The first client managed on her own
My test client remembered the subtitle editor by herself and made subtitles for her video by herself. Next up: drop the shared password, wire up sign-in and payments.
By Georg Malahov
Last week a small thing happened that matters a lot to me. My test client — a teacher, the very person whose videos this project started with — wrote to me on her own for the first time. She remembered the editor, tried out subtitle creation — and it all worked: she generated subtitles for her video. Before that I had given her the link, shown her around and recorded a short demo video of how to use it. From there she managed without me.
That's a real success. My so far only client from the outside — not quite a real one, a test one — was able to use the service and get a result. Not on a call with me, not with me dictating every step, but by herself, when she needed it.
Back in May we had a long conversation, and I remembered the key number: she makes subtitles by hand and spends over an hour on a single video. Automatic subtitles from other tools didn't work for her — sentences too short, or too long, or commas dangling at the end of a line — so she kept fixing everything manually. Those are exactly the videos I tested the editor on. Now the path looks different: upload the video, subtitles get created, fix what you don't like — done.
From that same May conversation I still have a list of bigger ideas. She has hours-long recordings of Zoom lessons with her students, and she needs to pull testimonials and complete, smart thoughts out of them for social media — right now there's no way to rewatch or analyze any of it. A perfect task for my service, but it's in the queue: basics first.
And the basics mean no longer hiding the editor behind a shared password. Right now access works guerrilla-style: one password for everyone I've personally given the link to. I need proper sign-in, purchases and a test launch — so that the next person needs neither me, nor a demo video, nor a password from me personally.
The funny part is that the thing lagging furthest behind turned out to be not the product itself but the hub around it — this site, where everything is supposed to come together: sign-in, payments, articles. The editor works, the client manages, and the storefront is still behind a password and without texts. A day or two this week will go exactly into the hub — time to drop the passwords and start publishing.
The next test is precisely this: a person I don't know arrives via a link and makes subtitles on their own. The client showed this week that it's possible.