Expanding AI technology in photo apps, with Timur Khabirov, Prequel

Gary Pageau of the Dead Pixels Society talked with Timur Khabirov, co-founder and CEO of Prequel, the mobile photo and video editing platform. In this interview, Khabirov talked about the history of the popular app, the philosophy that is driving its growth, and the potential for AI-driven photo and video content.

Founded in 2018 by Khabirov and Serge Aliseenko, Prequel has been able to position itself as one of the Top 10 photo and video editing apps in the U.S. With more than 60 million users and an average of 2 million Prequels made a day through social platforms like TikTok and Instagram, Prequel appeals to a wide array of creators including influencers, brands, and celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Bella Hadid, and Rihanna. The company has 200 employees in the United States.

Energize your sales with Shareme.chat, the proven texting platform. 

ShareMe.Chat 
ShareMe.Chat platform uses chat-to-text on your website to keep your customers connected and buying!

Mediaclip
Mediaclip strives to continuously enhance the user experience while dramatically increasing revenue.

Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Erin Manning  0:02  
Welcome to The Dead Pixels Society Podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau. The dead pixel society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Advertek Printing, and School Photographers of America.

Gary Pageau  0:18  
Hello again and welcome to The Dead Pixels Society Podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau. Today we're joined by Timur Khabirov from Prequel. He is the co founder and CEO and today he's joining us from Germany. Hi, Timur, how are you today?

Timur Khabirov  0:34  
I got it. Nice to see you again. And thanks for invitation. Let's say I'm good, except the jetlag. Because there's only been us in New York yen and the euro by Abba jetlag yeah.

Gary Pageau  0:49  
Tell me a little bit about your journey into entrepreneurship. You started the company? In what 2016? Approximately, so you've been in the industry? What drew you to it? What's your background,

Timur Khabirov  1:02  
um, ground, I started as an entrapreneur, when I was 17 years old, his name is my partner, and I never work with a salary. And I always like the Death segment tech industry. And when I don't mean to prequel, I'm a designer. And that was the first solution for his moment where I started to combine all my three experiences together as a business guy, the tech guy and the design guy. And I have an experience in business, what's going on here? Let's say, okay, so so you've

Gary Pageau  1:39  
got a business background, and then you're injured back and you enjoy design? And what better place to do that than a photo and video app.

Timur Khabirov  1:46  
Right. Exactly. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about

Gary Pageau  1:50  
your your flagship app, if you will, prequel. It has it has been around for a few years and gone through a lot of permutations and changes. So what was your first vision for the prequel app? When you first said, Hey, we need to do this app. It's an opportunity here. What was the opportunity you saw,

Timur Khabirov  2:12  
let's say in general, and the main point was the augmentation for the people's content. Because then let's see if we can say it's kind of fashion industry in the digital world, okay, who's your content the same as a person, right? If you go with site, where some dress right or something like that, which can help you to explain yourself to express yourself, because the fashion industry is an art, right? In our days, and the same video content. If you're taking us to just your content from the camera that will do the videos doesn't matter. You need this kind of augmentation. Right? Because without without augmentation, your content is naked. And we help people to augment their content to provide the demonstration incorrect way to how to provide the mode.

Gary Pageau  3:05  
And this was very early augmented reality and AI stuff, correct? I mean, before it became trendy, you were

Timur Khabirov  3:13  
doing Yeah, yeah. What, what with that mented reality as well. But the only difference in the real world through the camera works in the raster format, they are going to documentation based augmented reality objects, they are 3d, and it's a vector. And you can combine them together as different, you know, perception is different visual, you know, format. And instead of the regular AR, we use the visual of that. But at the same time, it's like mentation as well.

Gary Pageau  3:49  
So tell me a little bit more about that approach. Why did you choose that approach? Was there a technology reason or because it gives you different results?

Timur Khabirov  3:57  
It's it's, it's, let's say it's everything together the market is technology reason as well. Because you know, the Willie from era of information, I have a lot of information. And people, they already have an experience with the visual content. And it grows up every every day. And in this case, understood one thing, okay. When we started the user users, they are switching from the, let's say, the scrolling pages to the full screen. And the full screen means the full screen content, like you see the world through camera, or you can see like stories, like memories on Snapchat or tick tock whatever, right? It's a full screen format. And there's no this is the future. Because now we have the full screen format about maybe five here. So how the AR or VR glasses, right? It's like 360 degree full screen. Right? And that was the main reason I And I was thinking about this, okay, now we have the technology, which we can implement there in the Arctic species as well, why we cannot mix them together. And we have business as well on the mobile market, how to communicate communicate to the user.

