The fastest moving part of AI?
Generative video.
How RunwayML ushered in the era of generative video (genius):
Chapter 1: Beginnings in NYC
The story begins at NYU, where 3 grad students in a tech art program met up.
They were each building tools for designers - and surprised how enthusiastic the response was.
@agermanidis left, @matamalaortiz middle, and @c_valenzuelab right.
Chapter 2: Challenger
But Runway almost never even began.
Each of the the trio received fancy job offers. Cristobal, eg, had an offer on Adobe's AI team.
To test the market for Runway, the team sent a tweet looking for beta testers. The response was huge: 570 likes 👇
Chapter 3: The NYC Shoebox
The response gave them conviction to say no to the big companies.
The trio accepted jobs making $2k/month as researchers at NYU.
In NYC, that's pennies. So, they built fast. Cool things like this plugin for Photoshop:
Chapter 4: Rave Reviews
And, of course, they continued work on their own software. It was in private beta.
Designers loved it - calling it "a new Photoshop."
VCs agreed. Runway raised a $2M seed round just a few months after the trio went full-time.
Chapter 5: Tools for Creative Workflows
This allowed the team to move out of their shoeboxes.
They then built Runway entirely on the web & built easy-to-use apps on top.
A particularly epic one is Green Screen - which can generate a mask & propagate through.
Chapter 6: Going All In On Models
After raising a $8.5M series A at the end of 2020, the team went all in on models:
Latent Diffusion in 2021
Stable Diffusion in 2022
This helped the team raise series B and C rounds, setting them up for their next masterful launch...
Chapter 7: Gen-1
The company dropped Gen-1 on February 6 - and got massive reception on Twitter.
User uptake was enormous.
Because the company opened it up for human reinforcement learning, Week 1 to Week 6 Gen-1 improved crazily fast.
Chapter 8: #Gen2
This set them up to launch Gen-2 a mere 6 weeks later!
It has been producing absolutely stunning videos every single day.
It's not even public yet. Runway has masterfully rolled out access to active Twitter artists like @icreatelife
As it stands, Runway is the clear leader in the text-to-video AI landscape.
It's been genius execution of a genius strategy.
How Has @runwayml Had Such Success?
1. Master audience targeting:
Runway identified a key persona of techie creatives
2. Leverage a powerful go-to-market:
Runway cleverly designed Twitter-friendly features
3. Build a self-sustaining flywheel
Runway's growth feeds on itself
Want the full deep-dive of Runway's genius?
Check out my 3,300 word deep dive.
I read every Tweet, watched every YouTube video, & applied my 15 years in tech to bring you the best breakdown on the web:
🔗 tinyurl.com/3uw9tx3e
If you have any doubts about the company's just watch this video:
The multi-billion dollar advertising and trailer industries are being disrupted in front of our eyes:
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