How Kaps Turned AI into a $70K/Mo Subtitle Automation SaaS

From Manual Typing to AI-Driven Subtitles

Yuval Steuer and Roey Lalazar noticed a friend’s editors spent hours typing subtitles inside Adobe Premiere Pro. It felt slow and tedious. They wondered if they could save time by automating the process. Using OpenAI’s Whisper speech-to-text model, they built Kaps: a plugin that takes an uploaded video and spits out a ready-to-use SRT file.

Launching a Hebrew-Only MVP

They targeted the Hebrew-speaking market first, since Premiere didn’t support Hebrew transcripts. In just a few weeks they had a working prototype, connected Whisper under the hood, and offered fast, accurate subtitles. It worked so well that they realized editors everywhere would pay for the time saved.

A Lucky Influencer Shout-Out

Yuval and Roey didn’t have a marketing team. One day a video-editing influencer shared Kaps on his Instagram story. Within 30 minutes they’d booked $4,000 in pre-orders. That single mention validated their idea and pushed them past $20K MRR by December 2023.

Scaling with a Remote VA

To go global they hired Jeff, a virtual assistant in the Philippines, to list and reach out to influencers. Jeff negotiated deals on their behalf and achieved a 26% reply rate in Arabic markets—four times higher than their earlier attempts. In just two weeks he closed $5,000 in collaborations.

Building a Lean, Global Team

Rather than hire expensive local employees, Kaps taps offshore talent via OnlineJobs.ph. Their current team includes language copywriters, plugin developers, lead-gen pros, and outreach specialists. Each role costs a fraction of local rates but delivers high output.

Localized Landing Pages

Kaps didn’t translate a single page. They created distinct landing pages—for English speakers, Arabic speakers, and soon Polish and Hungarian. Each page tweaks headlines and testimonials to match local norms, all using the same Tailwind UI Salient template.

Results and Lessons

In 4.5 months Kaps hit $23K in MRR. One year in, they run at $70K MRR. Four key lessons stand out:

• Start small—solve a specific pain point before scaling.
• Influencer trust can turn on a dime and drive rapid sales.
• Offshore talent lets you grow lean without cutting corners.
• Localized pages move the needle more than a one-size-fits-all site.