graphics is still very active and profitable", believes Momcilo.
Most of the revenue for Videobolt comes from regular consumers or small businesses. The product was originally built with B2C in mind, but has evolved and now welcomes larger customers as well.
