Submagic

$0 to $8M ARR Bootstrapped in 2 Years - The AI Shorts Playbook

February 6, 2026

$8M ARR

Revenue

1M+ users

Users

2023

Founded

13 people

Team

Bootstrapped

Funding

What Submagic Does

Submagic is an AI-powered video editing platform that turns raw footage into viral short-form content in three clicks. Upload a video, and Submagic automatically generates trendy captions with emojis, finds the best viral moments from long-form content, adds hook titles, and syncs trending music. The product serves two core ICPs: small business owners discovering short-form content for the first time, and marketing agencies producing video at scale. With features like Magic Clips (extracting highlights from long videos) and AI-powered caption translation into 50+ languages, Submagic has become the go-to tool for creators who want professional results without professional editing skills.

The Problem They Solve

Editing video is complex. David Zitoun has been editing since he was 12 years old, has used everything from Sony Vegas to Premiere Pro, and still finds the process painful. For the millions of small business owners and creators who realized in 2023 that they needed short-form video to grow, the barrier was even higher. They lacked the skills, the time, and the patience to learn traditional editing tools. Meanwhile, the short-form content explosion meant the window of opportunity was closing fast. Creators needed captions, hooks, trending music, and optimal clip selection, and they needed it done in minutes, not hours. Submagic's co-founder, who spent eight years building a website builder, brought a relentless focus on simplicity: every feature had to work in three clicks or it wasn't shipping.

Submagic: $0 to $8M ARR Bootstrapped in 2 Years

Watch: How Submagic Hit $8M ARR Bootstrapped - Founder Interview

The Growth Story

When David Zitoun and his co-founder launched Submagic in May 2023, they had zero customers, zero revenue, and zero outside funding. Three months later, they hit $1M ARR.

The speed was staggering, but it wasn't accidental. David attributes it to two factors: short-form content virality and time-to-market fit.

The Perfect Storm (May - Aug 2023)

The timing couldn't have been better:

ChatGPT had just gone mainstream and everyone suddenly cared about AI
Alex Hormozi was demonstrating the power of short-form video to millions
Every business owner was waking up to the realization that they needed to be creating shorts

Submagic landed in the middle of this explosion with a product that could generate captioned, styled, ready-to-post shorts in under two minutes.

The Affiliate Flywheel

Timing alone doesn't explain the velocity. David launched an affiliate program just 30 days after getting his first customer. With zero marketing budget, affiliation was the only viable channel.

The program was deliberately generous:

30% commissions on lifetime value of every referred customer (not just first purchase, forever)
David personally showed affiliates how to make viral short-form content about Submagic
He proved the model himself first: one video hit 100,000 views and drove $3,000 MRR directly

Affiliates saw the proof and started posting content daily. Within two years: 10,000+ affiliates driving 20% of the company's $8M ARR, roughly $1.6M in directly attributed revenue, plus incalculable brand exposure from thousands of videos mentioning Submagic that never even used an affiliate link.

Product Hunt: Going All-In on the US

Two months after launch, on July 3, 2023, David and his co-founder made a pivotal decision: forget the French market, go fully into the US.

They launched on Product Hunt and hit #2 of the day. From that moment, the US became their primary market. David is candid that it required an exhausting 24-hour outreach blitz, and he wouldn't necessarily recommend it today given how competitive it's become. But at the time, with limited options, it was "the best decision ever."

The $5M Plateau

Growth wasn't always smooth. Submagic hit a plateau at $5M ARR that lasted 7-8 months.

The problem was clear:

15% monthly logo churn meant they were filling a leaky bucket
Many casual users signed up, used the tool for a few videos, and left
Paid ads and new features weren't moving the needle

The breakthrough came from a counter-intuitive move: instead of raising prices as advisors suggested, they lowered them and launched Magic Clips as a separate add-on product. This captured a new segment of users who wanted to extract highlights from long-form content, and the modular pricing let agencies pay for exactly what they needed. The plateau broke.

Where They Are Today

By June 2025, the numbers tell the story:

$8M ARR with zero outside funding
5,000 to 10,000 new signups every day
~2,500 new paying customers per month
1M+ total users (crossed in June 2024)
13 people generating over $600,000 in revenue per employee

Key Growth Tactics

The Affiliate Army

Submagic's affiliate program launched 30 days after their first customer, born from necessity rather than strategy. With zero marketing budget, David needed a channel where he only paid for results. The 30% lifetime commission was far above market rate, but David argues the math works: affiliates create thousands of videos mentioning Submagic that never use an affiliate link, generating brand awareness that's impossible to quantify. Today, 10,000+ affiliates generate roughly $1.6M of the $8M ARR, with the company paying out approximately $45,000 per month in commissions. They use FirstPromoter for tracking and explicitly ban paid ads by affiliates to keep the program organic.

Free Tools as an SEO Engine

Submagic experimented with a free tools strategy, building utilities like a YouTube video downloader, video compressor, and TikTok hashtag generator. The results were explosive: traffic spiked to 9 million monthly visitors at peak. But David learned a hard lesson. The YouTube downloader attracted massive traffic but converted poorly, and Google eventually blocked the page. The takeaway: free tools must be closely tied to your core value proposition. A video compressor makes sense for a video editing tool; a YouTube downloader does not. Despite the setback, SEO became their #2 acquisition channel, growing 30% month-over-month, driven by better-targeted tools and content.

Customer Obsession at Scale

David took the first 100 customers from Stripe, reached out for their phone numbers (offering a discount), and added them to a WhatsApp group where he built the product collaboratively. He still takes 5-6 customer calls every day. Anyone can book a call with the CEO of Submagic at any time. This isn't just customer support; it's product development. Inspired by Airbnb's 10-star experience framework, David aims to make every interaction so remarkable that users can't help but talk about it. The result: 80% of the 13-person team are former Submagic users who joined because they loved the product. Word of mouth became the company's most powerful, and cheapest, growth channel.

Key Takeaways for Builders

✓Launch your affiliate program early and make it generous: Submagic offered 30% lifetime commissions from day 30. The 10,000+ affiliates now drive 20% of revenue and immeasurable brand awareness.
✓Time-to-market fit matters as much as product-market fit: Submagic launched during the perfect storm of short-form content exploding, ChatGPT going mainstream, and every business realizing they needed video.
✓Obsess over simplicity: The co-founder spent 8 years building a website builder before Submagic. That experience distilled into a "three clicks to everything" philosophy that made the product inherently viral.
✓Your first 100 customers are your best product managers: David put his first 100 paying users in a WhatsApp group and built the product hand-in-hand with them. This is free and irreplaceable.
✓When growth stalls, lower prices instead of raising them: Submagic hit a $5M plateau for 7-8 months. Counter-intuitively, lowering prices and launching an add-on product broke through it.