Before Opus Clip, Young Zhao had already experienced failure. He co-founded a social app called Sober in 2013, which launched just two months before Snapchat brought a similar concept to the mainstream. He later built an Asia-based talent agency representing 150 food influencers with a 500+ person creative team.

The Failed Livestreaming Tool

In January 2022, he co-founded Opus, an AI-powered livestreaming tool packed with features like AI-generated memes and interactive overlays. After 3 months, they had only 200 users — most of whom they had paid $20-30 each to give feedback.

The Accidental Discovery

The pivot came from an unexpected place. Opus Studio had a simple clipping button that let users mark moments during livestreams for later reuse. Users started calling the rest of the product "nonsense" and asking for just the clipping tool. A 5-person squad (3 engineers, 1 PM, 1 designer) quietly rebuilt the clipping feature as a standalone product while the 24-person team continued working on the failing tool.

$1M ARR in 14 Days

Within two weeks of launching Opus Clip, tens of thousands of users signed up. Users were emailing asking if they could pay to skip the queue or get higher resolution — before the team even had payment infrastructure. Opus Clip hit $1M ARR just 14 days after public launch.

Explosive Growth

The company reached nearly $10M ARR with 5 million users by the end of 2023. It won Best in Show at SXSW 2024 Pitch Competition, and raised $30M from investors including Samsung Next and angel investor Jason Lemkin (who was a customer first). By early 2025: 10 million creators, 172 million clips created, 57 billion total social media views.

• Opus (livestreaming): January 2022 (200 users after 3 months)
• Opus Clip launch: May 2023
• $1M ARR: 14 days after launch
• $10M ARR: End of 2023 (7 months)
• 10M users: Early 2025
• 172M clips created, 57B total views
• Total funding: $30M+