Author丨Linfeng
Editor丨Sea waist
题图丨Midjourney
It's ugly, it's ugly.
APP Remini, a clay filter, became popular during the May Day period. A wave of "clay wind" swept through social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Instagram, and from the end of April to the end of May Day, Remini continued to rank in the top 10 of the App Store list for photography and video (free). It wasn't until the 7-day trial boom passed that Remini's popularity in China subsided.
AI camera is not the first time to rely on filters to catch fire, AI mirror to become a comic character, Lensa to change the style, all give amazing conversion effects. The effect of Remini is like opening a "blind box", and when the effect is stable, it is very ugly and abstract, but the restoration of the character's expression and face shape is in place. This outrageous effect has given Xiaohongshu and Salted Fish platforms a clay-style retouching business, and Remini has even topped the list of the App Store (China) camera category.
Source: Remini official website
In fact, Remini was on the top of the photography list in the United States in July last year, and at that time it focused on high-definition portraits, especially "Look at the future baby" and "aging filter" were hot spots. At the beginning, Remini was a project made by the domestic film restoration company Damu Technology, and it was sold to Italian app manufacturer Bending Spoons in 2022. The latter has been put into operation for Remini, and it has become popular twice, and according to Qimai data, its overall revenue in the past year is 120 million US dollars.
Bending Spoons is a well-known second-hand refurbished manufacturer that has acquired Evernote, made video editing apps such as Splice.
Founded in 2013 by Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello, and Matteo Danieli, three Italians, it continues to insist on making To C products, and has become an APP factory through acquisitions, until today it has achieved 100 million monthly active users and more than 500 million product downloads. Moreover, it became a unicorn after raising $155 million in February this year at a valuation of $2.55 billion.
图源：Bending Spoons
"Improve the product, commercialize it more effectively, rationalize the operating costs, and control these three levers." Luca Ferrari speaks from experience.
1. Fire 2 times
Random, fun, and fresh are the three characteristics that make Remini popular. In just one May Day, there are 30,000+ notes on Remini on Xiaohongshu, mainly recommending Remini's porcelain dolls (Jade) and clay (Clay) filters, as well as the combined effect of Remini and other image software.
It's easy to use, click to upload an image, and wait for 20-30 seconds to get a random ugly picture.
Source: The original image is self-shot, the original image on the upper left, and the upper right, lower left, and lower right are from the Remini style filter
Although the Meitu App and UniDream both have clay-style filters, Remini's style is the most abstract, and the resulting mistaken photos have become one of the entertainment points. For example, if the author uploads a picture of a person and a pet cat, and uses clay to generate the result, two eyebrows appear on the right side of the face. If you change to another filter, either the cat or the person is gone. A user uploaded a personal photo of a large scene, and the scenery was very good, that is, people were turned into fire hydrants.
Remini's Clay visual is very similar to "Shaun the Sheep", and it looks very "ugly and cute" overall. Humans and animals have their own ugliness, people will become cross-eyed, 4 nostrils or baldness, and the face of animals will become a whole piece of plasticine, whether it looks good or not depends on luck.
Another feature of this filter is that it randomly generates details. When the background of the original image is not a solid color or a messy object, Remini's clay style is modified from the original image to make the background of the picture consistent with the central character. So, when the author uploaded a picture of a window model, it generated a bald young man walking on a sunny street.
Source: Original photo taken by a reporter, Remini clay wind filter effect
After this kind of filter exploded, many users who are familiar with AI drawing directly found the clay wind tutorial. Dr. B station UP master @ University of Geology said that AI uses ComfyUI to do the workflow of clay wind filter, using the SDXL model, using the sai-craft clay style, and after connecting the two ControlNet models, it can generate similar clay wind pictures. Although not all the results are the same, it can be seen that these models are easy to learn.
Source: Screenshot of the video of the up master of station B "Dr. of the University of Geosciences Says AI".
This isn't the first time Remini has been out of the ring. In 2023, Remini's AI-generated images have become popular in the United States, and at that time, Remini's "Future Child" and "20-second Life Journey (See your Future)" AI raw images were very popular on Tik Tok. Many bloggers have used photos of themselves and their partners to generate pictures of the next generation of babies, and @bycaitrose compared the generated baby pictures with their own real children, and found that the accuracy of the AI generation is amazing, and the video has been viewed 15.3 million times.
