Media & Entertainment | Product Design| B2C | UX/UI | Innovation

Pioneering Human- AI Creative Collaboration

Overview

Co- founded a generative AI startup and led product development of Laila - a platform that empowers parents and children to create personalized video stories with just a few prompts. Despite early- stage funding constraints, rapidly evolving AI technology, and a part- time team, we built and launched a working product in 9 months. The experience taught me as much about startup dynamics and founder alignment as it did about orchestrating complex AI models.

Challenge

We set out to solve a meaningful problem: how could we use AI to enable creative storytelling for families without technical skills or production resources?

What We Were Up Against?

Creating a consumer product with early- stage funding limitations
Working with AI models that changed capabilities almost monthly
Building with a part- time team spread across different time zones
Finding the right product- market fit in an increasingly crowded AI space
Balancing our ambitious vision with current technical limitations

The big question:

Could we build a system that takes a simple prompt and transforms it into a complete video story with consistent characters, engaging narrative, and synchronised audio?

My Role & Approach

As CPO and co- founder, I wore multiple hats - from researcher to designer to prompt engineer:

What I Did:

Led product vision, UX design, and prompt engineering across narration, imagery, and video
Researched with parents to understand storytelling needs and screen time concerns
Designed wireframes and collaborated with an agency on UI/brand design
Built and iteratively refined a complex prompt system that orchestrated multiple AI models
Managed our product manager who worked with developers through releases and testing
Navigated co- founder dynamics and strategic decisions as a startup leader

Process

Secondary line

Discovery Research

Identified a gap for personalized video content while understanding parents' screen time concerns

Prompt Engineering

Tested multiple prompts and language models to find the best storytelling outcome

Iterative Refinement

Continuously improved our prompts and model orchestration as capabilities changed

Rapid Prototype

Designed interface in under two months while backend development continued

Model Orchestration

Worked with the team to build a modular system and test various image and video models as they rapidly evolved

Strategic Adaptation

Adjusted our business model and target market as we learned from initial launch results

Results & impact

Built and launched Laila, enabling

parents and kids to create personalized video stories

Secured acceptance into an accelerator program for mentorship and go- to- market strategy

Gained deep expertise in prompt

engineering and AI model orchestration

Created a modular AI engine capable of producing coherent stories from simple prompts

Positioned our technology for potential applications in education and other sectors

What I learned

This startup journey taught me that building with emerging AI is both exhilarating and humbling. The technology advances so quickly that what seems impossible becomes possible overnight.

I discovered that the magic isn't in any individual AI model, but in thoughtfully orchestrating multiple models to create something greater than the sum of its parts. This orchestration - deciding which model handles which task and how they work together - is where human creativity remains essential.

Perhaps most importantly, I learned that early- stage ventures require just as much attention to founder alignment and strategic focus as to the product itself. Technical challenges can be solved, but team challenges can sink even the most promising ideas if not addressed with honesty and clarity.

Next Steps

We're now focused on several priorities:

Exploring educational applications where personalization adds clear value
Seeking B2B partnerships to supplement direct consumer approach
Continuing to adapt our technology as AI models improve
Leveraging accelerator support to refine go- to- market strategy

As AI generation technology becomes more affordable and capabilities improve, we're positioned to evolve Laila into a platform that truly democratizes personalized content creation.