Most Indie Hackers will recommend validating a product idea before building a product.
That was my intention, but like all good plans, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy." and in this example, I am my own worst enemy.
The Backstory
In the middle of 2022 I was working on a side ecommerce project FNRBLR. Yes, it's a ridiculous name but that is a conversation for another day. What began as a woodworking hobby, quickly turned into small business of selling vinyl record holders and furniture to vinyl enthusiasts. Rather than just create an online shopify store, I wanted to build a brand for vinyl collectors and celebrate the love of physical music media. I made plans to start a podcast (currently on hold), a directory of record stores and crate digging events and to turn a record collecting game (that my friend and I invented) into a video based online battle.
The Shopify store is live and i'm happy with the modest sales that it currently brings in. I dabbled in some paid post boosting on Instagram and quickly realised that video marketing was an effective way to generate sales at a pretty reasonable CAC.
The Problem
The problem was that I couldn't find the ideal video tool that met my needs. I wanted a service that didn't charge a subscription as my marketing activity was sporadic - I just needed to make a couple of videos every 3 months or so as I released new products or had produced new stock to sell on the store. Paying a monthly fee for a tool that didn't exactly meet my needs was too much.
I tried a lot of mobile apps, purchased a bunch of after effects templates and tried the classic tools like Canva but they all shared a similar problem: each template was only useful for a single purpose (like a slideshow or sale promo) and if I needed to promote something else (like a podcast episode or announce a new product collection) then I would have to find another template which had a completely different visual design and wouldn't match my other videos.
So, I decided to build something for myself. I've been using After Effects since version 1.0 and have always enjoyed making simple animations. I created some templates and started using them in my marketing.
I'm also teaching myself Webflow and joined the Relume Library community. Someone in the community asked how they could take a screen recording and turn it into a simple video using Canva and I offered to help them out. It quickly became apparent that it was difficult to achieve so I created an After Effects template and made the video for them. They were stoked.
I realised that other webflow builders could probably use the template for their own website launch videos so I cleaned up the template and offered it for free on Gumroad. Fifteen people have downloaded it from a single link I shared once on the Relume Slack channel.
It then dawned on me that most people don't have After Effects or the skills to quickly make simple marketing videos.
The Solution
And that is where the inspiration for Kinematic Video came from. What if I could build a web front end where users could upload their screen recordings, text, images and other media and then After Effects could render the content to a Template, pulling the source data from a database.
I'd never done anything like this before so I built a simple web form, used Zapier to store the data in a Google Sheet and setup After Effects to render the clips.
I guess you could call that an MVP. The process worked, but there was a lot of work in optimising the video templates to accept any type of media, conform to different logo and image sizes and reference brand assets.
The Plan
This is where I decided I needed to stop what I was doing and focus on validating the idea first. Like a good Indie Hacker should. My new battle plan:
- Build a landing page & collect emails
- Create a survey to validate demand and collate feedback
Upon starting step 1, the battle plan fell apart.
To create the landing page I needed video examples and screenshots of the product. So, I went deeper in the video template creation and started building out the web application in order to have the screenshots to include on the landing page.
I'm not sure how I could create a landing page without these elements and I don't know how I could have done it otherwise.
So, after working my butt off over xmas and new year, I am finally ready to launch the landing page and enact Step 1 of the battle plan. You can check it out here: https://kinematic.video
Your feedback and comments are welcome.
The Review
On reflection, I know I could have put together a landing page much faster. I am a bit of a perfectionist and I feel it's better to put out something that you're proud of than something that is half-baked and rushed. I realise that this doesn't resonate with the "build fast and break things" or the generally sound advice of Indie Hackers to get something live as quickly as possible.
But that is who I am. I'm doing things the way I want to do them because that is what brings me joy. I'm creating this product because I like making things, learning new things and ideally, I want to create tools that help other people do what they do, better.
I am my own worst enemy. And as for the battle plan? Now i'm moving on to Step 2.
If you're keen to collaborate, or you're developer looking to help me build this out, or you're a motion designer interested in creating themes, please reach out.
