The explosive growth of short video content demand is placing significant pressure on creators in terms of content production and competition. To address this challenge, Jay Neo, former head of short video content at MrBeast, along with former Palantir engineers Shivam Kumar and Harry Jones, co-founded the Palo platform. The platform aims to leverage artificial intelligence and deep analysis to help creators understand what content works and generate new creative directions.
Rooted in the Experience of Top Creators
Neo, who joined MrBeast's team at just 18 years old, was responsible for improving user retention and was obsessed with analyzing retention charts to identify reasons for declining views. He gained over 1.8 billion views across platforms with a video asking passersby if they would fly to Paris to buy a baguette, and his successful approach was later adopted by MrBeast.
In 2023, after leaving MrBeast, Neo co-founded the "Creaky" brand series channel with other collaborators, quickly increasing its monthly views to over 1 billion. This experience made him realize the importance of content creation and analysis, prompting him to transform his insights into products for creators. In early 2024, he began working with his co-founders to launch Palo. The company has raised $3.8 million in funding from the Surge fund under Peak XV (formerly Sequoia India).
AI-Driven Creativity, Analysis, and Community
The Palo application includes three core features: AI-driven creativity and planning tools, analytical functions, and a community. Creators simply need to integrate all their short video accounts, and the tool will analyze the performance of all videos, providing in-depth analysis of popular and unpopular content.
Kumar, who serves as CTO, stated that Palo uses multiple models to extract data trees containing insights about "hooks," audience emotions, interest topics, originality, and related search terms. The reasoning engine inputs these raw data points into top-tier LLMs (Logical Hierarchy Models) for hierarchical aggregation, building a realistic and comprehensive profile of the creator's taste and style.
This AI-curated tool uses a conversational interface, allowing creators to ask questions about content or request scripts generated based on preset formulas. For content with heavy visual elements, it can even generate storyboards with different angles.
Pricing, Challenges, and Industry Thoughts
Palo currently offers its tools to creators with 100,000 followers, with a starting price of $250 per month, and the cost increases with higher usage. During the testing phase, the company has partnered with approximately 40 creators with millions of users.
Investor Josh Constine believes that Palo can help creators deal with "content burnout" caused by algorithms and trends, addressing procrastination and writer’s block. However, Palo’s launch comes at a time when the relationship between AI and the creator community is becoming increasingly tense. Avoiding the formation of fixed patterns among creators is a major challenge for AI tools.
Neo acknowledges that excellent videos still come from the creator's intuition, but Palo aims to guide creators toward potentially successful directions. He compares this process to comedians trying out new jokes on stage, collecting audience feedback after each performance and iterating, "We believe AI can bring similar advantages to creators."
