Neel is the Co-Founder at Clueso. Founded in 2023, Clueso is revolutionizing product education by enabling companies to create high-quality instructional videos and documentation in minutes. Their AI-powered platform transforms simple screen recordings into professional-grade content, streamlining customer onboarding and employee training.
In this episode, we delve into the evolution of customer education in the AI era.
- The inception of Clueso and its mission to simplify content creation.
- How AI is reshaping the landscape of product tutorials and documentation.
- Strategies for startups to effectively educate their user base.
- The challenges and triumphs of building a tech company from the ground up.
Neel also shares his entrepreneurial journey – from leading a Hyperloop team in college to co-founding Clueso and participating in Y Combinator’s W23 batch. We discuss the impact of AI on content creation, the importance of customer feedback, and insights into scaling a startup in today’s competitive landscape.
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Episode Timestamps
- 00:00 Intro
- 01:01 How did Clueso start?
- 4:58 Customer Education
- 7:40 Use cases
- 10:04 Ideal Customers
- 11:02 Customer Journeys
- 15:09 Clueso as an AI Company
- 16:05 10 Year Vision of Clueso
- 17:19 Co-Founders of Clueso
- 19:42 Things Neal learnt
- 22:43 Journey before Clueso
- 27:02 Reaction of Friends and Family
- 28:52 How to encourage student to Startup?
- 32:52 Startup Mindset for students
- 35:00 Advice for founders in using AI
- 37:37 Identifying Problems for AI for Startups
- 43:49 YC Interview Experience
- 47:58 Is YC worth it for Indian Founders?
- 49:33 Advice for YC
- 52:16 Tech that powers Clueso
- 56:58 How does Clueso think about product education?
- 1:03:26 How to create moat for your company?
- 1:05:22 First 10 Customers at Clueso
- 1:11:25 How to grow as a founder on LinkedIn?
- 1:16:37 What’s next for Clueso?
- 1:18:52 Closing note
About Neel Balar
Neel Balar is the Co-Founder of Clueso, an AI-powered platform for product education and documentation. Previously he led a Hyperloop team in college before going on to build Clueso through Y Combinator W23.
Full Transcript
Neel Balar:
When you are starting up, there are so many new things you come across, and you often feel impostor syndrome. With AI now, there are countless use cases to consider. Almost every company that serves customers can use AI to improve the customer experience, whether by automating more of the work or going beyond what they do today. One way to find an AI idea that can disrupt a market is to look at tools that already work well without AI – Salesforce and other old-school tools many companies use – and reimagine them as AI-first. If you were starting from scratch with AI, what would the ideal experience be?
Aditya Anand:
Thanks so much for doing this. I’m excited to learn more about you and your journey.
Neel Balar:
Thank you so much for having me. It looks fun and exciting.
Aditya Anand:
To begin, I’d love to learn more about how you got started with Clueso. How did you get the idea? Tell us the origin story.
Neel Balar:
We didn’t start with Clueso. We were doing something else before. My cofounders and I met at IIT Madras. At the end of our third year, in 2021, we began working together on a product called DeskLamp, a note-taking and digital reading tool for students and researchers. It was COVID, everyone was reading online, and we wanted to improve the reading experience. We were very focused on building product, not on acquiring customers and revenue. Later we shifted to acquiring users from universities in India and abroad, mostly through organic word of mouth. We ended up with around 25,000 users in about a year. The big problem was monetization. Students and researchers didn’t want to pay for software, at least for what we built. As a business, it didn’t make sense.
That’s the idea we got into Y Combinator with as well – YC W23. We interviewed in November 2022. In the interview, YC partners said they loved what we built, but the market wasn’t great and would be hard to get big in. At that point, we felt we would do things differently and succeed anyway. Two months later, by January when the batch started, we also realized the market didn’t work. We explored the US market too, then decided to pivot. For four to six weeks we explored multiple ideas, talking to many companies in our batch and in SF. That’s when we landed on Clueso.
The reason was one of our biggest problems with the previous startup: customer education. When we spoke to users – both active users and those who churned, even within the same cohort from the same school and year – the main difference was that churned users couldn’t figure out how to use the product or didn’t know about key features. Educating customers on how the product works and what it can do is critical. We decided to solve product education to help more customers use more features, get more value, and reach their “aha” moment faster.
