Icon

Icon vs. CapCut

Products
Icon
CapCut
Admaker
(replaces CapCut, Adobe Premiere)
Create winning ads in minutes.
Replaces CapCut ($7.99/month), Adobe Premiere ($54.99/month)
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Adspy
(replaces Foreplay, AdSpy)
Save time with AI-powered ad cloning.
Replaces Foreplay ($49-$99/month + $20/user), AdSpy ($149/month)
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Ads Manager
(replaces Meta & TikTok Ad Managers)
Save time with ad manager auto-upload.
Replaces Meta & TikTok Ad Managers (direct use)
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Creative Library
(replaces Recharm, Air)
Save time by storing, tagging, creating, & splitting videos with AI.
Replaces Recharm ($500-3K/month), Air ($250-$2K/month)
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Creative Analytics
(replaces Motion)
Save money with built-in creative analytics.
Replaces Motion ($1K-$10K/month)
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UGC Creators
(replaces Billo)
Save time & money with AI-generated UGC.
Replaces Billo ($99/video)
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Admaker
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CapCut
AdGPT
Create winning ads in minutes with AdGPT. It's like ChatGPT for ads. Example prompt: "Make an ad comparing Ridge Wallet to bulky wallets." Follow-up prompt: "Make it longer. Mention back pain. Make it funny."
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Bring a script
Increase creative volume by using Icon AI's script-to-shot matching for your scripts. Icon AI will split your script into shots & pick matching videos.
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Filters
Easily enable or disable AI UGC and/or AI B-roll using filters. You can also choose between brand ads vs product-specific ads (using the "Products shown" filter). Disable AI UGC if you're a big brand and worried about backlash.
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Permutations
Increase creative volume with built-in permutation A/B testing.
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Voiceovers
Save time & money with AI-generated voiceovers. Voiceovers are conversion-optimized.
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Captions
Save time with AI-generated captions. Caption styling is customizable.
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Background music
Save time with AI-picked background music. Music is conversion-optimized.
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Relevancy ranking
Increase creative volume by quickly trying other relevant videos for a shot. Options are ranked by Icon AI's match score. You can also see why Icon AI picked a video.
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Ads Manager
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CapCut
Auto-launch
Save time by auto-launching on all channels (Meta, TikTok, & more). Pick Meta campaigns or adsets to launch Admaker ads into.
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Auto-naming
Save time by defining a naming convention for launched creatives. Example: hook1_cta_1, hook1_cta2, & so on.
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Adspy
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CapCut
Win detection
Save time by using Icon AI (+filters on top) to detect winning ads. Filters: similar product (competitive), time running (2+ weeks), like to comment ratio (10:1+), revenue ($100M+), platform (Shopify), & more.
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Ad cloning
Increase creative volume by cloning ads from top brands.
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Creative Library
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CapCut
AI video creation
Save time & money with AI-generated videos (A-roll, B-roll, UGC). Static images also supported.
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Auto-splitting
Save time by auto-splitting videos into clips (building block) with Icon AI.
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Auto-tagging
Save time by auto-tagging creatives with Icon AI.
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Caption removal
Save time finding raw videos (captionless) by using our AI-powered caption removal.
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Creative search
Save time finding relevant videos using AI-powered search.
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Creative storage
Save money by storing your creatives with us.
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Creative Analytics
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CapCut
Reports
See ad analytics with custom reports. Report filters: name (campaign, adset, ad), types (video, static), & more.
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Creative view
See ad analytics in a creative grid-view. Shows hook rate, conversions, & more. Similar to Motion's Creative View.
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UGC Creators
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CapCut
Creators
Save time by picking the best creator for your ad. Creators are conversion-optimized.
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Looks
Save time by picking the best look for a creator (outfit, background, setting). Looks are also conversion-optimized.
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Misc.
Icon
CapCut
Integrations for brands on Shopify
Shopify, Klaviyo, Triple Whale, Northbeam, Amazon, & more
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GraphQL & REST API support
For developers, custom integrations, & more
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Fundamentals
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CapCut
Tier 1 Engineering Team (results in Tier 1 Products)
vs. not Tier 1 Engineering Team or overseas contractors with no equity
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Tier 1 Tech Investors (results in Tier 1 Engineering Team)
Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Kevin Hartz (A*, Eventbrite), Max Altman (Saga), Alex Botez (Chess), and founders & executives of OpenAI, Ramp, Flexport, Pika, Karat, & Cognition
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Tier 1 Ecommerce Investors (results in Tier 1 Products)
Ron Shah & Ash Melvani (Obvi), Roman Khan, Nick Shackelford, Jimmy Kim (Sendlane), Kevin Lee (Immi), Justin Mares (Kettle & Fire), Steph Liu (Levitate), Sara Du (Alloy), Jason Wong, and founders of Eight Sleep, Yotpo, Siena AI, Replo, Novel, Parker, GR0, DCL Logistics, Aftersell, Platter, Openborder, Prescient AI, & Daasity
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CEO/Founder with Tier 1 Engineering Background (results in Tier 1 Engineering Team)
vs. CEO/Founder without Tier 1 Engineering Background who can't hire Tier 1 Engineering Team
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CEO/Founder working 100 hours per week & 7 days a week (results in Tier 1 Growth)
vs. CEO/Founder working 50 hours per week & 5 days a week
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2nd time CEO/Founder with 1st startup being >$10M ARR (results in Tier 1 Growth)
CEO/Founder of Skio helping grow revenue from $0 to $10M+ ARR (and profitable) in 3 years (along with building a team of 50)
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2nd time CEO/Founder in Ecommerce (results in Tier 1 Growth from pre-existing relationships)
CEO/Founder of Skio from 2021-2024 (subscription management software for brands on Shopify)
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ObviBackboneHiyaImmiMilaKitsch
info
Problem

