Doug Wulff, TimeBolt CEO
“Every morning I wake up, there’s another 15 to 20 subscribers from our YouTube channel,” TimeBolt co-founder and CEO Doug Wulff told the 4thEst8 days after his YouTube channel topped 200 followers, resulting in a 20 percent month-over-month sales growth for his video and audio editing software. “We’re at about $12,000 a month in subscription revenue… that’s recurring… (a year ago) it was three or four thousand.”
TimeBolt is a editing software that looks for and snips out ‘dead-air’ from long format video footage and audio, commonly used by vloggers and podcasters. Wulff and his partner got the idea of automating the process when they saw the technique being used by some vloggers – then tried doing it, and realized how time intensive the “jump cut” editing was. In July 2019 they formed a company and launched a Beta late that fall.
“Once editors become aware that there’s software to rapidly jump cut long form video and podcast content it’s kind of a no-brainer,” Wulff said. “We’re changing their entire workflow when it comes to video.”
Both founders are full-time. A part-time employee was hired to handle outbound strategy, email marketing and manage customer service. Wulff says he’s raised more than a half-million dollars for prior ventures, but decided to bootstrap this one.
“It was a soul-sucking experience,” he said of fundraising. “You lose friendships… they say it’s lonely at the top, I definitely think it’s lonelier at the bottom as you’re trying to get there. This was a great experience because I finally had the ability to just start generating revenue before going out and working to raise capital.”
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