Gary Pageau  5:20  
Okay. And so that initial app was basically, you know, some filters, and things like that. But it pretty rapidly grew beyond just that. So you initially came up with just filters, you know, some basic filters in the first

Timur Khabirov  5:36  
let's say filter said, what what we call filters like color filters or visual effects is not there, not just I guess, I guess, yeah, we're working we work a lot with it's everything is authentic and aesthetic, we started to understand where the Lumiere brothers from the, from the previous century 1920s We, it's like, let's say it's kind of lab. We work with everything would linger photographer, photography, like from claimer famous for the artists, to artists, etc. And it's not that easy. It requires not just the, you know, color presets. It's not that easy. For example, when we work fixes builders, that took for us up to six months, come up with something it's not that easy. Yeah. When I was using the word filter this sweaty like difficult technology. Yeah.

Gary Pageau  6:35  
Yeah. Filters prior to basic have a word for what I was talking about. Yeah, say, let's

Timur Khabirov  6:40  
say the modern market.

Gary Pageau  6:42  
Let's agree to what degree you say that its effects, not filters, and I'm. So as far as looking at effects, I mean, there's almost an infinite possibility of the number of effects you can do. But as an app developer, you have to determine, you know, what's going to be findable and usable and applicable to your audience? I mean, that must be a huge challenge for you. To really fine tune that selection. Yeah. How are you gauging user feedback and determining that,

Timur Khabirov  7:18  
of course, when you start, you're trying to follow some trends on the market. But in our days, let's say we, in some ways, we are trendsetters action, right?

Gary Pageau  7:27  
Well, that's what I was getting is that you seem to be on the leading edge. Yeah. So where are you getting that inspiration from? Is it preserved from the users using the the effects? And then you building from there? Or is this an instinctual thing from your from your background? And I think it's instinctual things.

Timur Khabirov  7:47  
I will say you're absolutely right. Because our main goal is to provide the high quality, aesthetic and art, let's say people that are augmentation to users. That's our priority number one. And we understand we cannot come up with these without like high level technologies. Yeah. Yeah. Artificial Intelligence well,

Gary Pageau  8:11  
but what's interesting is that there's a lot of competing apps who have the technology, but they don't have the

Timur Khabirov  8:19  
exact Exactly, exactly. That's the point. That's the point. Let's say, you know, like, might be, let's say compare, but it's like a lot of musicians, a lot of music band rock bands, but you're familiar with that. But the voice of Freddie Mercury is also pretty much the same, that's the aesthetic, that's our main part.

Gary Pageau  8:43  
And over the past couple of years, you've really I think, hit on some of the, you know, during the COVID lockdown, there are a lot of people using your app to express themselves I think that's where it kind of reached a lot of mainstream recognition. What was that like? To see that users just escalate?

Timur Khabirov  9:03  
Execution inspiration and what I'm grateful for that was you cannot predict this you cannot predict this absolute thing you you can maintain these you can wander is but saying the same time is surprise for you sweating spiral? Where the grandpapa that

Gary Pageau  9:22  
Yeah, cuz I think that was one of the things that photography as a category, I think, during COVID People really took to imaging,

Timur Khabirov  9:33  
yeah,

Gary Pageau  9:34  
outlet for whatever they were feeling during the pandemic, whether it was documenting your surroundings or revisiting your cherished memories and printing them, or finding ways to express yourself through, you know, visual effects or videos or things like that. And it was really a big change a cultural change.

Timur Khabirov  9:58  
Yeah, I agree, sir. could immediately be stuck in your apartments like for months, like for one month, two months, three months, and you have the same environment around you what you can do, right? But in the same time, based on your behavior, you have to upload something, you have to consume some tech, right? And with these augmentation, you can provide your content, you can express your content in a good way. It's like something new, for example, I can take a video of my environment in my own apartment again and use different fields, and it's going to be different modes. And I think it helps people.

Gary Pageau  10:36  
Yeah, I think it was actually I wouldn't say it was a therapy, but it was a form of expression, which is, which

Timur Khabirov  10:41  
is that? Okay, let's say therapy. Yeah, let's go towards Yeah.

Gary Pageau  10:46  
So let's talk a little bit about some of the trends that are happening now. You know, we were talking before we started recording about avatars, you know, sort of this almost idealistic version, that's being created through a self, talk a little bit about how that came about. Because that's really more than just applying an effect, you're actually interpreting the image in a way and creating a new image based on, you know, a, like I said, an idealized way, someone may want to present themselves either, you know, as a cartoon or as a, as an astronaut, or as a rock star or something like that. That's really like the next step of this.