来源：TikTok
This is actually Remini's AI Photo function, users upload 8-12 images and wait for 4-5 minutes to select different model styles, and they can get the corresponding AI conversion images. There are four types of generated results, workplace-style resume photos, childhood self, maternity clothes, and photographic art photos, which are suitable for users to see themselves in a variety of ways.
Source: Remini official website
Therefore, last year's Remini's AI cross-dressing also had a certain amount of popularity on Tik Tok. Among them@Gracesplace the video of changing 4 workplace looks in 12 seconds has exceeded 50 million views.
With strong video traffic, Remini's downloads soared to No. 1 in the U.S. app store in mid-July 2023, surpassing Instagram Threads. According to TechCrunch, as of July 10, 2023, Remini had 2.131 million double-ended downloads in the past 10 days, with $3.73 million in consumer spending between June 9 and 15. According to Appfigures, Remini's daily net income increased from about $90,000 to $567,000 in just one day, a five-fold increase.
Now, Remini is on fire again with a clay-style filter. According to Diandian's data, Remini has entered the top 10 in photography and video in 49 regions, especially in Asia, Australia and other regions. Up to now, according to Qimai data, Remini has reached 2.867 million downloads in the past month and earned about $98,000 after dominating the list of apps (free) in China for a week.
Source: Diandian data, Remini's global list distribution
Source: Qimai data, Remini's revenue estimate for the past 1 month
Not to mention that users in the e-commerce platform have also made "Remini retouching" a business, from charging 1 yuan/2 tickets, 10 yuan 6 tickets to free of charge, there are people who take orders.
2. After being acquired, the annual revenue exceeded 20 million US dollars
After a while, Remini was officially launched in 2019 with the "old photo restoration" function, which was widely disseminated for the first time. The company behind it is actually Damu Technology, which started with image restoration algorithms, and in 2018 launched an AI app for restoring old photos. Both apps work the same way, similar to Topaz and Magnific's one-click repairs.
Source: The original picture on the left is from the network, and the right Remini can be repaired with one click
According to Huang Shuo, CEO of Damu Technology, he shared in the early years that Remini and "You and I" had a highlight in the market, with a cumulative user of more than 10 million. When the company started the project, Damu Technology launched "You and Me Back Year" and Remini at home and overseas respectively. In 2019, the "You and I Back then" was just launched, focusing on the middle-aged and elderly market, but it could not be promoted.
At the beginning of 2020, "You and I" received attention through Fuji TV's report, and the server was overloaded due to the sharp increase in downloads and the demand for image processing on the platform, so it cooperated with Amazon to process millions of images per day.
Photographer Rob shared with the Fstoppers community that he used Remini to work with images of people from the 1900s, and to his surprise, Remini reproduced the details of the characters' hair, eyes, and skin. It's just that the AI is not "proficient" in the details of the characters wearing glasses, and only half of the glasses frame is left after repair. The rest of the effects made Rob sigh: "Out-of-focus pictures are worth keeping in the future, and AI may be the solution." ”
来源：Fstoppers，Remini旧照修复效果
Later, Damu Technology sold Remini to Bending Spoons, an Italian second-hand app manufacturer. This Bending Spoons, which is good at refurbishment, has made Remini popular twice, and A16z has released a ranking of Top50 GenAI mobile products according to Sensor Tower (monthly active user data as of January 2024), and Remini ranks fifth. In an interview with Sifted in April, CEO Luca Ferrari said that Remini currently has 90 million monthly active users.
Source: A16z
It has to be said that Bending Spoons has successfully put Remini into operation, reaping cash flow and user retention. A user of Hacker News summed up its strategy: "It's actually very simple, Bending Spoons acquires the app built by others, optimizes the business strategy of the app, increases the lifetime value (LTV) of the product, and places advertising growth. Generate cash flow after converting paying users, which can be used to fund the next acquisition."