Since then we’ve made a few small pivots, but have stayed focused on product education. At Clueso, we’re building an AI-powered platform to help companies create videos and documentation. Today, SaaS companies educate customers primarily through a help center/knowledge base and videos, but creating this content is very manual. We’re automating it with AI.
Aditya Anand:
You were talking about help documentation for product education. In the startups I’ve been part of or cofounded, I’m very familiar with this problem. Product education is always a challenge, and teams face competing priorities: build product or build help docs and make the product more self-serve. What should an early-stage B2B SaaS do to educate customers?
Neel Balar:
Great point. There are always competing priorities, and customer education rarely becomes top priority unless you see major churn because of it. But it’s critical for delivering a great customer experience, driving word of mouth, and improving retention. Teams often don’t prioritize it because the process is manual, involves multiple people, and the ROI isn’t straightforward.
To create a good demo or how-to video now, a designer handles templates and editing, while the PM knows the feature and content. There’s back-and-forth and scheduling across teams. It’s hard to get alignment and time. We’re solving this by making it quick and low-effort. Our product works like this: you do a raw screen recording of your product while explaining a feature. From that, Clueso automatically creates a professional video and step-by-step documentation. It’s the same as explaining a feature to a teammate or customer on a call, but you just do a quick screen recording and get professional output. Because it’s simple and fast, our customers create many more videos and articles and see strong impact. Prioritizing this early helps deliver a great customer experience.
Aditya Anand:
Product education is one use case. Are there others for which customers use Clueso?
Neel Balar:
Absolutely. Product marketing is a big one. Tech companies ship new features frequently. You need to educate existing customers to drive adoption and upsell, and also attract new prospects. That requires product videos, blogs, GIFs, newsletters, etc. Clueso helps create those quickly. We see early-stage and larger companies use it for new feature videos and monthly update videos.
Another large use case is internal team training, typically when you have 200+ employees. You need to onboard new team members on your product, internal tools, and processes – creating SOPs and documentation. L&D teams handle this and use Clueso.
Sales enablement is another. How do you make sales more efficient? Train reps on your customized CRM workflows – Salesforce’s generic docs won’t reflect your customizations – and create use-case-specific videos for different industries so prospects see what’s most relevant.
Aditya Anand:
Tell us about Clueso’s ideal customer profile. Who will say, “This is something I need”?
Neel Balar:
We’re continually narrowing it, but today it’s primarily Series A+ B2B SaaS companies, especially in the US, where many fast-growing SaaS companies are. We’re also seeing strong pull from operational companies and fintech/insurance, where internal training is significant. Because we’re a SaaS company ourselves and understand the space, we’re starting with B2B SaaS, typically Series A+.
Aditya Anand:
I want to share for the audience that my company, Admin – an HR and IT automation platform – was one of Clueso’s early customers. As a seed-stage startup a year and a half into building, we had no bandwidth for help docs or videos, and our product was complex for customers and internal non-technical team members. We found Clueso on Product Hunt or LinkedIn, tried it, and over the past few months created videos and step-by-step documentation refined by Clueso. We published it and saw real ROI in customer and internal understanding. Can you share more early customer stories?
Neel Balar:
Great to hear your story. We love working with you and your team. One example: Aspire, a Singapore-based fintech and one of the fastest-growing fintech companies. We onboarded them about three months into our journey. They started by creating videos and documentation for their customer-facing help center, then expanded into many internal use cases: educating internal teams on financial terms, supporting the support team with “how to answer this” guides, and other operational training. In a recent case study, we found they saved close to 80% of the time creating content, doubled output, and freed time to focus on other parts of their job.
Another (unnamed) company launched version two of their product and needed 100+ videos and 100+ articles within a month – impossible manually. With Clueso they created over 100 videos and help articles for the launch, and customers immediately got value because documentation was strong. We’ve since onboarded larger companies, including US public companies with product academies and certification courses. They need high-quality videos and articles covering concepts and how things work. Teams use Clueso to produce the same content 10x faster.