Timur Khabirov  11:26  
Let's say, let's start from the beginning. The main core to be human was content, it's, I go places and places. It's like inside our DNA, right? On the face recognition, or your friend or enemy, right? Predator or your friend. And the same with your environment is a danger for me, or is it good for me to leave here? And it started, like, millions years ago, but the same on the market, we are human being right. And everything starts with a face on the market. Do you remember like, and five years ago, that was like masks on Snapchat? Facebook, we started with that, in our these these avatars? It's just the beginning. It just the beginning says kind of education for users, what AI can provide, what AI can create. But the better way to understand this, to try it on your face on your portrait. Yeah, and this is only the beginning. We see what's going to be in six months in one year. So where do you think that's going then? Um, the next step is like environment augmentation and where artificial intelligence can generate your environment after there is going to be the video. And the final step was the metaverse.

Gary Pageau  12:48  
So this is all coming in the next couple of weeks, right? Yeah.

Timur Khabirov  12:54  
A couple of weeks. I I will see at the end of this year, we will see the two AI tools for video content. Okay. And in 2024, we will see the beginning of the metaverse is your 3d avatar 3d generation. And then the AI will generate like 3d environment.

Gary Pageau  13:16  
How is this different than let's say some of the other generative generative AI type applications where people type into a into a prompt? You know, I want a forest scene with a mountain in the background. It's generating this. So what you're doing is taking what's existing there and using artificial intelligence to enhance that correct. So you're not generating something from nothing. You're using an existing experience?

Timur Khabirov  13:45  
What's our difference? I can say again, the aesthetic? Yeah. Yeah, they get a high quality of art, but in the same time, my opinion, people they don't need the prompt, right? Because I'm a huge fan of ergonomics, like an icon is what ergonomic. Right? The Steve Jobs sort of ways the real, like physical keyboard for the official one. And I think the future which we're working on to replay the prompt to understand your request, like in three words in five points, you or another writer writes to come up with a huge grant. I think it's not good for for users, and for people right now in the market. That's going to be the future. And who will do do this? Best way. Let's see.

Gary Pageau  14:36  
There's gonna be there's gonna be a lot of competition because as as you probably know, a lot of attention on a lot of money flowing in and exactly and where the money goes and follows whether or not there's good products.

Timur Khabirov  14:50  
It's everywhere like in cryptocurrency or on any other market segments. One is ours. You know, a lot of players in the market, but during the time you know, it's you It only like two or three or four or five buttoned up. Well, I

Gary Pageau  15:03  
mean, this time last year, we were all talking about how great NF T's are going to be right. And that sort of went.

Timur Khabirov  15:09  
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Gary Pageau  15:12  
Pretty cool. Didn't have an NF T generator. And it did it.

Timur Khabirov  15:16  
Did that boy? Oh, well, we try it. But I think yeah, it's, it was a trend for the 2022. But not anymore, either. No, no, it's like evolution, you know, the market is the same like nature. It tries many variations, many different ways. But nobody knows who what, who will win. This is loved in nature. They were humans, right. We are nature, in our markets nature as well. Well, it's

Gary Pageau  15:45  
interesting, isn't it? Because I mean, I mean, you always look at, you know, sometimes, you know, the most advanced technology doesn't win. Or, you know, in some case, marking adopted something different, right. I mean, there's always cases like, where?

Timur Khabirov  16:01  
Exactly, exactly, exactly. Market is people? Not to you?

Gary Pageau  16:06  
I mean, I got to say, you know, looking at, you know, the numbers and the number of users you have, and you know, you've done pretty well in the market. Thanks. Yeah, the app is free. But there is a subscription, you can get a monthly subscription. And also you can buy. How is that broken out? In terms of Do you know, most people have a high number of free users in a very small number of subscribers that kind of carry the freight? And then as the per pack purchase idea, eaten into that, or is it? Are you able to upsell people under the subscriptions?

Timur Khabirov  16:43  
The traditional subscription model is a model of the future. Let's say, let's take a look at the Adobe company, right? When in our old days, when they tried to sell the Photoshop or $2,000 stores too expensive, when they started to provide a subscription model, they grew up from $30, from $30 billion, up to $300 billion. Because this the future is more affordable. For users. That's the like from the business perspective. Right. But you were talking about the some free tools, I think domain ID will have the long term goals, not the short term. Yeah. So just make money. And that's it and go out from the market. Now, in this case, where provides like, up to 60 parts of our tools for free for users, because I'm worrying about about user experience, because we have on the market people who will never pay, right? That's true, you have to understand this. And at the same time, you have to provide for themselves. Because everyone is equal.