The same goes for their rework of the Remini, which builds on the original. First, change the features of the Remini product, then change the focus of the promotion, and then monetize it on the platform with a higher conversion rate.
"We usually rewrite the entire software or the most critical parts, redesign the user interface, add or remove features," says Luca Ferrari.
Before and after the acquisition, the product positioning changed. Remini derived two other technical directions from the original image quality enhancement panel, AI agent photo and style filters, and chose the AIGC map track that was not popular at the beginning of 2022. The examples in the interface are all women's ever-changing images, which have changed from a practical tool for photo restoration to a beauty tool that focuses on women's preferences, including style filters, hairstyles, fashion styling, and video cross-dressing such as "Impression of the Century".
Bending Spoons' strategy of quickly iterating on popular features is also obvious. For example, it will do Barbie marketing campaign filters in 2023, and the personal avatar of the versatile linked profession. After the clay filter exploded, Remini launched "classical" and "Hanfu" filters, which can transform characters into cheongsam and Chinese costume shapes.
Source: Remini app, left classical filter update, right video cross-dressing
Delivery strategy changes. According to Beluga's previous analysis, Remini's channel traffic will be dominated by Facebook before March 2023, and after April, Pangle's traffic will surpass Facebook to become the main channel, and it will be put on Southeast Asia after polishing in the European and American markets. Judging from the social traffic from February to April this year, Remini's desktop traffic was dominated by YouTube, followed by Reddit and Facebook, which were widely spread in China, Japan and South Korea this year.
TikTok video streams, Instagram and Xiaohongshu graphic streams recommended by bloggers are more effective in attracting traffic, and the 7-day free trial strategy provided by Remini has increased the user base. Therefore, a week after the explosion, Remini was limited by the charging threshold and the number of times, and Remini's ranking in the App Store China dropped significantly, while in Japan, Macau, Hong Kong and other regions, Remini ranked in the top 5.
Source: Diandian Data
Under the operation of Bending Spoons, Remini is one of the few projects that can hit the list multiple times and has a good income. According to AppMagic, Remini earned more than $20 million from June 2022 to July 2023.
3. Make a profit from day one
Bending Spoons, a manufacturer that specializes in refurbished products, is the new unicorn this year.
2022年从Remini开始，Bending Spoons收购了Evernote、FiLMiC、Meetup、Hopin等，还有个应用程序开发商Mosaic。 不仅如此，它旗下还有Splice、30 Day Fitness、Sleep等C端产品。
"We will look for products that have embodied PMF or have potential, and if they are willing to sell to us, we will buy their company and do it better. This is because we used to think that we understood the market, made products and development from 0 to 1, and then took other ways to find out if it was more effective for us. Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari said in an interview with 20VC.
He summarizes the characteristics of the acquired product, having a user/customer base, a recognizable brand or a good positioning.
In terms of improving the performance of acquisitions, Sifted has described Bending Spoons' approach as "ruthless", as long as the project does not have a team. When they acquired Evernote, for example, they laid off almost all of Evernote's 250 employees in the U.S. and Chile, giving them compensation, 16 weeks' pay, and one year's health insurance.
Bending Spoons is not optimistic about Evernote's original unprofitable nature. Changed the original free business plan to a paid subscription, and the annual fee price increased by 60% from $79.99 to $129.99. This attitude of forcing krypton has caused Evernote to lose a large number of users, leaving a group of loyal users, and even turning it into a profitable and sustainable business.
According to the analysis of Matrix Partners, Bending Spoons' commercialization strategy is aggressive, and it will block the realization point of previous acquisitions. For example, Focos, an iOS app made by a Chinese developer in 2018, had a high DAU but mediocre revenue. After Bending Spoons acquired it, it set a payment threshold, which means that you can't save photos without a subscription. Instead, Focos became the highest-grossing photographic product for a time.
The seemingly "cruel" Bending Spoons has an i-person boss. Luca, who was initially not good at socializing, described his former self as "very introverted and afraid of hurting others". Luca graduated from the Technical University of Denmark and the University of Padua with a diploma in telecommunications engineering with almost all honors, worked at McKinsey after graduation, started his own business twice, and suffered a miserable failure before Bending Spoons.
