Investing in Captions

Bryan Kim

Posted June 22, 2023

As an investor, one of the most rewarding aspects of my job is believing in and standing alongside great founders. Lucky for me, Gaurav Misra and Dwight Churchill were the first cofounders I invested in after joining a16z in 2020. Since then, they’ve confirmed for me that a combination of consumer-centric design sensibilities and cutting-edge technology is critical when building beloved products. 

I first crossed paths with Gaurav during my tenure at Snap, where he built and led the design engineering team, a new products team that incubated products like Snap Maps, and much more. Gaurav, a rare full-stack founder, teamed up with Dwight, previously an early member of the team that launched Marcus, Goldman Sachs’ consumer finance business.

With the shared insight that millions of people talk to a camera every day, they set out on a mission to build an AI creative suite designed to make this behavior more seamless for content creators and consumers alike. Today, Captions helps creators quickly and easily script, record, and edit video content with a focus on short-form videos. Captions’ first feature made it easy for content creators to generate automated captions over their videos, and they’ve since launched additional features like AI Eye Contact, which corrects eye contact in post production, and AI Music, which helps creators add the right music to any video.   

I believe the popularity of short-form video content—found in TikToks, Reels, Spotlight, Shorts, and countless other industry and vertical-specific platforms—is not just a fleeting trend, but an enduring behavioral shift, enabled by the amazing cameras in our pockets and the increasing appetite of content viewers. And today, a large number of creators (influencers around everything from fashion to sports, wellness, music, cooking, DIY, etc.) talk to their audiences in these short-form videos. However, there remains a significant barrier to engagement: a large portion of videos consumed on mobile are watched with the sound off. Before Captions, producing text overlays and other artifacts for these videos required a lot of time and effort. 

By leveraging AI, Captions has made voice-to-text content generation seamless, and that’s just the beginning. Additional current and upcoming capabilities include AI voiceover & voice cloning, translation, visual editing, and sound effects generation.

Having first invested in Gaurav and Dwight’s company at the seed stage, then again as part of their Series A and B fundraises, we are incredibly excited to have seen the company’s growth to date and to continue partnering with them as they pursue their end vision of helping creators of all sizes and backgrounds easily create, edit, publish, and distribute high-quality content to a global audience. 

If you are ever creating digital content, try out Captions! And also…they are hiring!

Contributor
More From this Contributor

The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. In addition, this content may include third-party advertisements; a16z has not reviewed such advertisements and does not endorse any advertising content contained therein.

This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly as well as unannounced investments in publicly traded digital assets) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/.

Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.

Explore similar Investments
go to top