How to develop an Apple App of the Year? See what the founder of Replay said

Replay is a video editing software with similar functions to Meipai. Its video editing function is very powerful and easy to use. Replay has just been selected by Apple as the best app of the year. Not only that, their founder Jeff Boudier also demonstrated the new function demo of Replay at Apple's October press conference. How all this happened, please see PingWest's interview with Jeff Boudier: (P=PingWest, J=Jeff Boudier)

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P: Besides China, in which other countries did you win Apple's App of the Year award?

J: We won Apple's annual best app in 34 countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, France and many other European countries, as well as India and many South American countries. This is a surprise for us. I received a notification email from the Apple App Store team last week.

P: Why do you think Apple chose Replay as the Apple App of the Year? Especially in China?

J: I don’t know much about China, but I know that Replay is quite popular in China, including in South Korea and other countries. Asia has become an increasingly globalized region, and software developed in various countries can be used. I think Apple wants to select some innovative apps that need to make good use of the characteristics of Apple devices, and our software meets these requirements.

P: I played with your new video style Light, which is very nice and powerful. As a consumer-oriented application, how do you balance ease of use and functionality?

J: This is a critical question. The core concept of Replay is to allow people to create beautiful videos with just two clicks. Many design decisions of Replay come from this principle. When people can create videos with two clicks, they start to use Replay more. When they use it more, they want more complex things. So, we design different levels according to different users. For example, some users only want to make something in ten seconds, while some users want to make a perfect video in half an hour. Replay allows them to achieve their wishes. Therefore, we did not put the "Timeline Editor" at the top level of the interface, because this would make some users feel intimidated. For more advanced users, we put the "Timeline Editor" at the second level, and they can use it normally. This is a difficult thing to think about. When we want to add any feature, do we consider whether this feature will make our software more complicated? Will this feature make our software more creative? We need to carefully weigh the pros and cons. If we simply listen to the opinions of users and add features, we will create a monster with millions of features.

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P: As both are video editing applications, what is the difference between you and Meipai?

J: I think Meipai is very successful and has great technology. I have tried similar apps in the App Store and Meipai’s technology is the closest to ours. In comparison, I think Meipai is more suitable for short videos, while Reply is more suitable for more complex videos, such as Happy New Year videos. In terms of their own community operations, they invited some celebrity users to upload videos, but we did not do that.

P: What are your current ways of sharing? Have you considered sharing on WeChat Moments/Weibo in China?

J: We can share on many platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and WhatsApp. We also have our own video sharing community with 4 million users. In the "Revelation" interface of Replay, we will put some of our selected good videos every day. I know that the number of users of platforms such as WeChat Moments/Weibo in China is very large, but few people use them in the United States. For example, Americans prefer WhatsApp rather than WeChat. And platforms such as Moments/Weibo have their own sharing rules, so we haven't involved them yet.

P: What is Replay’s profit model?

J: The software is free. There are more than 20 video styles in the software. You can buy one for $1 or buy all for $10. What's more interesting is that we found that more users are willing to spend $10 to buy all. This shows that users see the value of Replay and it is worth their money.

P: Please talk about Replay’s future plans.

J: We have reached 4 million users now, which is a good start. Our future plan is to reach 40 to 50 million users. This number of users may not be too high for social software, but it is a challenge for creative software, which means we need to be in the top ten downloaded in the App Store. At the same time, we have many new features under development. We know that users want more control, but as we said just now, we are very cautious about adding new features. We will gradually add some new features to make Replay a more complete and powerful app. At the same time, we found that users like to share videos in Replay’s own community, so we will also strengthen community building.

P: Please tell us about your company Stupeflix

J: We founded the company in June 2009. François Lagunas is our CTO. He is a very creative person. He has studied a wide range of areas: daily applications of video, GPU cards for 3D games on PC, and ways to publish and upload videos. We founded our company based on these technologies. We also opened our API to third-party developers, and we provided them with a GPU solution for video development. Our first software for ordinary users was Stupeflix used on the web. Now there are 3 million users. You can easily create a wonderful video with videos, pictures, texts and music. But in order to make our products closer to consumers, we need a faster solution. In order to run faster, the video must be rendered on the user's local device. When Tim Cook launched the iPhone 4S, it had a powerful A5 chip. We knew that it was time, and mobile devices were powerful enough and fast enough to enable us to create such a solution. After that, we invested a year or two in research in this field, and we launched Replay in December last year. We have more than 20 engineers, and we are all passionate about video production.

P: In addition to technology, how do you ensure the artistic quality of the video?

J: The engineers we hire are very well-rounded. In addition to being very good at programming, they are also very good at video art, such as video transition motion design and animation design, etc. We are very proud to have such a team. Just like Steve Jobs would train Apple engineers in art design, such work is equally important to us.

P: What is your current financing situation?

J: As you know, our company has only been established for five years. Although we have not made a lot of cash yet, we already have many investors, such as 500startup and Seedcamp, etc.

P: Not only are you Apple's top app of the year, but you also demonstrated your demo at Apple's October press conference. These are all very rare. How do you maintain good communication with Apple?

J: We are honored to be Apple's top app of the year and to attend Apple's conference. There are millions of developers every year, but only a few can attend Apple's conference to demonstrate their apps. Your app needs to be beautifully made, creative, and take advantage of the features of Apple devices. Apple has a department dedicated to communicating with developers. They will hold meetings with developers of excellent apps and give them more suggestions. Before the official release of Replay, we started to contact Apple's "Developer Relations Team". Fortunately, they believed in our team and our products. We kept in touch with Apple for a year and a half, and then we were invited to Apple's conference to demonstrate the Demo.

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P: Every time Apple updates its system, it brings many new features. Some third-party software will be replaced by Apple’s own new features. Do you have this problem?

J: Replay is a very innovative app. There are a lot of high technologies behind it. We have done a lot of research in motion graphics and video production. Apple has its own iMovie software, which is also very powerful, but we do better in terms of user experience and ease of use. I know that many single-function apps will be replaced by Apple's own new system functions, but this will not be a problem for us.