In product teams, the overwhelming amount of screen recordings and screenshots often goes unnoticed, and creating videos is both time-consuming and costly. However, two former Microsoft employees saw an opportunity in this market and decided to launch an AI tool called Lica, which easily transforms screenshots and recordings into engaging tutorials and product videos.
This startup was founded in 2023 by Priyaa Kalyanaraman and Purvanshi Mehta, both former Microsoft employees. Kalyanaraman, who worked as a product manager at Microsoft, was involved in developing AI features for PowerPoint and Microsoft Designer. She noticed a strong demand among business users for AI assistants to simplify daily content creation. Due to visa issues, she initially struggled to start her venture, but during a hackathon, she created a small demo and posted it on social media, which caught the attention of Replit founder Amjad Masad.
At the same time, Mehta was independently developing a content personalization project. Through a friend's introduction, the two decided to collaborate on a video storytelling tool because they found that existing tools often looked good but were not very useful.
Lica has just completed a $4 million seed funding round, led by Accel, with participation from Naya Ventures, Village Global, and several angel investors including Replit CEO Amjad Masad and former a16z partner Balaji Srinivasan.
Aditya Agarwal, managing partner at Naya Ventures, who previously worked at Dropbox and Meta, pointed out that people traditionally used a combination of documents and slides to convey ideas, while video production is both expensive and time-consuming. This makes Lica particularly important, as it fills a significant gap.
With Lica's help, users can easily generate product or explainer videos, as the AI automatically adds transitions, background music, and effects. Users can also manually add elements, such as narration text, and guide the AI assistant to create videos in specific styles, such as “make a tutorial video in Gen Z language.”
After generating a video, users can modify the tone of voice, subtitles, language, style, and music through prompts. Kalyanaraman stated that many people do not know how to accurately describe the video effects they want, which often leads to repeated revisions. Lica acts like a fast AI producer, helping users save time.
The two founders also emphasized that Lica understands design aesthetics. When users input unusual design or color choices, the tool ensures that the final output is both visually appealing and not overwhelming. Mehta mentioned that the AI assistant uses two models: one is a coordinator that combines different parts and selects the best narration voice; the other is a layout generator that arranges how screen recordings or text are displayed. The company also utilizes open-source and proprietary models to handle features like audio generation.
Currently, Lica offers a free version that allows users to generate 10 short videos, each up to 3 minutes long, with 3 downloads per month. If you want to generate unlimited videos up to 10 minutes long, you can choose to pay $49 per month and gain access to branded templates.
Although the tool currently focuses primarily on product and tutorial videos, Lica plans to optimize its AI assistant in the coming months to support more video formats, such as marketing, presentations, social media, and investor pitches.
While Lica may not have direct competitors, other companies and entrepreneurs typically use Zoom or screen recording to create simple videos and occasionally refine them with tools like Loom. In contrast, AI startups that rely on avatars to create tutorial videos or internal communications, such as D-ID and Synthesia, are taking a different approach.
Sameer Gandhi from Accel believes that the combination of the Lica team's expertise and product approach gives them a unique advantage. He stated, “Lica helps users maintain creative control while enjoying AI assistance by combining advanced AI capabilities with intuitive design. Coupled with the team's background in generative AI and product development, we believe they are uniquely positioned to address critical needs that the market has yet to fully capture.”