Aditya Anand:
Do you see yourselves as an AI company, a product education or product marketing company, or something else?
Neel Balar:
We’re definitely an AI company. Our ability to do what we do comes from advances in the models we use. In our product we use speech-to-text for transcription, GPT-4 APIs for AI rewriting, and text-to-speech to generate voices. We’re AI-powered, focused on product education.
Aditya Anand:
You’ve had a strong start. How do you see this evolving, and what’s the ten-year vision for Clueso?
Neel Balar:
The last few months have been great. So far we’ve focused on training videos to educate customers on using a product, but we see this expanding into many domains. We want to support any instructional or educational videos, not just screen-recorded SaaS product videos. Ten years out, we envision catering to any kind of educational video creation. We started with video and documentation creation for SaaS companies, making it super easy, and we may eventually challenge large, general-purpose video creation tools. We’re early, figuring it out, but we see a path to a large product that helps create educational content across many use cases.
Aditya Anand:
Tell us more about your cofounders. How did you meet and start working together?
Neel Balar:
I love my cofounders. We were in the same batch at IIT Madras. My cofounders are Akash and Prajwal. Akash and I were roommates in our first year, and he and Prajwal were great friends too. We knew each other for a while but started working together later because we were doing different things in college. Akash started a product design club. Prajwal excelled at competitive programming, winning hackathons. I was doing deep tech and hard tech with Avishkar Hyperloop, an international competition team building a Hyperloop prototype. We participated in SpaceX’s Hyperloop Pod Competition, met Elon Musk in 2019, and won a couple of international competitions. After all that, we realized we wanted to build something of our own, bring complementary skills – business (me), design/product (Akash), and engineering (Prajwal) – and start together. We all live together now in the same apartment.
Aditya Anand:
So all three of you had the entrepreneurial bug from the beginning?
Neel Balar:
Yes, since the third year of college.
Aditya Anand:
Starting a startup takes you deep into several domains – product education, product marketing, video-to-text, the AI revolution, and more. What are some things you know now that you didn’t when you started?
Neel Balar:
We initially worked on in-app product walkthroughs, not videos and documentation. After two months we realized we lacked a unique insight to win in that space; established digital adoption platforms already did well. We noticed companies wanted to create more videos, and over 80% of SaaS users prefer learning via video. With TikTok and reels, people prefer visually heavy content. We pivoted to video. We started without AI – basic screen recording, zoom effects, etc. – but learned that audio is a big challenge: writing scripts, mic quality, and many people are insecure about their voice. AI voiceovers got much better since we started in June 2023, so we added AI voiceovers. Then customers didn’t want to write professional scripts, so we used GPT-4 to generate or improve scripts by analyzing on-screen actions or the original audio. Most features came from customer pull. We didn’t begin with a long list of AI features; we built a faster, better way to create videos and docs, then added AI where it solved real challenges.
Aditya Anand:
I’d love to learn more about your journey before Clueso. What was your childhood like? Any formative experiences that shaped your worldview?
Neel Balar:
I grew up in Guntakal, a small town in Andhra Pradesh. My family runs a textiles business; no one was in tech. Up to tenth grade, life was simple: school, come back, play cricket. In sixth grade I started going to my dad’s office – the dukaan (store). Watching customers pay upfront for what they bought was exciting. For two or three years I got very interested and thought, “I want to build something of my own.” As a Marwari, you often have a business mindset and want to do your own thing.
I also realized my dad had already grown the business well, and there wasn’t much for me to build there. I was good at math and physics, so I prepared for JEE, got into IIT Madras, and explored many clubs and teams. I joined Avishkar Hyperloop, learned a lot, and later led a 70-person team. When my tenure ended, I felt something missing – I liked having many things on my plate. I decided to either work at a very early-stage startup for flexibility or start something myself. My cofounders were already inclined toward starting up, and we realized we had complementary skills and the same goal. That’s how we started together. I would have loved to do more in childhood, but it has shaped up well.
Aditya Anand:
How did your friends and family react when you told them you were starting this company?
Neel Balar:
I’m fortunate to have a very supportive family. Some friends can’t pursue startups due to financial situations; I didn’t have that pressure. My dad was very supportive – he even said he’d invest. My parents know what it’s like to build a business and encouraged me. My friends were excited too. At 22, with few responsibilities, it felt like the best time to start.
Aditya Anand:
We were talking off-camera that early in life – right after college – is the best time to start a startup because responsibilities are low. How do we encourage more students or early-career professionals to take this path, given family background and financial expectations? What can colleges, students, or families do to encourage more entrepreneurship?
Neel Balar:
This is a topic we love discussing. A few things help. First, residency or entrepreneur-in-residence programs run by VC firms that provide seed funding. That initial financial stability for a few months gives flexibility and makes the leap safer.
Second, in college, seeing seniors start up and do well creates strong pull. At IIT Madras, after we got into YC, many juniors reached out each application cycle for feedback. That exposure matters. Third, pre-incubation programs like IIT Madras’s Nirman provide small grants (e.g., INR 2 lakhs) with no equity so you can explore. Fourth, more academic flexibility. Strict attendance requirements can be a barrier. BITS, for example, has flexible attendance, which may be one reason more students try startups. These factors together encourage more people to start up.
Aditya Anand:
In terms of starting up, mindset is more important than intelligence. For students in their third or fourth year, how can they build courage and the right mindset? Should they start experimenting with something?
Neel Balar:
Starting up brings constant impostor syndrome. The best antidote is finding great cofounders. Don’t begin with the sole intention “we must start a company.” Start working with people you enjoy. Go to hackathons together, build small products. With AI credits available – OpenAI, AWS (often $5,000), etc. – build a small prototype. When you build something and get someone to use it, you see the impact and get motivated to build bigger things. Start small with the right people; that builds the right mindset for the long term.
Aditya Anand:
Clueso is in the middle of the AI boom. How would you advise founders building in AI to navigate hype versus reality?
Neel Balar:
I don’t think it’s hype anymore. We see real use cases across fields, and it’s just the start. Models will keep improving, and many workflows still done the old way can be transformed.
For existing companies, there are two tracks: improve internal efficiency (Copilot and other tools) and deliver better customer-facing experiences by automating more and doing more than today. For new builders, you don’t need to build models. Use APIs and credits. Pick a small, real problem and build a prototype, even if it’s a wrapper over GPT. That’s good enough to explore, learn how models behave, and discover real use cases. As you build, you’ll learn from users and arrive at something more concrete.
Aditya Anand:
Let’s talk about identifying problems. As a young entrepreneur experimenting with ideas, how do you find a space that can be disrupted by AI?
Neel Balar:
YC advice I like: look at tools already doing great without AI – Salesforce and many others – and reimagine them as AI-first. If you designed the experience from scratch today, what minimal user input would produce the final output they need? That’s how we thought about video creation.
Also look for industries with very manual processes – insurance claims, healthcare documentation, etc. You may not fully replace processes immediately, but you can make them 10x faster. For students and early professionals, it’s harder to find ideas because you lack domain exposure, so you often build for your own problems. That’s what we did with DeskLamp – improving digital reading – but those can be “nice to have” and hard to monetize. Validate early: talk to enough people in the space, test your hypotheses, and as YC says, sell before you build. Know who you’ll serve and whether the problem is big enough to pay for before you invest heavily. We learned that the hard way with DeskLamp.
On YC itself: many founders ask whether YC is worth it given the standard deal. At the early stage, it absolutely is. Filling out the application alone forces clarity about your market and product that you might not get from day-to-day execution. For us – with zero prior work experience – YC was a game changer. We were product-heavy and customer-light, conducted user interviews poorly, and misunderstood the importance of revenue focus. YC corrected a lot of that. The brand also adds trust; many customers are more willing to buy from a YC company. The network is incredible – the smartest group of 200 people I’ve met in one place. If I were starting again, I’d do YC again, maybe even at a slightly later stage. For Indian companies targeting the US market, YC also builds trust.
Aditya Anand:
Tell us about your YC interview experience.
