Former Microsoft employees will receive $4 million from Accel to develop an AI tool for product presentations

Product teams often have tons of screen recordings and screenshots that end up going unused. Video production using these screen recordings was time-consuming and expensive. Therefore two former Microsoft Employees began developing Lica, an AI tool that easily creates tutorials and product videos from screenshots and screen recordings.

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

Kalyanaraman – who has worked on PowerPoint and Microsoft Designer, including adding AI features to those products – said she sees a lot of demand from business users who want to integrate AI assistants into starting a business.

“I wanted to start something and give everyday people design agents to help them communicate better. But I had a visa and it was a challenge for me to start my own business. I created a small demo in a hackathon and posted it on Twitter (now X), where Amjad Masad from Replit saw it and expressed interest,” said Kalyanaraman.

Mehta also built his own content personalization projects. A mutual friend introduced them both and they decided to create a tool for video storytelling because they felt that tools were flashy and ineffective.

Lica has raised $4 million in a seed round led by Accel, with participation from SouthPark Commons, Village Global and angels 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 traditionally people create a combination of documents and slides to convey their ideas. On the other hand, video development was expensive and time-consuming. He believes that Lica closes this gap.

“In the vast majority of cases, we use a combination of documents and slides in our reports because these are artifacts that anyone in an organization can create. To produce the videos, we turned to different agencies depending on our requirements. We would not produce a video for internal or external communication because it is not feasible,” Agarwal said.

The duo first started working on a model that makes it possible to process any type of multimodal input and, based on that, predict the sequence of actions and product-specific media. However, the company decided to focus on video first, targeting prosumers and teams such as product, customer success and sales.

The startup has a tool that allows you to create a product video or explainer film from a screen recording. Lica can automatically add transitions, background music and effects. The company’s editing tool gives you the freedom to edit some parts, such as: B. Text for the comment, to be added manually. You can also guide the AI ​​assistant with prompts to give the video a specific voice, such as: B. “Create a tutorial-style video in Generation Z language.”

Once the video is created, you can also edit parts such as voiceover sound, subtitles, language, style, and music using prompts.

“A lot of people don’t have the vocabulary for what they want from a video. This leads to several time-consuming iterations until the final video is available. We provide you with an AI assistant that behaves like your video producer and works quickly,” said Kalyanaraman.

The founders noted that the tool also understands design aesthetics well. In cases where a user enters unusual design or color options, the tool ensures that the final product looks pleasant and not off-putting.

Mehta mentioned that an AI assistant has two types of models: an orchestrator that puts together different parts of the presentation, including choosing the best voice for the narration, and a layout generator that takes care of how different parts of the screen recording or of the text will be displayed on the screen. For other parts like audio generation, the company uses a mix of open source and close source models.

Lica currently has a free tier that allows you to create 10 videos with a limit of 3 minutes per video and 3 downloads per month. You can pay $49 per month to create 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, Lica will look to optimize its AI assistant for additional video formats such as marketing, presentations, social media and investor pitches in the coming months.

Lica may not have direct competitors, but companies and startups generally use everything from Zoom calls to screen recording to create a rudimentary video, with a tool like Loom to polish it up. AI-centric startups like D-ID and Syenthesia have used avatars for tutorial videos or internal messages.

Accel’s Sameer Gandhi believes the startup has the right mix of team quality and product approach.

“Lica excels at combining advanced AI capabilities with intuitive design in a single platform, allowing users to maintain creative control while benefiting from AI-powered features. Combined with the team’s background in generative AI and product development, we believe they are uniquely positioned to address an important market need that other solutions have yet to fully address,” he told TechCrunch via email.