Struggling to keep up with AI?

Recipes by Cardboard · AI video

You can make your launch video this week, without hiring an editor

Cardboard, a YC-backed AI video editor, lets you copy a video that already works and make it yours. Here’s how.

Find a video you love, and make your own version of it

Most of a good video is the edit: the pacing, cuts and captions. A Recipe is an edit that already works, ready for your footage. Founders tend to start with:

• App Launch Teaser. Your app floating on screen, then a brand reveal.
• Talking-head Meta Ad. You to camera, captioned, made for feeds.
• Podcast Product Review. A chat and a live demo in one shot.

It takes three steps, and you never touch a timeline

1. 1
   Pick a recipe. It lists the footage to bring and the sizes it exports.
2. 2
   Drop in your clips, photos or audio. Its Director rebuilds the cuts, captions and motion graphics on your footage.
3. 3
   Ask for changes in plain English, like “tighter intro” or “a vertical cut for LinkedIn”.

Seen a video you wish you’d made? Paste its link and remix that instead.

Their own launch did half a million views

Before Cardboard, its founders made launch videos for other startups. When it was their turn, their YC launch pulled in about 500,000 views. Recipes are their way of handing you edits that already work.

Trying it costs little: plans start around $10 a month, there’s a 3-day free trial, and it now runs inside ChatGPT and Claude.

They learned film by remaking Apple’s launch videos

Saksham Aggarwal (left) and Ishan Sharma are engineers who met in school. To teach themselves filmmaking, they recreated Apple’s launch films. That got them work making launch videos for other startups, until they stopped to build the editor itself.

Saksham’s pitch for it: Cursor, but for video.