Neel Balar:
We applied with DeskLamp. In the application we had about 10,000 signups; by the interview two to three months later, 15,000–18,000. The interview is only ten minutes; they decide quickly. They ask basic questions about your business: customer, market, how it grows. In our interview, they said our product was good and users liked it, but the market was a graveyard – hard to make money and build a big business. We explained how we’d win, and they asked if we had other ideas. They just want to see flexibility, because early on you can’t be too attached to an idea. We pivoted later than we should have.
You can’t tell how your interview went; reactions are neutral. We thought we wouldn’t make it, but the next morning they called and accepted us. They didn’t love the market but loved the team and were willing to fund us to figure it out. YC focuses heavily on team – hustlers who won’t give up. They also like young founders; students who choose building over partying show motivation. I recommend anyone early in their journey apply to YC, even without quitting your job. The application alone is valuable, and if it works out, it can be life-changing.
Aditya Anand:
There’s a narrative about whether YC is worth it for Indian founders. Specifically, what should an Indian founder expect to get out of YC?
Neel Balar:
YC is equally worth it for Indian founders. The only challenge is if you’re serving the Indian market exclusively – B2C or fintech – because YC requires you to incorporate in the US, Singapore, or Canada, which may complicate Indian operations. But if you’re building SaaS or software targeting the US, it’s a no-brainer. It’s the best accelerator for that path.
Aditya Anand:
For someone filling out the next batch’s application, what mindset should they have and how should they approach it?
Neel Balar:
YC wants to see how well you know your customers. Are you talking to them? Do you have real insights versus generic statements? Traction helps, but they care about your thinking and insights, and about the team. It’s hard to get in as a solo founder; I recommend finding a cofounder, working together for a few months, then applying. Startups are hard with many more downs than ups; you need someone to share the journey with.
For the application: keep answers concise and simple. Avoid complex jargon. Explain your product as if they know nothing about your space. Communicate how you’ll deliver value and why your team can do it. Share what you’ve built before to show hustle and motivation.
Aditya Anand:
Tell us a bit about the tech that powers Clueso.
Neel Balar:
At our core, we do a lot of video processing in-house, using libraries like FFmpeg and other video processing/editing libraries. On top, we have AI features: speech-to-text via APIs like Deepgram, Whisper, and AssemblyAI; script rewriting via GPT-4; and text-to-speech via ElevenLabs, WellSaid Labs, and Murf.ai. We also use GPT-4 Vision to analyze visuals. For example, we launched a feature where you upload a presentation and Clueso generates a concise, narrated video – great for sales demos where decks can be boring, but a crisp voiceover improves engagement. We prompt-chain internally to orchestrate results and combine AI with our video processing and UX to deliver a smooth end-to-end workflow.
Aditya Anand:
Okay. Models will evolve.
Neel Balar:
We haven’t heavily experimented with non-OpenAI LLMs for script work; OpenAI works well for our needs and cost optimization isn’t a top priority right now. For voiceover we use market leaders like ElevenLabs and WellSaid Labs, and for transcription we use specialized providers. We may fine-tune a smaller model later for our specific use case. For now, GPT-4 meets our requirements. On foundational models generally, I don’t have unique insights beyond what’s public. One area we do know well is customer success – how to offer a great customer experience as a SaaS product. I’m happy to talk about that.
Aditya Anand:
Given Clueso’s focus on product education and customer success, how do you think about these for your own customers?
Neel Balar:
We experiment a lot. We’ve built a detailed help center/knowledge base covering all Clueso features, with both a video and an article for each feature because users have format preferences. It’s all created with Clueso. We experiment with video length, GIF density in articles, and more to see what works, then share those learnings with customers.
In-app, we avoid interruptive tours. One thing customers love: while a video is rendering, instead of a blank loading screen we show short GIF tips like “Add zoom effects to improve engagement,” with a quick how-to. Since users render 4–5 times per session, they spend a few minutes on that screen and pick up tips passively. We also added hover tooltips that explain what buttons do and embedded GIFs/videos next to features so users can learn without leaving the app.
For customer success, we’re heavy Slack users. For each customer we create a shared Slack channel – or Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, or Discord if they prefer. It’s easier than email; customers drop quick messages for issues or feedback. That lets us support them faster and learn how to improve. We now have 200+ channels across platforms, so we built an internal announcement tool: write an update once and post to all channels. Customers loved it and asked when we’d launch it in Clueso. We’re productizing it.
