How We Built a Tech Startup Around Our Community

Over the last two years, Subly has become a go-to solution for multitudes of creators, a meeting point for thousands of businesses and educational institutions– all through one pandemic, one rebrand and 3 major launches. 

It’s unbelievable to look back to over a year ago when we celebrated our first 3,500 users when we were still working on Subly 1.0.

It was around that time that an important team member joined us–the Subly Bot. 

Subly Bot’s job was to send Slack notifications every time somebody signed up to Subly. 

In the early days, he’d let us know of a new user sign up every couple of hours. Subly Bot motivated all of us to keep building.

As we launched new features and our team expanded, Subly Bot started working a lot harder, too. We admit, when he began messaging us every 10 minutes, we had to mute him. 

Don’t worry, he’s still on our team, adamantly notifying all of us to keep going. Today, Subly Bot logs a new user around the world every couple of minutes. 

Ok. What does Subly Bot have to do with Subly’s birthday, though? 

Subly Bot reminds us every day who we’re building Subly for, it’s you. 

Our community loves Subly because we have been committed to being customer-obsessed from day 1. That’s why Subly Bot is such an important part of our team. (Even if he’s not real.) 

We built Subly out of a common pain point– complicated content workflows. And we simplified the process down to just 4 steps. 

To this day, we pride ourselves on making content as simple, and global, as possible. 

But, Subly hasn’t always worked the way you use it today. It hasn’t always looked the way you see it today. In fact, Subly wasn’t even called Subly.

While our evolution hasn’t been noticeable week-by-week, we’ve made some pretty risque moves for a budding startup. 

Wait, what do you mean Subly hasn’t always been Subly?

Once upon a time, circa July 2019, we were Take 1 Video. 

Take 1 Video was working on automatically transcribing and subtitling videos. It was a common problem in the creator community, and Take 1 Video wanted to make it simple. 

We weren’t sure what ‘simple’ looked like, so we sent off invitations to 30 hand-selected beta launch testers. We sent them this:

And it did this: 

This is what the seeds of Subly looked like. 

Take 1 Video wasn’t perfect, and we knew that. But we didn’t want to assume what perfect would look like, after all, how could we know?

That’s why we sent it to beta testers. We wanted our user’s feedback. We wanted to build exactly what was needed at that time. 

So, what did you end up building?

Not Take 1 Video.

We realised that Take 1 Video wasn’t what creators needed. Creators needed more than video transcription, they also needed audio transcription. They needed more languages. They wanted more control. They wanted more personality. They wanted better engagement. They wanted broader. Something with a more global focus. 

So we scrapped the Video. We scrapped the idea of taking just one video. And we created Subly. 

Subly is for video and audio. And in the future hopefully different files, too. It’s for automatic transcription, translation and subtitles. For individual creators all the way to large enterprises. For those with and without editing skills. For everyone, not just English-speakers. Subly has a focus on subtitles because language accessibility starts here; so does engagement and reach.

What was actually different about Subly, though?

After that first round of beta testers, we decided to become Subly. 

We changed our name to Subly. We re-designed the logo. We re-designed the user interface and even changed our brand colours. A lot of work, and worry, went into this move. 

We were worried that the product would be unrecognisable. That our early adopters wouldn’t approve. That it wouldn’t look as simple or easy-to-use anymore. 

But we trusted in the process and launched it anyway.

This is what Subly Free looked like in February 2020:

And this is what automatic transcription and subtitling looked like back then:

We added new elements that were missing before. 

We made the dashboard different to the editor. We added a pop of our new brand colour. We added editing and styling features. Overall, we tried to give our users more control in the SaaS platform. Like they had asked. 

To our delight, our early adopters surprised us. They supported the MVP in February 2020. Our user sign ups rapidly began growing, which made things exciting for us (and for Subly Bot).

This version of Subly supported video for transcription and subtitling in over 30 languages. Subly now had a focus on subtitles and engagement and accessibility. It looked more straightforward, the colours were more dynamic and carried more personality, and we were more inclusive.

Ok. Where did the rest of what I see today come from then?

You! 

After that first launch, our mission was to collect as much feedback as possible. We listened to our users day in and day out. And we made changes to the platform daily. 

Our users said, headlines to grab attention too, so we added a Headline tab. 

Our users said flexible margins, so we adjusted the Position tab.

As we listened more and more we unlocked all of the other things we never realised you needed from subtitles. 

And Subly started looking a little more like this:

Again, these new updates all came from the community. Our users kept showing us new use cases for Subly and where we fit into their workflow. So we added features like downloading subtitled videos, or downloading transcripts only.

We also launched a special campaign to get direct feedback from real-time users. Our Founding members campaign were users who needed Subly, and for a discount they got to test the early versions of all our releases. This led to 5% of our users at the time subscribing and becoming Founding Members. They were intrumental in making Subly what it is today.

How did Subly Pro come about?

Subly Pro, our first-ever paid subscription, launched in October 2020. 

We decided to build a paid version of Subly because one, we needed to keep building our team and our tech; and two, because a lot of users from all sorts of backgrounds began discovering Subly. And subsequently requesting new features from Subly. 

Subly wasn’t just subtitling, it was about saving our users’ time. Hundreds of hours a week. 

There was a large part of our user base creating content in batches, for themselves and their businesses. They repurposed their content. They produced for multiple channels at a time. They created branded content. 

So Subly Pro was built with them in mind. 

This is what Subly Pro for creators, agencies and businesses looked like:

We tried to help our users save even more time. Now they could upload and transcribe their video and audio; show off their brand with logos and brand colours and fonts; add headlines; resize their content for any platform. We also made it super simple to export TXT, SRT and VTT files. 

While the editor looked similar, it was less complicated. We deleted unnecessary buttons, made important elements stand out with brand colours and cleaned things up a little bit. To make room for what was to come.

How the community helped us build our biggest feature to date–Subly Premium

In February 2021, we launched Subly Premium. It was a major launch for us as we introduced a new major feature: translation. But to make it work, Subly needed to have some work done, too. (We loved it as it was but a little new style never hurt anybody!)

We introduced collaboration features for teams, which warranted a side menu! So we squeezed in a side menu, made it pop with a little more purple, and also created tabs for your Video and Audio! 

While we tried not to change too many colours, we wanted the editor to look fresh; upgraded. 

And in the editor, we added a Translation tab.

What next?

The good news is that we’re just at the beginning. There’s still so much to find out about our users’ workflows. About what businesses and larger teams need. And, so much we still want to do to make Subly and content as simple as it can possibly be. Have something your dreaming of seeing on Subly? Leave a suggestion on our roadmap page! 

While all of these updates make the Subly Bot ecstatic, at times it can be challenging, especially knowing how many creators now rely on us. But each new user notification reminds us why we do it. 

It’s still insane to see the users join in real-time and to be tagged in the content they create and were proud of thanks to Subly. 

Subly has come a long way in the past two years and truly matured and evolved into a community we’re proud to be a part of every day, both externally and internally. 

Head over to our YouTube channel where we’re celebrating everything we’ve learnt by baking a cake! 

Thank you so much for your support, and we’re so glad you’re on this journey with us.

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