Gary Pageau  17:54  
But it's interesting, because I mean, like I said you do have the security, but you do have the ability to buy just a limited feature set for a really, you know, a smaller amount, which I think is a great way to instigate trials of the subscription without having to actually call it a trial.

Timur Khabirov  18:10  
Yeah, you know, cuz, honestly, we can make more money, but it'll give like 80 bucks for a subscription. But like I told you before, the main point, I would like to create the brand would like people you love. We didn't like that. Just just to speculate we can increase our revenue, maybe two, three times. But if we're talking about long term goals, I think it's not a good idea.

Gary Pageau  18:39  
So the next thing before the metaverse is going to be video you mentioned video seems to really be taking now obviously, with short form video with enhanced video with you know, interactive video to some extent where people can clip from other videos and do things with them. What is going to be their prequel approach to that because you don't want it You're obviously not going to copy what other people are doing. You're going to have your own spin on it

Timur Khabirov  19:07  
from technology Yeah, videos. It's not that easy. No nuts sometimes it's so complicated. Yeah. Because you know, we you have 24 frames a second, not just one. But let's say first increment the visual first components. I told I tried to explain what's different between four and Vidya is a general right for that will never die. It will never it's different. Different explanation and different message the video is the video, but the video it's it's not that it's not the easiest thing. From a technology perspective from the art perspective as well. That's about in the same time. We're going to provide the same the aesthetic augmentation. We just started with a photo and we would like to provide the same for the video. content as well. I know it's going to be maybe some different variations but the main idea if you have some, let's say the the Hollywood in your pocket, that's it. You can be your the Hollywood, right, right. Wherever you can create your own shot, right? Yeah. Maybe in the future is going to be like net UGC based debase Netflix platform or HBO, or something similar. Yeah. But when you can like in one to three to create some beautiful content, like short videos, or maybe action, maybe drama, maybe thriller or whatever, it's up to you.

Gary Pageau  20:34  
It's really a leap, a big leap from photo to video. And that's where I think people tend to make mistakes, they just think of photo and then video system moving photo. And it's really a different user experience. Experience. When you upsell apps, when people see a still image, they're actually have to engage their mind. And they have to, like, put it in context, which is why AI is interesting and things like that, because it actually engages the user, they have to think, Okay, who is this of? What are they doing? Why do I care about this image? Whereas a video actually, your brain goes acid because it says, Okay, you're gonna show me something. So the onus is on the Creator, to be able to tell the story.

Timur Khabirov  21:18  
Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. Because that's the transient. It's a different journal, right? Sometimes you would like to see like, I don't know, I have the beautiful, looks like magazines. It's a different experience. Anyway, you're gonna continue in your life and maintain a life people consume that it photos and you will consume the video as well. You have the TV instead of the book, like for the book, I guess.

Gary Pageau  21:47  
So the metaverse is the next iteration of the future. And since then, some people are very hot on it. Some people are very lukewarm on it. It looks like some of the big vendors right now. Like Microsoft seems to be backing away from it somewhat. And Facebook is not making any money at it right now. So yeah. But obviously, you know, when certain hardware vendors, perhaps like Apple is supposed to be coming out with a headset soon, that that will, yeah, will boost the market. So I think the challenge someone like yourself has, is the timing is that a if it's a win? So how do you gauge that?

Timur Khabirov  22:30  
Exactly? Well, I think you're absolutely right, the main problem with the hardware, first of all, it's not that comfortable. Now, and it's too expensive. If you compare it for like Facebook, the prices like more than $1,000 for the for the new one, right? The same price like for iPhone, but they will the iPhone, this is your part of your life, this part of you. But the glasses is not that easy to wear them, right. And I think maybe I hope Apple will come up with some canonical glasses, I would see. But anyway, in the same time, I think the real impact for the market will start in one year on two years. But at the same time, you have to be prepared for that. Because it's not that easy. It's very hard technologies. And we already started to work on that. And of course, you cannot make money as like Facebook now in our days. But if you're going to go away, in one year or two years, you have to start to work on this. You have to be but in the same time where the 70% here, we work for mobile. Well, that's

Gary Pageau  23:36  
the advantage you have is you know someone's coming in, right in with a Metaverse product without the background in photo and video. You know, they don't have that base to work from now, when some people talk about, you know, the metaverse possibilities. They're always talking about gaming, and maybe movie. But I do think there's a big opportunity for personalized content. I think that is actually one of the opportunities which I think you're going to be trying to address.

