How Will Smith Helped a Little Bootstrapped Startup Rise to the Top
The inspiring story of how a Hollywood star helped us enter US and global markets, and launch our new startup
‘Now, this is a story all about how,
our animation studio got flipped, turned upside down…I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there…
This is a story about our tech startup that I want to share!’
It all started in Rostov-on-Don, Russia in 2018 when my wife, Veronica, and I decided to combine our skills and efforts to produce 2D animation and founded the studio, V+ Animation.
Things were going fairly well. We were working on animated commercials for various companies. After a year, we started working on our own animated series. The script of the first episode and the characters were ready! Sadly, the project didn’t develop any further. Part of the reason was that the style of the series was significantly different from our old, simple, motion graphics. Despite that, the concept and style overwhelmed us with excitement so we knew we really wanted to keep working in that direction! That’s when our idea was born.
Let’s Chance it
It was the beginning of 2019. I woke up one morning and saw an Instagram post by Will Smith. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that he’s an awesome Hollywood actor who I’ve always been inspired by! My wife (my girlfriend back then) Veronica sent me his post saying, “We have to make something for him in our new style!” I replied, “Yeah, let’s do it! Let’s say… he’s driving a car in Miami while listening to his song and drinking JUST Water. You know, with ‘The Fresh Prince’ vibes!” (JUST Water is a company founded by Jaden, Will Smith’s son, that they promote together.)
We made a short loop animation and posted it on our Instagram. Of course, we hoped that Will would notice it so we tried our best to gather everything that we could to touch his heart with this short clip. We wanted to show that we are very familiar with his life’s work and everything he represents, especially since I’ve always wanted to create something for Will (being a fan of his since childhood)!
The Magic of Will
It was hard to believe that Will would simply run into our video by looking at his mentions on Instagram, so I decided to send the clip to his colleagues as well. On top of that, I used our video as a targeted ad so that they could see the video and show it to him. I put my best foot forward, although we didn’t hear anything back.
A month later, we were celebrating our friend’s birthday. Suddenly, I heard Veronica say, “What??!!! Will Smith tagged us in his post!” So, I opened Instagram and saw our video on his page! He thanked our studio and praised our integration with JUST Water. He even tagged our personal accounts! I was so elated and overwhelmed that my head started spinning! Our friends who were with us at that moment started screaming and jumping around like crazy. The next thing I knew someone slid a shot of tequila into my hand! With shaking hands, I was about to down it, but instead, I spilled it all over my face.
Thrilled and excited, we immediately recorded a thank you video for Will and started sharing it on social media. When I looked at my phone again, I just couldn’t believe my eyes! There were so many messages, comments, and follows that started flooding into our studio’s Instagram account.
I went outside to catch some fresh air. When I came back all the guests congratulated Veronica and me. It seemed like it was our birthday, although it was our friend’s, so it felt a bit embarrassing! But the ‘birthday boy said that it was the best thing that could happen at his birthday party.
Our Lives Would Never Be the Same
In the morning, I woke up to a phone call from the news media asking me to comment on our story. Calls, DMs, and emails were raining down on us, one after another! News reporters wanted to meet with us! Even famous American actors, producers, musicians, and American talent agencies wanted to collaborate with us. We felt like movie stars!
To be honest―I couldn’t have ever imagined that it would lead to such an uproar. We had to adapt very quickly. We understood that if we didn’t take advantage of the opportunity that Will gave us, we would be dropping the ball. So we had to grab hold of this opportunity with all we had. We were almost literally washed ashore in America! Of course, we planned on entering the US market, but I thought it would be smooth and gradual. But boy, was I wrong! Neither I nor my wife expected such an incredible turn of events.
The ‘Hollywood-on-Don’ of Rostov-on-Don
Inspired by these events, we decided we couldn’t just stop with Will Smith. Apart from the fact that we started receiving lots and lots of offers from well-known and influential people from the US, we also decided to keep taking advantage of this niche new market. We didn’t count on another repost, so we tried to find other celebrities who we were interested in working. As a result, we managed to collaborate with the heroes of my childhood. Heroes, such as Macaulay Culkin and Martin Lawrence, as well as popular electronic musicians and hip-hop artists. The icing on top is that we’ve been able to work with big companies like Amazon Music and Warner Records.