Brainstorming 100 unique, 40-second scripts is painful.

Manually matching 20 clips (from your 10,000-video library) to each shot in your 100 unique scripts is even more painful.

Creating 10 permutations of each of the 100 ads (for A/B testing) is maximum pain.

Now imagine voiceovers, captions, music, & manually uploading all 1,000 ads to Meta & TikTok on top of this.

Products for scriptwriting (ChatGPT), competitor research (Foreplay), creative storage (Recharm, Air), editing (CapCut), creative analytics (Motion), & video production (Billo) exist, but they're not built for admaking (or just built badly).

Problem
Solution

Icon solves this with the first AI Admaker.

AI Admaker helps with scriptwriting, ad research, video creation, script-to-shot matching, permutations, voiceovers, captions, music, analytics, ad auto-launching, & more.

Solution

What they're saying

Obvi
"We went from spending hours making each ad to building entire campaigns in minutes. Icon's AI helps us shape perfect creatives at incredible speed."
Ron Shah

Ron Shah

CEO, Obvi

Products

Admaker(replaces CapCut, Adobe Premiere)

Create winning ads in minutes.

Uses AI for scriptwriting (AdGPT), video creation (A-roll, B-roll, UGC), script-to-shot matching (existing & AI-generated videos), permutations, voiceovers, captions, music, & more.

Replaces CapCut ($7.99/month), Adobe Premiere ($54.99/month)

Admaker
Adspy
(replaces AdSpy, Foreplay)

Save time with AI-powered ad cloning.

Replaces Foreplay ($49-$99/month + $20/user), AdSpy ($149/month)

Adspy
Ads Manager
(replaces Meta & TikTok Ad Managers)

Save time with ad manager auto-upload.

Replaces Meta & TikTok Ad Managers (direct use)

Ads Manager
Creative Library
(replaces Recharm, Air)

Save time by storing, tagging, creating, & splitting videos with AI.

Videos are used as building blocks for AI-generated ads in Admaker.

Replaces Recharm ($500-3K/month), Air ($250-$2K/month)

Creative Library
Creative Analytics
(replaces Motion)

Save money with built-in creative analytics.

Replaces Motion ($1K-$10K/month)

Creative Analytics
UGC Creators
(replaces Billo)

Save time & money with AI-generated UGC.

Replaces Billo ($99/video)

UGC Creators

Story

Kennan Davison

Kennan Davison

CEO, Founder
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
CPO, Chairman, Founder at Skio (CEO 2021-2024, $10M+ ARR in 3 years, profitable).
Previously: Pinterest, Hulu, Wieden+Kennedy (ad agency), League of Legends Challenger (Top 200 North America, 100M+ players globally), Y Combinator S20 (solo founder), Columbia (transfer, dropout).
LinkedInXGitHub
Hi, I'm Kennan!
Growing up, my dream was to be a pro gamer: this felt within reach in high school once I ranked top 200 North America in League of Legends (out of 100M+ players globally).
Despite this, I needed to support myself so I went to college and started learning to code. Coding came naturally (especially with 100 hour weeks) and I was soon skipping class to work at places like Hulu and Wieden+Kennedy (ad agency). Realizing that being paid to work full-time (vs. paying to go to school) sounded quite nice, I dropped out after 1 year to join Pinterest.
After Pinterest, I started a company called Skio which does subscription management software for brands on Shopify. In just 3 years, we've partnered with 1000+ brands (Liquid I.V., Milk Bar, Polaroid, Barstool, Unilever, KraveBeauty, Boba Tea Protein), reached $10M+ ARR (+profitable), and built an amazing team of 50.
With advancements in generative AI (video specifically), I saw an opportunity to help brands bring their stories to life exponentially faster and make marketing much better (hence Icon & building the first AI Admaker).
I love learning how we can help better. Feel free to reach out any time at kennan@icon.me.