Timur Khabirov  24:07  
Yeah, you're absolutely right. Because then everything status was gaming gaming, like it's kind of moves for the harder, right, right now and for the gaming community. I never knew I never liked the I'm not against the PS, PS PlayStation or an Xbox. But I'm the older generation, no experience, or when I started to use the VR glasses for the game. I really liked this I really liked and the gaming it's it's kind of boost for the industry. And the second one like is you're sadly moving. That's how it always works. And the third step, you're absolutely right. It's like the Instagram like tick tock or whatever any other media platform like publishing platform Let's say that's gonna be the next step, the huge next step.

Gary Pageau  25:03  
And that's where really the mass market gets into it. It's not the gaming or the movies. It's

Timur Khabirov  25:09  
exactly, exactly, exactly, yeah. Gaming is on the beginning. That's like the first generation of consumers,

Gary Pageau  25:17  
the early adopters, and folks like that. So you've got a pretty aggressive timetable there. If you're looking at 2024, I think, yeah. Yeah. So what is the I hope, a lot before. So what does that driven by? I mean, what, what what set that timetable? Was it you're looking around? Or do you have insight into how that some of the platforms are developing?

Timur Khabirov  25:41  
Yeah, I'm still searching. Understand the market. And I like the futurology. I'm a huge fan of futurology of science. And I'm trying to combine everything together and understand what's going to be in the future. Right. You can watch the movies about future like the same, the avatar or whatever, other miracles, and just combination. And I realize, as I told you before, because the long term story, and in this case, we need to understand the market, we need to understand the future cannot understand the Predict 400 Plus, because we have an AI it's a new kid on the block. Yeah, it's unpredictable action. Like it was it's not that easy. Like it was before, like, previous times, but the same time we have to move forward in for us is that the minor? Yeah. For sorry, in for us is, is? is doesn't matter what kind of lens? It can, it can be like the classic camera for video cameras can be the camera or smartphone. Or it can be VR or AR glasses doesn't matter for us.

Gary Pageau  26:49  
Yeah, the type of camera I think is becoming more and more immaterial, right? I mean, you're gonna have actually gonna be happening fairly soon as people are going to have content coming from, you know, their phone, camera, the camera on their computer, they're gonna have cameras on their car are gonna have cameras on them, their home has cameras, and accessing some of that information.

Timur Khabirov  27:11  
Yeah, draw on it, that it's everywhere. It's everywhere. Yeah. So that'll

Gary Pageau  27:14  
be quite the challenge for you and your team to integrate all of that content. Right?

Timur Khabirov  27:20  
Yeah. It is a challenge. 

Gary Pageau  27:23  
Yeah. Well, thank you, Timur, for your time and for your insight into the future. Where can people go to get more information about you and the Prequel app,

Timur Khabirov  27:33  
the more information we have for 250 people in pretty cool, operating new US and in Europe, as well. We're going to grow up. And we are growing our r&d department as well as work for artificial intelligence and our departments. Because we're gonna go big and tall to the long term story. I hope the exit strategy is going to be another acquisition might be the IPO in the future. But that's from the business perspective. From my own perspective. It's my it's my passion.

Gary Pageau  28:06  
So right now you're not looking. We are, are you looking at an exit strategy now or you're that's what you're saying? You're not looking for one? Oh, not

Timur Khabirov  28:13  
might be investment in the near future. But when I'm adding an investment from the site, when as an investor, I'm on money and we have revenue, we can afford a lot of things, we can grow up with our own money. And maybe in the future, if we're going to be bigger in the short time, of course, we will need kind of investment.

Gary Pageau  28:35  
Well, thank you tomorrow for your time and best wishes on your travels. And look forward to seeing you when you're in the United States sometime.

Timur Khabirov  28:43  
I hope I'll see you soon. We'll be in Texas in Austin.

Gary Pageau  28:46  
No, no, no South by Southwest.

Timur Khabirov  28:50  
Anyway, I hope I'll see you again very soon. Take care. Yes. Thank

Gary Pageau  28:54  
you so much. Bye, bye.

Timur Khabirov  28:55  
Thank you so much. Appreciate this. Thank you.

Erin Manning  28:59  
Thank you for listening to The Dead Pixels Society Podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at www.thedeadpixelssociety.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai