How A.Team helped D-ID launch an award-winning mobile app

The Challenge

In 2022, a startup called D-ID went viral. Partnering with genealogy platform MyHeritage, they gave people the power to upload old photos of their relatives and bring them to life using D-ID's groundbreaking “Deep Nostalgia” technology. 

Deep Nostalgia was just one of many tools on D-ID's platform. Another tool in the suite helped YouTuber Damon Fox create Harry Potter by Balenciaga. The video went viral, as one of the first AI-generated videos of its kind. Fox took only two days to create the video with three tools: Midjourney, ElevenLabs, and D-ID — helping the tool go viral. 

As the viral acclaim picked up, D-ID faced a significant hurdle: their technology, while groundbreaking, was only available on desktop, limiting its potential reach in a mobile-centric world.

Users wanted the ability to animate photos, personalize content, and unleash creativity, all from the palm of their hand. This would include integrating new, mobile-specific features like real-time selfie animation and voice-driven content creation, ensuring that the app was intuitive, powerful, and aligned with user expectations for on-the-go interaction. So, Dor Bar Shalom, the Director of Product at D-ID, brought in an A.Team. 

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The Build

D-ID’s ambitions went beyond simply porting the company’s core API-powered capabilities from the web app to a mobile version. They wanted to add mobile functionality like turning a selfie into an avatar or in-app voice recording to allow users to create mind-blowing videos on the go. 

They brought on A.Team to turn this idea into a reality, without losing momentum. As a talent solution, A.Team was perfect for D-ID because of the speed at which they wanted to get up and running: “The A.Team model allows you to go from 1 to 100 very quickly, from conception to execution. There was hardly any onboarding,” said Shalom.

After kickoff, A.Team’s first step was to assemble a dynamic group of six expert mobile developers and integrate them seamlessly with D-ID's product team. This collaborative effort focused on overcoming the technical intricacies of mobile app development—not to mention getting past the gatekeepers of the App Store—while maintaining the essence of D-ID's creative AI tools. 

D-ID’s blended team of full-timers and A.Teamerstook an agile approach, including rapid deployment of updates via code push. They delivered an MVP in under five months, transforming their already powerful platform into a mobile powerhouse. 

This strategy not only preserved the integrity of D-ID's web-based Studio but also introduced new mobile-specific functionalities, bridging the gap between web and mobile user experiences.

Outcomes

D-ID went from idea to MVP launch in just five months. 

Since then, their technology has been used to create over 150 million videos, and almost 270,000 developers have generated a D-ID API key in the last year alone.

D-ID’s mobile app now has 1M downloads, a 4.5 App Store rating, and Product Hunt declared the mobile app the winner of this year’s Golden Kitty Award for “Best Marketing & Sales Tool,” after D-ID earned 2,000 upvotes on Product Hunt’s site. 

At its core, D-ID’s story is about more than just impressive tech; it’s a new frontier for creative expression. It enables storytelling in ways that were previously unimaginable, through the power of new native mobile functionalities. Now, the power of generative AI is in users’ pockets — and businesses like Warner Brothers Pictures, Publicis, Mondelez, Skilldora, and MyHeritage are saved from the costly process of reshoots.