Ozone

Ozone shipped their MVP in under three months as a browser-based collaborative video editor, deliberately stripping away advanced features like effects, transitions, and color grading to focus on real-time co-editing. This aggressive minimalism got them into Y Combinator Winter 2022 and generated early excitement from content creators tired of desktop software limitations. However, their execution speed masked fundamental problems. Video processing is computationally expensive—their cloud infrastructure couldn't handle rendering at scale without crushing latency. They prioritized shipping over solving the core technical challenge that made their product viable. Early users encountered constant crashes and unusable export times, creating a gap between the compelling vision and broken reality. The warning signs appeared immediately: support tickets piled up faster than feature requests, and retention dropped sharply after the first week. By focusing on collaborative features rather than ensuring a single user could reliably edit one video, Ozone built the wrong MVP. They needed to prove video editing worked before proving it worked together.