Founder story video with an AI avatar: who is on screen?
An About-us video built from an avatar raises one question: whose face. Three Sume avatar inputs for a founder story, a 40-second script, cost, and a label.
For a founder-story video the first decision is whose face appears. Sume's avatar creation takes three inputs: a text prompt, structured profile traits (props with ethnicity, sex and age), or a reference image (photo). Only the photo route can look like a specific person, and that needs that person's consent. The other two give you a presenter who tells the founder's story without being the founder.
The three options
| Input | API type | Resembles a real person? | Use when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prompt | prompt | No, unless you describe one | Neutral narrator for the brand |
| Profile | props | No | You already hold traits like age and sex in a CRM or brief |
| Image | photo | Yes, if you supply their photo | The founder agrees to a synthetic version of themselves |
Honesty in the script
A narrator can say 'our founder started this in a garage' without pretending to be the founder. A founder-lookalike saying 'I started this' is a claim of first-person speech that the person did not record. If you go that way, have the founder approve the exact script, and add a line to the page that the video is AI-generated. The reference-photo URL must be a public HTTPS image; Sume rejects localhost, private-network and non-image responses before it submits the job.
A 40-second structure
- Before (10 s): the problem the founder lived with, one concrete moment.
- Turn (15 s): what they built first and who used it.
- Now (10 s): what the company does today, in one sentence.
- Invite (5 s): what the viewer should do next.
Cost
Creation is 0.95 dollars once. The clip is per second at the tier rate; these are no-product-image rates.
| Tier | Per second | 40 seconds |
|---|---|---|
| standard | $0.184 | $7.36 |
| plus (default) | $0.245 | $9.80 |
| max | $0.55 | $22.00 |
Use the preview
A founder-story video lives or dies on the first frame. Create an avatar-video preview, check the framing, and only then generate the final render. Preview stills do not depend on quality, so approving a preview and then choosing a different tier does not require a new preview.
What to keep out of the script
Avoid claims you cannot document in the same page: customer counts, funding, awards. The avatar will say any number you give it with the same confidence, so a wrong number looks more authoritative, not less. Keep dates and numbers in the page text where they can be sourced and updated.
If a real founder wants to appear, consider a short real recording for the first ten seconds and an avatar clip for the rest. Sume's avatar route produces the avatar part; combining it with a real recording is an editing step outside this endpoint.
When a plain page works better
Some audiences read an About page for evidence, not performance. If the page already has dates, names and links, a 40-second clip adds little. Use the video where it carries a feeling the text cannot, such as why the founder cares. If you cannot say what the video adds, skip it and spend the 9.80 dollars elsewhere.
Sources
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Written by Sume