Yuval Steuer and Roey Lalazar weren't trying to build a big business. But sometimes, the best ideas come when you're just trying to solve a small problem.
They saw a friend's video editors spending hours manually typing out subtitles in Adobe Premiere Pro. It was slow, boring, and a complete waste of time. That's when Yuval and Roey had a lightbulb moment: "Why not automate this?"
Using OpenAI's Whisper model, which turns speech into text, they built Kaps, a simple tool that automatically creates subtitle files from video.
No more manual typing. Just upload your video, and out comes an SRT file (the file format for subtitles).
Fast forward 4 and a half months later, and Kaps was making $23,000 in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). Today, just one year after launching, they're at an incredible $70,000 MRR.
How did they do it? Let’s break it down step by step.
- The creation of Kaps
What exactly is Kaps? It’s a tool that integrates with Adobe Premiere Pro and automatically transcribes the audio from your videos into subtitles. Users upload a video and get back an SRT (subtitles) file. Editors can get their work done faster, without the hassle of typing everything out by hand.
Kaps Installation Guide On Adobe Premier
Yuval and Roey weren’t video editors themselves, but they knew there had to be a better way. Adobe Premiere Pro didn’t support Hebrew transcription, so they started by building a simple solution just for that. And it worked — so well that they realized this could be something much bigger.
The big idea: While Adobe Premiere Pro didn’t support Hebrew transcription, Whisper did. So, they built a simple solution for Hebrew speakers and quickly realized they were onto something big.
$20k MRR by December 2023
- Influencer marketing
Their first taste of success didn’t come from a fancy marketing plan. It came by accident.
Yuval and Roey had a friend who was a well-known influencer in the video editing world. One day, this friend posted about Kaps on his Instagram story — and boom! Within just 30 minutes, they had $4,000 in pre-orders.
Instagram Influencer - Transcription SaaS Plugin for Adobe Premier
Why did this work so well? The answer is simple: people trust influencers. This influencer had spent years building a relationship with his audience, so when he recommended Kaps, his followers were ready to buy.
Expanding beyond Israel
At first, Yuval and Roey focused on the Hebrew-speaking market in Israel. They quickly hit $7-8K MRR within a month or two. But they knew they couldn’t stop there. To keep growing, they had to go global.
That’s when they brought in Jeff, a virtual assistant (VA) from the Philippines, to help with influencer outreach. Jeff started small, just making lists of influencers, but soon took on more — like reaching out to them and even negotiating deals.
Jeff was a rockstar. He was able to get a 26% response rate from influencers in Arab countries, which was four times better than Yuval’s previous efforts. In just 15 days, Jeff had closed $5,000 in influencer collaborations on his own.
Today, Kaps works with around 70-80 influencers and is rapidly expanding into new languages like Polish, Hungarian, and Arabic.
It’s a simple technical task that only requires changing two letters for each language you want to support. For instance, to enable Portuguese, you simply need to change `language="en"` to `language="pt"`.
Influencer Marketing - Transcription SaaS Plugin for Adobe Premier
- Hiring smart
One of the secrets to Kaps' rapid growth has been hiring affordable, high-quality talent from countries like the Philippines. Using platforms like OnlineJobs.ph, they found people who could do great work without breaking the bank.
They received a few DMs from virtual assistants after someone on Reddit mentioned that they were underpaying them. This could be a clever strategy to employ from your own account.
Take Jeff, for example. He earns a base salary of $500 per month, plus bonuses of $10-25 for every successful influencer deal he closes. In total, he makes around $1,000 per month, which is good pay in his home country.
Yuval used a unique "trust-building" strategy with Jeff. Instead of paying him the exact amount each week, Yuval would slightly overpay him to see if he’d report the mistake. For example, instead of $100, Yuval might pay $110. Jeff’s honesty earned him more responsibilities, like access to the company’s bank account and WhatsApp group.
Now, Kaps has a whole team:
- Copywriters for specific languages;
- Developers for plugin updates;
- Lead generation specialists;
- Outreach specialists.
- Going global
To reach a global audience, Kaps didn’t just translate their website into different languages. They created custom landing pages tailored to each market. For example, their English landing page targets a global audience, while their Arabic landing page is designed specifically for customers in the Middle East.
Kaps English Landing Page
Kaps Arabic Landing Page
The design stays the same (they use a template called Tailwind UI Salient), but the content is localized to fit each market. This has been key to their international success.
- The results
By finding a gap in the market and using influencer marketing to build trust quickly, Kaps was able to grow fast. Their ability to hire affordable talent and scale their operations has helped them reach $70,000 MRR in just one year.
Key lessons:
- Find a problem: Kaps started by solving a simple problem that Adobe wasn’t addressing;
- Use influencers: People trust influencers, and that trust can translate into quick sales;
- Hire smart: Offshore talent can help you scale without breaking the bank;
- Go global: Customized landing pages can help you reach a worldwide audience.
Conclusion
After reading this article, you can probably see that Kaps’ success isn’t just about building a tool — it’s about solving a real problem, executing a smart marketing strategy, and scaling efficiently. By enhancing Adobe Premiere Pro with OpenAI’s Whisper, Yuval and Roey have created something that video editors around the world can’t live without. And the best part? They’re just getting started.
