Cardboard

Cardboard

Agentic video editor

Winter 2026ActiveB2BArtificial IntelligenceSaaSConsumerVideoMediaSan Francisco, CA, USA
Cardboard is an agentic video editor for growth/marketing teams and serious creators who need to ship videos consistently. Instead of agencies, long timelines, and infinite review cycles, teams give cardboard a footage + a goal (“3 variants”, “30s hook”, “testimonials”) to get a strong first cut in minutes on which they can iterate quickly. Multimodal LLMs can finally reason over footage, and WebGPU/WebCodecs make a real NLE possible in the browser. For the first time, an “AI director” inside a professional editor can be a reality. We have to build two hard things at once: a high-performance editor in the browser and an agentic editor that is reliable for production use cases. Most startups do one; incumbents can’t rebuild their stack without breaking everything. Saksham and Ishan met in school and have known each other since 15 years. Saksham was Co-founder/CTO of Iterate AI (backed by EF) and posts content on social media; Ishan has spent ~5yr building memory-heavy, performance-critical browser apps at HackerRank (S11) and deeply understands browsers. He has built Hotspoter (5M+ downloads) when he was 14. Together, we’re unusually suited to build the editor core others avoid. Video is becoming the default distribution channel, and the team that iterates fastest compounds attention. Cardboard becomes the default workspace for video production, the way Canva/Figma became the workspace for design - because it’s collaborative, fast, and does the tedious parts for you.

Verdict

Medium Signal
Market Opportunity
Video creation for growth/marketing teams and serious creators is a real and growing market — Wistia, Loom, and the creator economy validate demand. ICP is clear (growth/marketing teams needing consistent video output) and $60/month SaaS pricing is reasonable. TAM is potentially large but crowded, and the B2B focus on marketing teams is a sensible wedge rather than going after all video editing.
Medium Signal
Founder Signal
Ishan Sharma brings ~4.5 years at HackerRank (YC S11) building high-performance browser apps and led multiple 0→1 products — directly relevant to the hard browser-based NLE problem. Saksham co-founded Iterate AI (EF-backed, ~1yr 9mo) and was founding team at PYOR (Coinbase-backed). Both are technical with real shipping experience, though neither has a major exit and Saksham's experience is thinner. Ishan's 5.7M+ download Windows app built in school is a strong signal of early builder DNA.
Low Signal
Competition
Extremely crowded space: Descript, Adobe Premiere/After Effects, CapCut, Runway, Wondershare Filmora, Opus Clip, and numerous AI video editing startups all compete here. The browser-based NLE + agentic AI combination is a real technical differentiator claim, but the moat is thin and well-funded incumbents (Adobe, CapCut's ByteDance backing) can rebuild. The 'two hard things at once' argument is interesting but unproven as a durable moat.
Medium Signal
Product
Live product with pricing page ($60/month starting), changelog, login/signup, and a detailed UI screenshot showing a real NLE timeline with AI features (silence removal, captions, smart trim, voiceover, color grade). Shows 'USED BY HUMANS AT' section implying some customers but no named logos or specific revenue/usage metrics. Features appear substantive and built rather than vaporware.
OverallB Tier

Cardboard has a clear ICP, a live product with real pricing, and two technical co-founders with directly relevant experience — particularly Ishan's deep browser/performance background at HackerRank and Saksham's prior AI agent company. The core technical bet (WebGPU/WebCodecs + multimodal LLMs = real browser NLE) is credible and non-trivial to replicate quickly. The fatal weakness is the competitive landscape: this space is drowning in well-funded competitors from Descript to Runway to CapCut, and Adobe has infinite resources to bolt AI onto Premiere. No named customer logos or revenue numbers make traction hard to assess. The vision (Figma/Canva for video) is compelling but the path to defensibility requires either a massive network effect or a technical moat that hasn't been demonstrated yet.

Active Founders

Saksham Aggarwal
Saksham Aggarwal
Founder

Saksham Aggarwal is the founder of Cardboard (W26). He studied CS at BITS Pilani and previously built AI products at Iterate AI (EF-backed startup). He has published at ACL and has spoken internationally on AI evaluations. He was the first engineer at PYOR (backed by Coinbase and Castle Island) and worked in growth at Sequoia-backed Flint.

Ishan Sharma
Ishan Sharma
Founder

Ishan Sharma is the founder of Cardboard (W26). He is a full-stack engineer with deep experience in high-performance web systems, creative tooling, and applied AI. Previously, he spent ~4.5 years at HackerRank (S11), where he led multiple 0→1 products used by millions. He started programming in 6th grade and built a Windows app in school that crossed 5.7M+ downloads and was featured on CNET and Softonic

Cardboard
Cardboard
TierB Tier
BatchWinter 2026
Team Size2
StatusActive
LocationSan Francisco, CA, USA