Investors

Founders Fund

Founders Fund

Icon Investor
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Peter Thiel's Founders Fund is a venture capital firm. Its partners have founded and funded companies including PayPal, Palantir, SpaceX, Anduril, Flexport, Airbnb and Stripe.
LinkedInX
Ron Shah

Ron Shah

Icon Investor
Ron Shah
Ron Shah
Ron Shah
CEO, Co-founder at Obvi, Co-host at Chew On This, Managing Partner at Gaas for SaaS.
LinkedInX
Roman Khan

Roman Khan

Icon Investor
Roman Khan
Roman Khan
Roman Khan
Roman Khan
Roman Khan
President, Founder at Peak21, CMO at Raycon, CMO at Know Beauty, CMO, Co-founder at Linjer, CMO at Nutrition Kitchen.
LinkedInX

Team

Kennan Davison

Kennan Davison

CEO, Founder
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
CPO, Chairman, Founder at Skio (CEO 2021-2024, $10M+ ARR in 3 years, profitable).
Previously: Pinterest, Hulu, Wieden+Kennedy (ad agency), League of Legends Challenger (Top 200 North America, 100M+ players globally), Y Combinator S20 (solo founder), Columbia (transfer, dropout).
LinkedInXGitHub
Yunyu Lin

Yunyu Lin

Founding Board Member
Yunyu Lin
Yunyu Lin
Yunyu Lin
Yunyu Lin
Yunyu Lin
Yunyu Lin
Head of AI at Ramp.
Previously: CEO, Co-founder at Cohere (AI CX / LLMs, acquired by Ramp), Nuro, Facebook, Y Combinator S20, Duke (dropout).
LinkedInXGitHub
Kevin Jin

Kevin Jin

Engineering
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Previously: CTO at Kalder, Compound Labs, Robinhood, Rippling, Impira, Flexport, Google, Tesla, TSM, Vanderbilt.
LinkedInGitHub

Why us

Track record of things that can't be faked

Icon is the best team helping brands create winning ads in minutes.

Our CEO/Founder (who is writing this, sorry for writing in 3rd person) brings experience from Skio, Pinterest, Hulu, Wieden+Kennedy (ad agency), League of Legends (Top 200 North America, 100M+ players globally), & Y Combinator S20 (solo founder).

At Skio (subscription management software for brands on Shopify), he was CEO/Founder of the company from 2021 to 2024 helping grow revenue from $0 to $10M+ ARR in 3 years (w/ 90% margins) and a team of 50 (on $8.4M raised). Skio is profitable and still growing >100% YoY.

Our tech investors include Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Eric Nam (K-Pop), Alex Botez (Chess), Reilly Opelka (Tennis), Max Altman (Saga), Kevin Hartz (A*, Eventbrite), & execs of OpenAI, Ramp, Flexport, Cognition, & Pika.

Our D2C investors include Ron Shah & Ash Melvani (Obvi), Roman Khan, Nick Shackelford, Jimmy Kim (Sendlane), Kevin Lee (Immi), Justin Mares (Kettle & Fire), Steph Liu (Levitate), Jason Wong, as well as founders of Eight Sleep, Yotpo, Siena AI, Replo, Novel, Parker, GR0, DCL Logistics, Aftersell, Platter, Openborder, Prescient AI, Daasity, & more.

Our team has also worked with 1000+ brands like Liquid I.V., Milk Bar, Polaroid, Barstool, Unilever, Bulletproof, 100 Thieves, Vega, KOS, KITSCH, True Botanicals, mindbodygreen, Transparent Labs, GHOST, Wild One, OpenStore, The Nue Co., Immi, DRMTLGY, Boba Tea Protein, KraveBeauty, Glamnetic, Doe Lashes, Magic Mind, Remedy Organics, & Siete Foods.

Focused on building the AI Admaker

Icon is focused on building the AI Admaker vs. also juggling the underlying AI tech.

We believe our approach is fundamentally better because we're free to choose the best technology partner for a specific job.

To illustrate this, maybe one AI-video partner specializes in face closeups while another partner specializes in body movements (where face doesn't matter as much).

If we built all underlying technology in-house, it would create a fundamental conflict of interest where we can't offer a competitor's tool (that might be better) without losing revenue.

Ready to create winning ads in minutes?