Burning the Candle at Both Ends
In the Spring of 2020, the pandemic was in full swing, so everyone was home consuming online content like crazy. Film production was put on hold but you could do animation without leaving your house. Therefore, the demand for our work only increased. One day, when I was reading through endless requests for animations (Instagram clips and YouTube music videos) I realized that we couldn’t process all of them with the number of workers that we had. On top of that, all our staff members were busy juggling multiple projects.
We had to refuse a lot of offers, while others (who wanted to work with us) didn’t have budgets sizable enough to order our animations. It was heartbreaking to realize that we would leave all these people without a chance to share their music with the world through our visuals.
Animation Studio . . . To Tech Startup!
After a year of productive work with clients from the US (mostly musicians), we noticed that the main requests for animations were all comparable to each other. The requests would go something like this, “I’m driving a car listening to my song; I’m chilling by the pool; I’m making music at my studio; I’m in a club,” and so on. And, then I thought, “What if we could automate the process of creating short animations, make it more cost-effective, while at the same time keeping our unique style and vibe?”
That’s how our startup was born. It’s an online platform for creating animated music videos called, “Vibetoon.” The idea is simple: just in a few steps you can create a character that looks similar to you, choose a scene and animation from a list of options, upload your track to the video, and then finish it by setting the right tempo and rhythm of the animation. And voilà! Musicians receive a complete animated video that they can post on social media!
We outsourced our project to a local development team. The project got up and running quickly (as projects tend to do), but later it (of course) was brought to a halt. There were multiple causes: some technical, and some related to our team members’ hectic schedules. However, we were able to work it out and pull ourselves together to continue the project.
Through all the hardships, we managed to release the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) version. We launched it in America at the end of October 2021. We were able to get our first paid subscribers and reactions from people in the industry!
Doing It Solo
I’m proud that we accomplished all of this without investors. In the past, our developers said we need an MVP to get funding, but I didn’t think we needed a product for investors. I believed, and still believe, that we need to keep customers at the heart of everything we do. However, I will admit it’s rarely a fast process. We financed the startup with the funds that we earned from our animation studio. And, that’s the advantage of holding onto your main source of income! I believe in the fact that our animation studio was what saved us from going hungry and having mental breakdowns, while we were developing our startup. (Although, we did have our fair share of breakdowns due to the launch of our project stretching for more than one year.)
Of course, I want to go further, but I’m also just really glad that we’ve made it this far. I particularly want to point out the incredible perseverance and talent of my wife, Veronica, whose contributions to the project have been simply priceless. She managed to solve a lot of complicated technical problems related to animations that even experienced animators couldn’t fix!
What’s Next for the New Kids on the Block?
We are actively working on improving our web and mobile versions of the site. Back in the day, I was always afraid of launching something imperfect or flawed, and that’s exactly why my projects either evolved very slowly or weren’t shown to the world at all. As soon as I tackled this shortcoming, everything I worked on started to develop way better and faster. Now, I believe that dilly-dallying and trying to bring your creation to the state of perfection is self-mockery, and (more often than not) a waste of time and energy.
Of course, we’re only at the beginning of our startup journey, and there’s so much more to look forward to in the future, but―the launch of the project, our first paid subscribers, the subscribers’ Vibetoon videos on social media, great feedback from our clients, and lots of collaboration offers―all these things are great fuel for us moving forward. On top of that, we still have TONS of interesting ideas.
Fortune Favors the Brave:
What Will Smith Teaches Us About Entering the US Market
Well, if it wasn’t for our buddy, Big Willie, perhaps, we would’ve kept making excuses and debating over entering the US market. You know, it’s just like when adults teach children to swim by throwing them into a pool; Will stirred us into action.
Sadly, a lot of talented entrepreneurs and creative people from around the world are so sure that they should first test whatever they’re working on locally and then try navigating to the US. I think that’s a strategy, but I don’t think it’s always the right one.
Admittedly, it was helpful to have a jump-start like the one we were lucky to have. But, if creatives and entrepreneurs keep making a plethora of excuses in the fear that something may or may not work out in a country like America, they’ll end up wasting a lot of time―or even worse―may become doomed for failure!
This whole experience has been breathtaking… I hope one day we can meet Will Smith in person and thank him for the unbelievable chance that he gave us! Let’s hope he won’t charge us too much for the ‘little’ promotion he did for us! 😉
Written by Vitaly Nikolaev
Edited by Christopher Barnes
