Xu personally handled fulfillment for every order placed through the gig before any self-serve product existed.

“I managed the manual process of delivering videos.”

Beating existing Fiverr spokesperson-video sellers on price and speed was enough to convert buyers even before AI avatars were disclosed as the underlying method.

“Our competitive prices and fast delivery led to our first paid customer for $5.”

The self-serve product (then still named Movio, later HeyGen) publicly launched on Product Hunt on July 29, 2022, after development began in Q2 2022.

“On July 29th, 2022, we launched, claiming top spots on Product Hunt.”

The team added a free tier with a visible watermark on generated videos, applying consumer-app growth tactics (freemium plus built-in sharing) to a B2B product.

“we added a notable watermark in videos, key to bootstrapping.”

The watermarked free videos got shared outside the product, functioning as organic distribution and pulling in new traffic without paid spend.

“the watermark fueled sharing, yielding a skyrocketing viral coefficient crucial for viral video marketing.”

HeyGen's inclusion in third-party "generative AI landscape" maps, starting with a Sequoia Capital mention, drove a wave of further mentions and traffic.

“Sequoia Capital mentioned us first on October 24th.”

By mid-2026, at $200M+ ARR, HeyGen's own announcement credits organic word of mouth (not paid acquisition) as a primary driver of its growth and unusually high capital efficiency.

“a product that grows largely through word of mouth”