Hey Deal Lifters 👋✨
Today’s edition is the kind of founder story that punches you in the gut — in the best way.

It’s not about billion-dollar budgets.
It’s not about insider networks.
And it’s definitely not about YC golden tickets.

It’s the story of two outsiders who got rejected, ignored, and underestimated…
…and still built a $40M+ ARR bootstrap beast used by 10 million+ creators around the world.

This is the VEED.io story — and trust me, it’s one of the best “persistence > pedigree” lessons you’ll ever see.

Let’s break it down. 🎬⚡

🎥 PART 1 — The Pain That Started It All

London, 2017.

Two strangers — Sabba Keynejad and Timur (Tim) Mamedov — meet at an online hackathon and quickly realize they’re obsessed with the same problem:

Video editing software sucks.

It’s clunky.
It’s slow.
It’s built for professionals, not creators.
And it completely ignores how the internet actually communicates today — through short, fast, social-first videos.

Sabba, with a deep background in design and video workflows, had felt this pain for years.
Tim was still a university student…but so committed that he literally wrote his final dissertation on VEED as a business idea.

At first, the duo built a tool that turned blog posts into videos.

It flopped.

But instead of quitting, they leaned on a key founder instinct:

Pivot toward the problem you know best.

Not the problem you wish existed.

And that was the birth of…

🎬 PART 2 — The Birth of VEED.io

2018. London.

Sabba and Tim launched VEED.io — a simple, clean, entirely browser-based video editor.

Just an MVP.
No funding.
No pedigree.
No Silicon Valley buzz.

They didn’t want to reinvent Premiere Pro.
They wanted to reinvent accessibility.

Their thesis was simple but spot-on:

This became their north star for the next five years.

And the best part?
They didn’t need a fancy office or VC dollars.

Just:

• a laptop

• a browser

• a problem worth solving

• and insane persistence

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🛠️ PART 3 — 2019: The YC Rejection That Fueled a Revolution

In 2019, Sabba and Tim applied to Y Combinator.

They had:

• users

• momentum

• a product people liked

But no paying customers.

YC rejected them.

Most founders would spiral.
These two? They built their payment system that same weekend.

By Monday, they had:

20 paying customers.

A real business model.

A new sense of direction.

This was a defining moment.
Not because they got rejected — but because of how they responded.

This became VEED’s personality as a company:

• move stupidly fast

• learn aggressively

• build publicly

• ignore pedigree

• trust the grind

🚀 PART 4 — Growing to 50,000 Users With Zero Marketing Budget

While other startups burned millions on acquisition, VEED took a completely different approach:

SEO × Content × Community

A lethal combination.

Here’s how they did it:

1. SEO landing pages for every conceivable tool
They built hundreds of pages ranking for terms like:

• “Add subtitles online”

• “Cut video online”

• “Crop video for TikTok”

Millions of people searched for these daily.

VEED became the default answer.

2. Fast, useful free tools
People didn’t just click.
People converted.

3. Community engagement
Creators shared VEED tutorials.
Fans posted hacks.
Educators used it in classrooms.

Momentum snowballed.

By the end of 2019:

50,000 monthly active users

$0 spent on ads

growing faster than many VC-backed competitors

This period built VEED’s foundation:

📈 PART 5 — 2020–2021: The Explosion

During COVID, remote teams, creators, teachers, and solopreneurs all needed one thing:

Simple video tools.

Premiere Pro was too heavy.
iMovie was too limited.
Loom solved recording, not editing.

VEED became the easiest way to:

• add captions

• clean audio

• cut clips

• make social content

• collaborate in the browser

Their metrics went ballistic.

🟣 2020: Hit $1M ARR

🟣 2021: Hit $7M ARR

🟣 Bootstrapped the entire time

🟣 Profitable

🟣 Growing faster than some VC-backed unicorns

This is when the industry finally realized:

VEED wasn’t a toy.
It was a movement.

💰 PART 6 — 2022: Sequoia Comes Knocking

After years of turning down investors, VEED finally said yes.

February 2022:
They raised $35M Series A led by Sequoia Capital, one of the most prestigious firms in Silicon Valley.

But here’s the twist:

They didn’t need the money.
They took it to go bigger, faster.

At this point VEED already had:

1 million+ users

explosive SEO growth

profitable operations

This funding allowed them to:

• hire world-class engineers

• scale infrastructure

• expand features

• compete with incumbents

• move into AI

And that last point?
It changed everything.

🤖 PART 7 — 2023–2025: The AI Takeover

While most video editors were still “dumb tools,” VEED went all-in on AI:

• AI auto-subtitles

• AI clip generators

• AI background remover

• AI voice cleanup

• AI video creation

• AI text-to-video workflows

This transformed VEED from a tool → into a platform.

Creators didn’t just edit videos.
They generated them.
Businesses didn’t just produce content.
They automated it.

Growth skyrocketed.

🟣 $40M ARR

🟣 10M monthly active users

🟣 200+ employees

🟣 One of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in Europe

Not bad for a startup YC rejected.

🧠 PART 8 — Why VEED Beat Every Incumbent

Let’s break down the strategic execution:

1️⃣ Simplicity > Complexity

They built the Google Docs of video editing.
Nothing to install.
Nothing to update.
Nothing confusing.

2️⃣ SEO as a Superpower

While competitors ran ads, VEED harvested intent.

3️⃣ AI at the perfect time

When AI caught fire, VEED was already deeply integrated into the browser.
They became the perfect delivery system.

4️⃣ Bootstrapping discipline

Being profitable early made VEED:

• efficient

• creative

• resilient

• allergic to waste

5️⃣ YC rejection shaped their culture

Instead of validation, they got motivation.

They didn’t need permission to win.

🧨 PART 9 — Strategic Lessons for Founders

🔥 Lesson 1: You don’t need pedigree to win.

YC didn’t believe in them.
The market did.

🔥 Lesson 2: Build for the shift, not the status quo.

Video exploded post-2017.
VEED rode the wave.

🔥 Lesson 3: Distribution is more important than innovation.

SEO was their real growth engine.

🔥 Lesson 4: You can bootstrap your way to tens of millions in ARR.

VC is optional.
Not mandatory.

🔥 Lesson 5: Pivot fast, build faster.

Their first idea failed.
Their second became a rocket.

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🏁 Deal Lift Takeaway

There’s more than one way to win.

Not every great company is born at Stanford.
Not every unicorn is minted in YC.
Not every founder needs VCs to get started.

Sometimes it’s just:

• vdvdvdvdvdtwo friends

• a browser

• a problem the world underestimates

• and relentless execution

VEED.io proved that great companies don’t need perfect beginnings.

You can start small.
You can stay small.
And still build something massive.

Because the market doesn’t care about your pedigree.
It cares about your product.

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