Young Zhao

Young Zhao is co-founder and chief executive of OpusClip, a San Francisco, California, company whose AI tool turns long videos into short clips for social media. He co-founded it in 2022 with Jay Wu, its chief technology officer, and Grace Wang, its chief marketing officer.

Launching a Social App Called Sober

Zhao's first startup was a social app called Sober, built around meeting people after a night of drinking, according to a founder profile. The app was overshadowed when Snapchat launched and it failed, and Zhao took away the lesson that a product has to meet a real need, not only look appealing.

Running a Talent Agency for Short-Form Creators

He and his team next built software for restaurants in China, then moved into a talent agency focused on short-form video. Running the agency gave him a close view of how creators work, and he saw that many solo creators wanted to make video for themselves but struggled with editing tools. "The inspiration was to democratize this tedious process through AI, so all the creators in the world would be able to access all the technologies," he told Business Insider.

Turning a Clipping Feature Into OpusClip

The team's first AI product was a live-streaming tool with AI memes and automated interactions. It drew about 200 users, and none stayed once financial incentives ended. One feature inside it, a tool for saving memorable moments from streams as clips, was popular with early users, so the team made it a standalone product. Tens of thousands of people signed up within two weeks of launch.

Finding Early Users Among Podcasters

Zhao has said podcasters were the strongest early users because they manage large amounts of long-form recording, followed by media companies, gamers, and sports channels. Eighteen months after launch, OpusClip said 10 million users had created more than 70 million videos on its platform.