On product marketing, we post feature videos on LinkedIn, which drive demos. We dogfood everything we claim to deliver, which yields insights and credibility. Using our own product shows customers the impact directly because they experience our content themselves.
Aditya Anand:
How do you think about building a moat and differentiation?
Neel Balar:
There are many video tools, most very general. You can create anything, but it takes time to learn and do. We’ve focused specifically on screen-recorded product videos. We understand the exact problems: adding zoom effects, high-quality voiceover, consistent branding with intro/outro, and more. We’ve made these one-click and automated. By focusing deeply on this niche, we can deliver a better experience than general tools.
Second, while others require stitching together 3–4 tools, we’ve built the best end-to-end workflow for screen-recorded demos and how-tos. The way we compose AI, editing, and workflow is a differentiator.
Aditya Anand:
How did you get your first ten customers?
Neel Balar:
The first ten are the hardest and most educational. Several channels each contributed one or two:
• Network and warm intros: former colleagues, angel/investor intros, anyone who trusts you already.
• Communities: customer education, customer success, and product marketing communities. Be genuinely helpful; don’t sell. If you add value, people will approach you.
• Alumni and investor networks: portfolio companies trust each other more; alumni (IIT, BITS, etc.) often occupy founder or product roles and are willing to help.
• Personalized outbound: I searched LinkedIn for companies hiring customer success roles with responsibilities like “create videos and documentation.” That signaled a real need. I reviewed their websites and help centers, sometimes signed up to test onboarding, then sent very personal messages with specific, constructive feedback and explained how we could help. Those got replies and meetings.
• YC network: two of our first ten customers were YC-backed; one from our batch took a bet before we had much product.
Aditya Anand:
Talk about doing things that don’t scale.
Neel Balar:
YC teaches this well. Don’t optimize for 1,000 lukewarm users when you’re chasing your first ten. Do anything to find ten who love you – people who’d be genuinely upset if your product disappeared. Work from a design partner’s office, shadow their workflows, customize for them. Learn deeply first; scaling comes later.
Aditya Anand:
I see Clueso making a lot of buzz on LinkedIn. For a founder trying to grow on LinkedIn – outreach and posting – what do you recommend?
Neel Balar:
LinkedIn works well for us – all three cofounders post, and engagement is high. There’s clear ROI: we get demos directly from posts. The hardest part is starting. Don’t worry about perfect content at first; just start posting. Over time, resistance drops and quality improves.
Topics that work for us:
• Personal stories: why we started Clueso, what we learned from DeskLamp and why we pivoted, how we got our first ten customers.
• Product updates: new features, how they help, and actual results (e.g., a launch post that led to ten demos).
• Thought leadership: how to launch features, create effective product videos, structure announcements, etc., with concrete examples and data.
People want to learn from authentic stories and practical insights. Engage in comments, be helpful, and be consistent. Twitter/X is something we’re still figuring out, but LinkedIn has been great.
Aditya Anand:
So to grow on LinkedIn, you need authenticity?
Neel Balar:
Authenticity, consistency, and quality. Don’t sacrifice quality for consistency. I post about once a week; the algorithm might prefer more, but I prioritize value in each post. If you’re consistent and high-quality, people will keep following.
Aditya Anand:
What’s next for Clueso – for the audience and for me as a happy customer? What can we look forward to?
Neel Balar:
Three focus areas:
• Output quality: make video outputs and documentation even better.
• Time to value: reduce time from raw input to final output; improve latencies across the pipeline.
• Expanded use cases: beyond screen-recorded demos and how-tos to marketing videos with animations and storytelling. Many still go to agencies and spend $5,000 per video; we’re exploring how to solve that.
Additionally, localization: we recently launched language translation – take a video in English (or another language) and translate it to 20+ languages for better regional experiences. We’re improving translation quality and adding more languages.
Aditya Anand:
Thanks so much for doing this. It was really insightful to get a behind-the-scenes look.
Neel Balar:
Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure talking with you. We love sharing our journey and learning from others’ journeys too. We’ve been enjoying your podcast and look forward to hearing more from other guests.