Ayesha Rao

Co-Founder | Launch and product videos for SaaS/AI teams

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

Absolutely love the fresh, breezy visual language we designed for this one.

Go check out Superflow!

[rakesh @rakesh_goyal]

"We're never changing our QA process. It's tight."

Then he sent me the checklist. 400 rows. A ten person QA team clicking through every page.

So I ran our @usesuperflow QA agents on one of their live sites.

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

The strongest launch videos reflect how deeply founders understand their buyers' world.

Before the logo or product ever appears, the setup should answer:
- Who is this for?
- What does their world look like today?
- Why is this problem so hard to solve?
- What's at stake if nothing changes?

(Snippet from a launch video for an autonomous lab robotics platform)

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

The more closely I work with founders building complex tech products, the more I get to look under the hood and realize just how layered and intricate these platforms truly are.

Years of product thinking, hard decisions, a deep understanding of their customer, an entire belief system about how something should work.

And then comes the moment where all of that has to be communicated - clearly, quickly, convincingly.

I don’t mean a launch video built to generate hype. That’s a different kind of storytelling with a very different energy. I’m referring to the moment when founders who’ve been building and serving customers for years - refining edge cases, onboarding flows, integrations, automations - finally have the time/resources to communicate the depth of what they’ve built.

Working closely with them to translate years of product thinking can be quite intense, because they are super precise about what they want to see.

Sometimes we’ll spend hours simplifying a single product flow by removing ONE unnecessary click from the visual narrative, and have conversations like:
→ What exactly should be on screen right now - and why?
→ Are we introducing too much cognitive load here?
→ Does this workflow feel more complicated than it actually is?
→ Didn’t we say the same thing two scenes ago?
→ What does this moment signal to a buyer about our product maturity?

The work is in deciding what NOT to show and how to make it look good - which is difficult to do fully internally because they're too close to the product and have lived inside the logic of the platform for years.

That’s exactly the gap we thrive in.

If you’re a founder or marketer building a complex product, I’d love to hear how your team is currently thinking about product storytelling - and whether video is playing the role it should.

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

A cybersecurity company, a developer tool, and an AI startup might all ask for a "clean, modern" product video.

But those descriptive words don't lead to the same creative decisions.

If you're a new player entering a market full of incumbents, the tone might be more bold, confident and fast.

If you're selling to legal teams, perhaps the opposite is true. The tone can be more sophisticated and trust-worthy, not necessarily energetic.

A developer tool might embrace speed and precision. A healthcare company would intentionally feature real people to build familiarity and confidence.

The goal isn't to find a style that's objectively "good."

It's to create one that communicates the right tone, to the right buyer, with the right messaging.

Because creative decisions are also positioning decisions. Beyond explaining what the product does, a great product video also sets out to answer:
"What kind of company are we?"

(sharing a few snippets from videos made by Fabel)

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

Founders naturally want to show their product in action.

But for a lot of early-stage companies, the products often contain sensitive customer data, proprietary workflows, or features that simply can't be shared outside the company.

The obvious solution is to record a walkthrough, but that creates a different problem. There are too many screens, too much context, and too much information for a new prospect. Instead of understanding what makes the product valuable, they're trying to figure out what they're even looking at.

You need something that's detailed enough to feel real, but abstract enough to protect what's confidential.

This is the gap a good product video fills. It's a carefully reconstructed version of real workflows, where long walkthroughs are compressed into the moments that matter. Every screen is simplified just enough for someone seeing the product for the first time, while staying faithful to how it actually works.

It makes your sophisticated product feel intuitive, without watering it down or losing the details that make it credible.

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

Making a bunch of product explainer videos for Complyance - here's an animatic vs final snippet from one of them.

The core story and flow remained almost identical from storyboard to animation, what evolved were the nuances in the visual language.

We developed a pipe-like motif to represent the platform's internal architecture, so it feels gated and secure - vendors don't simply enter the system, they move through checkpoints, validations, and risk assessments.

When AI auto-fills a vendor questionnaire, there's a subtle purple glow that travels through the field. A small touch to convey hidden intelligence, because you don't have to know what's happening behind the scenes, but you do feel it when using platforms that understand their user to the T.

Most of these details will go unnoticed. That's kinda the point.

AI works behind the scenes, and doesn't scream about its brilliance - similarly, thoughtful motion and design shape how your product, brand, story, and your company come across. Thoughtful being the operative word.

