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Наталя ХандусенкоStartup
31 March 2025, 10:30
2025-03-31
Two friends created an AI tool to increase video views on YouTube. How does Thumbnailed it work, which can analyze and generate video designs in minutes?
Two childhood friends, developer Roman Galdava and graphic designer Vadym Yaremchuk, created a tool to increase video views on YouTube — Thumbnailed it. It analyzes audience preferences and creates optimized cover, title, and description with a focus on clickability. Thanks to this, the user quickly receives a ready-made design for a YouTube video by simply sending a link to the script to the bot. The startup is already on its way to its first investment, and in the future it plans to expand the list of niches, including Amazon.
Two childhood friends, developer Roman Galdava and graphic designer Vadym Yaremchuk, created a tool to increase video views on YouTube — Thumbnailed it. It analyzes audience preferences and creates optimized cover, title, and description with a focus on clickability. Thanks to this, the user quickly receives a ready-made design for a YouTube video by simply sending a link to the script to the bot. The startup is already on its way to its first investment, and in the future it plans to expand the list of niches, including Amazon.
The idea to launch a startup emerged in early fall 2024, when Roman Galdava and Vadym Yaremchuk first met with Sviatoslav Sviatnenko, founder of the Mission Possible venture program. They shared the idea of creating an automated solution to improve click-through rates on YouTube, which was born from their many years of experience and the work of their own design agency.
The startup was called Thumbnailed it — a combination of the word "thumbnail" (preview/cover) and the idiom "nailed it" (handled/did it right).
About the founders and startup team
The startup was founded by two childhood friends:
Roman Galdava is a developer with 3 years of experience;
Vadym Yaremchuk is a graphic designer with 7 years of experience, of which the last 3 years have been spent creating branding for YouTube channels.
A year and a half ago, Roman and Vadim moved to Kyiv to get acquainted with the local design community and look for new opportunities that would contribute to the development of the design agency at that time.
Both co-founders work on the startup full-time and have no other jobs: Vadym is responsible for marketing and operations, Roman for the technical component.
The total number of people in the team, including outsourced employees, is up to 10 people.
Thumbnailed it is a tool to increase video views on YouTube. How does it work?
Thumbnailed it, analyzing audience preferences, creates an optimized cover, title, and description with a focus on clickability. To do this, the user only needs to send a link to the script to the bot.
Analysis, title generation, and description occur automatically using AI, within the Slack bot functionality.
The main difference between Thumbnailed it and its competitors in the niche is how the analysis is done:
it all starts with defining the author's niche using information about the channel's target audience;
further using information from the YouTube API, the tool identifies anomalies (such as an increase in the number of views by two or more times compared to the average number of views on the channel) in the author's niche;
After selecting from 10 anomalies (videos), the tool analyzes the preview, titles, and descriptions, looking for similar parameters. In the preview, these can be colors, composition, number and size of focal zones, etc. In the titles, the structure, emotion, hook, etc. can be repeated;
By identifying similar features, a pattern is formed, which, when combined with the video content (sent by the user), creates a title, description, and a TK for the thumbnail. The team is currently working on converting this TK into a prompt and connecting image generation.
“If we compare this to agencies or freelancers, it usually takes about 48 hours to create a package. That is why we focus on radically reducing production time so that in the final version of the product the author can get the finished result almost immediately, without leaving the chat,” explains Vadim, co-founder of the startup.
The project was launched on ProductHunt on March 12. The MVP was implemented as a bot in Slack to collect initial feedback and user wishes. The startup is currently in the finalization stage of Product Market Fit. A test version is available, which involves the creation of images by outsourced designers based on a brief generated by the bot.
"After launching on ProductHunt, we received numerous requests for a demo call, which we are currently processing. After the demo call, the user receives access, without a testing period," adds Vadim.
You can learn more about the tool's functionality in the video .
About users and monetization
For now, the startup only serves English and Ukrainian channels. Currently, Thumbnailed it has 2 main types of users:
First, “cash cow” channels, whose creators receive their main income from YouTube’s internal monetization. For them, maintaining a high CTR is a critical necessity;
second, technology companies that use YouTube as a marketing channel.
During the product test period, 5 users were involved. Another 10 remain on the service model, but with the release of image generation, the startup plans to convert them into SaaS customers. The majority are English-speaking authors of “cash cow” channels from Tier 1 countries, which include the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, as well as most EU countries).
“By involving the first 5 users in the test period, we received valuable feedback, which we use to optimize the bot’s operation and select an appropriate model for image generation. The test model provides for delivery of the finished package within 24 hours. With image generation enabled, it will take no more than 2 minutes,” says the startup’s co-founder.
The team is planning an update, including image generation, for early April.
The startup's business model is based on a custom monthly subscription. The author can independently choose the cost of the package depending on the number of videos released per month and the number of designs per video (the more designs, the better the efficiency, due to the greater space for experiments in AB tests).
The test version is available with Custom Pro - a plan for users who want an individual approach to creating thumbnails. Analysis is automated, design is created manually. The final price is determined by the user, depending on the number of videos that the author publishes per month. Starts at $100 per month (with 2 packages per month, $50 per package). As the number of orders per month increases, the price per unit decreases. One package is one 1 credit, which includes a preview, title and description.
The final version will also include: Light — includes 20 credits, but without image editing, previous cost $60; Basic — includes 40 credits with image editing access, $100.
On the way to the first investment and competition
Thumbnailed it has direct competitors — Pikzels and VidIQ, whose products generate thumbnails and titles based on key moments from a video.
“Our main point of differentiation is the focus on improving efficiency. We do not sell the generation capabilities of the bot, we sell the end result in the form of an increase in views, which we achieve as a result of an in-depth analysis of successful cases in the client’s niche and trends,” Vadim explains the advantage of his tool.
As for indirect competitors, these are freelance designers and marketing agencies. “They provide services, which means tens of times higher production costs and days for analysis/creation of visuals, instead of minutes in our case,” adds the co-founder of Thumbnailed it.
The launch and development of the startup is financed by the co-founders, or rather, by the design agency's service business.
Roman and Vadym are participants in the Mission Possible startup acceleration program , which began on October 17 and runs until the end of April. The final stage of the program will be a Demo Day, where participants will pitch their startups to investors and demonstrate the progress made within the program.
“The startup has not yet attracted investment, but we are making every effort to achieve good metrics by the Mission Possible Demo Day to receive a $25,000 grant from the program,” adds Vadim.
What are the plans?
In the near future, the startup plans to launch a full version of the product based on a web platform, with internal YouTube integration.
Among the long-term plans is to expand the list of niches.
“Click-through rate is a critical metric in PPC and on Amazon, we have already spoken with entrepreneurs who have encountered low CTR in these niches, so we know what hurts them and what solution they are willing to pay for,” shared Vadim.
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