I'm finally ready to talk about my new startup Evertoon, and my work transition!
Earlier this year, I left my role as CTO of Minted, in order to start Evertoon. It was a tough decision, since Minted is a wonderful company and succeeding extremely well as a business. But starting a company in Evertoon's product space has been a long-time dream of mine, and I eventually took the plunge. Minted and I have been very mutually supportive. I interviewed all of my replacement candidates to lead Minted's engineering, and was delighted with the hiring of Charlie Rice, a fantastic engineering leader from Amazon. For three months after my departure until Charlie started, I advised Minted 3 to 4 hours per week. I still help out from time to time, and am very happy to see that Minted engineering is thriving.
I'm very excited to share about my new company Evertoon! Evertoon lets users create 3D animated videos by taking regular text and having avatars act it out, with animations and special effects. Many people have ideas in their head that would be entertaining videos, but lack the budget and resources to find actors, create visual effects, and locate an appealing physical setting. It only takes a few minutes to use Evertoon to turn your humorous story or marketing message into a video. Add explosions! Make your avatar punch your friend's avatar and send him the video! Express your quirky humor in a video! By making these easy, Evertoon seeks to unlock the visual stories trapped in people's heads.
For me personally, this is a culmination of my love for products with beautiful art (like Minted), slick 3D graphics (like Microsoft Flight Simulator), appeal to consumers (like Gmail or Google Desktop), and enable storytelling (like Google Lively). Everything has led up to this!
I'm showing the product-in-progress to people who are interested in this space. If you have an interest in this area and you know me in real life and want to give me product feedback, drop me a line!
Earlier this year, I left my role as CTO of Minted, in order to start Evertoon. It was a tough decision, since Minted is a wonderful company and succeeding extremely well as a business. But starting a company in Evertoon's product space has been a long-time dream of mine, and I eventually took the plunge. Minted and I have been very mutually supportive. I interviewed all of my replacement candidates to lead Minted's engineering, and was delighted with the hiring of Charlie Rice, a fantastic engineering leader from Amazon. For three months after my departure until Charlie started, I advised Minted 3 to 4 hours per week. I still help out from time to time, and am very happy to see that Minted engineering is thriving.
I'm very excited to share about my new company Evertoon! Evertoon lets users create 3D animated videos by taking regular text and having avatars act it out, with animations and special effects. Many people have ideas in their head that would be entertaining videos, but lack the budget and resources to find actors, create visual effects, and locate an appealing physical setting. It only takes a few minutes to use Evertoon to turn your humorous story or marketing message into a video. Add explosions! Make your avatar punch your friend's avatar and send him the video! Express your quirky humor in a video! By making these easy, Evertoon seeks to unlock the visual stories trapped in people's heads.
For me personally, this is a culmination of my love for products with beautiful art (like Minted), slick 3D graphics (like Microsoft Flight Simulator), appeal to consumers (like Gmail or Google Desktop), and enable storytelling (like Google Lively). Everything has led up to this!
congratulations niniane! best of luck, break a leg!
ReplyDeleteI can't wait till Japanese Otaku get their hands on this....
ReplyDeleteYou will shudder at what they will "create" with your tools...
Good luck, Niniane. You will indeed kick ass.
ReplyDeletelets hope this doesnt turn out like google lively for you..haha
ReplyDeleteHow exciting, good luck! ;-)
ReplyDeleteDo you have plans on how you will monetize this? Perhaps through selling ads or purchasing custom 3D content not available to the casual user?
ReplyDeleteYes, I have plans on how to monetize. :)
ReplyDeleteCool, Hopefully you won't have to resort to VCs to grow this. I look forward to seeing this in the future. On another note if you don't mind is your tech written in C++? Are you using your own custom 3D engine or a third party?
ReplyDeleteLooks like a repeat of Google Lively.
ReplyDeleteOh dear, I think I'm gonna cry. Is this you, Lively?
ReplyDeletestupid idea and will have the same stupid outcome as lively. She would be closing shop in an year from now. Willing to bet a billion on that
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDelete"stupid idea and will have the same stupid outcome as lively. She would be closing shop in an year from now. Willing to bet a billion on that"
They said the same about twitch tv. My hats and respect to her. She has the "balls" and courage to set out on her own. Most just sit there working for someone else and never have the initiative to develop something on their own.
Looking at the picture posted, why does that Asian girl have such a flat face?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteEx-googler can't get TechCrunch press on launch? It reminds me of that software that was popular a couple of years ago that used robotic voices and cartoons to tell a story
ReplyDeleteEvertoon has not launched (I'm simply sharing what I'm working on), but thanks for the support!
ReplyDeleteAre you doing the animation yourself and all programming? Have you a team?
ReplyDeleteI do have a small team. I'm doing the majority of the programming up until now, and am hiring more engineers. The animation art assets are done by an art studio I partner with.
ReplyDeleteWhat language do you program in? Are you using Unity as the engine?
ReplyDeleteNiniane GOOD LUCK! And most of all, HAVE FUN!
ReplyDeleteThe Evertoon App is amazing. Its really addictive. I have a lot of suggestions to make it even better.
ReplyDelete1. Allow the user to change the set within a scene
2. Let there be more than 2 characters in a scene
3. Trimming feature needs to be more powerful and intuitive.
You are on to something here. Good luck !!