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

Underrated joys of building a creative business:

→ A lead books a call because they saw your latest project and "want something exactly like that"

→ Meeting a client IRL for the first time. The Zoom square becomes a real human you can get to know beyond just their role in the project

→ A new hire that just gets it. They own their work, overcommunicate, and are naturally aligned with the big picture

→ Brainstorming session with your co-founder that derails into fits of giggling and guffawing over some silly detail. These are the moments that make the hard days worth it 🫶

→ Casually checking in with a past client - and they thank you for "not being transactional people"

→ Wrapping up your day at a reasonable hour and looking forward to 8 hours of sleep!

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

@vikpat wow just came across you work and really enjoying these breakdowns!🔥

love the nod to spiderverse with the nametag - think you’d like this fan film we made with @iamtubbynugget couple years ago: https://t.co/Pecwu7ViOC

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

@prachiruns Insanely inspiring!!

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

a few frames from the launch video for Centsight🍋🧊

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

A page from our Art Director's notebook.

What I love about this is she's one of the most technically adventurous people on the team - AR/VR, Cavalry experiments, playing with tools most people haven't even heard of. And yet, when it comes to really getting to the core of an idea - visual notes, shapes, and words are worked through on paper first.

When everyone's rushing to hand their thinking over to AI, creatives will always be the first to remind us that an outcome is only as meaningful as the thinking that precedes it.

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

Founders reach out to us with a Figma file and a launch date.

"We just need to animate these UI screens."

And we get it. The screens look good, the product is great. You just want it moving.

But motion design is the last 20% of the work.

The part nobody really asks for - is the part that determines whether a video actually does its job.

→ Immersing in the brand identity to arrive at a design language that has a feeling, not just a look
→ Rewriting the script seven times until they exclaim - that's exactly the line we should lead with!
→ Taking a 12-step product flow and asking - what are the three moments that absolutely cannot be skipped?

That’s the foundational 80%. That's the gap we fill.

The motion design just makes it impossible to look away.💥

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

Video is a ruthless medium.

You can hide fuzzy positioning in decks, docs, and landing pages. But in a 60 second narrative - every weak claim, every bloated sentence, every "we're the leading platform for" moment reaches a point where it has to be chosen or thrown out, intentionally.

The animatic is where this hits hardest. It's intentionally rough - just shapes, light motion, a temp voiceover.

When there's nothing pretty to look at, all you're evaluating is whether the story stands on its own.

→ "That line feels like it could be misinterpreted."
→ "We're spending 15 seconds on this feature, how do we simplify it?"
→ "Wait - we've never actually said it that way before."

While developing the Sprinto explainer video, the breakthrough was when we uncovered 'trust' as the throughline - the thread connecting the product, the brand, and leadership's vision.

That clarity existed before, but it lived in silos.

The script → animatic → design → final animation process helped turn it into a single, communicable idea that they could collectively get behind.

A snippet of the animatic vs final video👇

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

A few bangers from the TPRM agents launch video for @complyanceHQ

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

holy trinity of client feedback:
copy → "make it punchy"
design → "make it pop"
motion → "make it more premium"

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

This quarter is shaping up to be an exciting one at Fabel.

Deep in the weeds working on:
→ Launch film for a Series A agentic AI company (just wrapped the shoot - editing + motion tests underway) → Launch video for a new challenger in the virtual desktops space (final visual systems being designed)
→ Product explainer for a margin intelligence platform (in the last stages of animation!)
→ Second video in a series of product explainers for a Series A GRC platform (knocking out storyboards + styleframes)

Almost every project that comes our way is at a high-stakes moment - launch, fundraising, positioning shift, new category.

Which means the work goes far beyond “making a video.”

It’s about helping teams:
→ Communicate complex products clearly
→ Match brand perception with the strides the product has made
→ Build assets marketing + sales teams can reuse

Looking forward to joining forces if you're navigating similar moments - DMs are open.

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

A few frames from @sprintoHQ's explainer video

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

Most product launch videos are boring because they dump features on screen instead of building an experience.

The reason great storytelling sticks with you is because it literally lifts you up. Feels like you're soaring for a few minutes - through motion, sound, color, energy.

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

When we create launch videos for SaaS/AI teams, we don’t just ask “what should we show?”

We obsess over the “how”:
→ Where do we build anticipation?
→ Where do we hold back?
→ Where do we go big?

[Ayesha Rao @_ayesharao]

The standard we hold ourselves to at Fabel:

Take ownership → Overcommunicate → Overdeliver → Optimize