Francesco Patarnello was his friend who went to the Technical University of Denmark as an exchange student, and Matteo Danieli was a fellow student he met in Denmark, and together they co-founded Evertale in Denmark and founded Wink! An app for users to write in a diary.
Source: Sifted
They didn't do any early potential user testing, only surveyed user interests. When the app is actually developed, users resist such apps due to privacy concerns, and the retention rate after launch is also low. There is a gap in team building, so they randomly get people on top, and they don't get good results.
Even though they managed to raise 1 million euros and receive financial backing from Mangrove Capital, after 2 1/2 years they ran out of money and returned to Milan in frustration and shutting down the company.
They can't wait to start their business again, never make the same mistakes again, and start over. The Luca trio, with 2 employees, founded Bending Spoons in 2013 with Evertale's remaining $40,000.
"From the very beginning, our confidence was at its peak. From day one, I emailed people I wanted to hire and said we were going to be the best company in the future. Even then we had nothing. ”
After suffering the last loss, Luca has formed a team that takes into account both products and technologies over the years, and has invested heavily in the team's skills. Today, at least 300 of Bending Spoons' 400 employees are software engineers, AI researchers, data analysts, and product managers.
In the first year, Luca et al. made almost $100,000 by writing 3 apps. The road to acquisition began in early 2014. Over the past 10 years, from the acquisition of the first product for $15,000, to redesigning the growth, the proceeds to the team's talent/internal tools, and so on.
"We do have a second soul, which is the soul of capital allocation, like a combination of 'private equity + Google'." Luca said that regardless of whether the project is on the rise, plateau or decline at the time of acquisition, the principle of team members is to apply resources (talent or money) where value will be most generated.
From its inception to 2019, Bending Spoons did not raise funds for about 6 years, but fortunately, the previous rounds of cash flow were positive.
"This time we do the 'engine' of building the product, rather than building the product directly." They will be deeply involved in the operation and try to improve the product for de-commercialization. As a result, user acquisition is a difficult task in Luca's view. Even if the original product has historical data and user accumulation, reinvesting in it is like a bet. For example, when a product spends more on advertising than it needs to be, and the rate of user acquisition is not as fast as it needs to be, the money becomes uncontrollable, "You've already spent your money, and unless you find an effective user acquisition, you have to end it."
Luca continues to manage risk, and it's not without its failures. Six years ago, Luca invested about $7 million to try to make a game version of Netflix, where users paid 1 ($10-$12/month) to enjoy unlimited play. "We licensed dozens of games to mobile (which is very expensive), and we thought we could do it," Luca didn't expect when Apple released Apple Arcade (game subscriptions) around the same time, and they were so frustrated that they had to shut down the entire project.
This incident taught Bending Spoons another hard lesson: at least when it comes to forecasting market demand, you need to be humble and cautious, and if it's very new, then forward-looking people are sure to see it. So when he saw Evernote, which had millions of users and a mature workflow, entering a low point, Luca was motivated again.
Later, they repeatedly operated short-term functional products into long-term profits. According to interviews, Bending Spoons series users have reached 100 million MAUs and 500 million downloads, with revenue of $392 million in 2023 and sales expected to rise to $500 million in 2024, with the main source of revenue coming from acquisitions.
Refurbished APP has made explosive products many times, and Luca believes that there is no second company similar to them, so it is enough to attract capital in the later stage. According to Smartbeast analysis, from 2019 to the present, Bending Spoons has started financing, a total of 7 rounds, and in February 2024, it raised $155 million, with a valuation of $2.55 billion, becoming a unicorn, with previous investors including H14, Nuo Capital, Tamburi Investment Partners, Red Circle Investments, Durable Capital Partners, etc.
Becoming Italy's third start-up unicorn, the funding news catapulted Bending Spoons, which had gone unnoticed, overnight in Europe, and even more rarely, Luca claimed that "it was profitable from day one".
Stepping on the pitfalls ahead, Bending Spoons found a way to "let other people help us find market-ready products", and Luca just had to buy them and make them better.
"Still, we're just getting past the starting line," Bending Spoons wrote on its website, as confident as it was when it was founded.