DEV Community: underway

Episode zero is the foundation now, everywhere

underway — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 10:40:03 +0000

episode zero was always meant to be the foundation. it is the one conversation where you say what you are building, who it is for, what those people do instead today, where it honestly stands, the hardest part, and what comes next. everything underway asks you after that is supposed to stand on it.

we went through every part of the app that should read it, one by one, and checked that it really does. most did, in some form. some read it only when your browser remembered to send it. some never read it at all. and a founder who had just kept their episode zero, with nothing else on the record yet, opened today to an empty list of things to film. that is fixed now.

what to film has topics from the moment you keep it

what to film on today used to wait for your first numbered episode before it suggested anything, because it read your episodes and you had none. now, as soon as you keep episode zero, it reads that. the first topics come from what you said there: the hardest part you named, the goal you set, anything you said was still unresolved. each one carries your own line as its basis, so you can see where it came from.

it never suggests retelling episode zero. what it is, who it is for and why you started are already on the record. the topics are what happens next with them.

your first episode builds on it

your first daily episode is the one where it matters most, because episode zero is the only thing underway knows about you. so the first interview is written to build on it, and that is decided in code rather than left to chance: at least one question reaches back to the hardest part you named or the goal and the date you set, in your words, and connects it to what you picked to talk about today.

an example, from underway's demo series, about a small photo printer. its founder said in episode zero that the hardest part was the rollers, which work for forty prints and then do not, and that the goal was two hundred units in real houses by the end of the summer. their first episode was about a change to the roller springs. the questions asked what the change was meant to fix, then: you said the rollers lie, working fine then failing. did today change that? and to close: two hundred units by the end of summer, where does today leave that?

written without episode zero, the same day got: what did they change, what was it struggling with, what would it take. fine questions. but nobody watching would know this was a series with a beginning.

every later interview, however long ago you filmed it

the questions, the threads offered on the setup screen and the interviewer who decides what to ask next now all read the episode zero you kept, from your account, whatever device you are on. the phone sent none of it before; it does now, because nothing depends on the phone sending it.

your co-host reads it too. its briefing used to cover the last ninety days, so an episode zero filmed in spring quietly dropped out of it by summer. it is always in the briefing now, in your own words, as the standing answer to what you are building and why.

it is read as background, never as news and never as instructions. a question can name the goal you set in episode zero; it will never claim something happened today because episode zero mentioned it.

your season's goal

the season on today proposes a goal when you have not set one. it used to propose it from your episodes, which meant nothing until you had a few. when episode zero says what comes next, that is now the suggested goal, in your words, with your date. it is still only a suggestion: nothing is set until you press make it the goal.

only the one you kept

episode zero can be a practice run now: have another go, keep it or delete it. everything above reads the one you kept, and never a go you have not kept yet. a few places used to pick up whichever intro they found first, which could have been an attempt you were about to throw away. they all ask the same question now, in one place.

and if what episode zero taught the series memory never reached your account, because the tab closed before it could save, underway now writes it in itself once it has stood for half an hour, so every later question finds it.

what episode zero opens, a diary of the build: a founder video diary.

faqs

do i have to do anything?

no. keep your episode zero and it is read everywhere it should be. if you already have one, it is already being read.

will every episode ask about my episode zero?

no. only your first daily episode is told to build on it. after that it is background: a question reaches back to it only when what you are talking about touches the hardest part or the goal you named.

i redid my episode zero. which one is used?

the one you kept. a go you have not kept yet is never read, and a replaced or deleted one is forgotten.

does it work on the phone?

yes. the reading happens on underway's side, so the phone and the web get the same thing.

can i change what it says about me?

redo episode zero from its page in the vault. once you keep the new one, everything reads that instead.

start your series with episode zero, with a 7-day trial. start your 7-day trial.

Originally published at https://underway.life/episode-zero-is-the-foundation

Build in public marketing, kept beside the diary

underway — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 10:40:02 +0000

build in public marketing is sharing the real work of building a business, in order and while it is still happening, so the people who might buy from you, invest in you or work with you get to know you before you ask them for anything. it works because it is honest. it stops working the moment the sharing gets bent towards whatever performed last week.

the short answer to how to do it well: keep two things apart. one is the record, what actually happened, posted on a rhythm you can keep. the other is the shop window, the material made on purpose to be found: videos aimed at a search, clips run as ads, a launch film, a page that answers a buyer's question. the record earns trust. the shop window brings strangers to it. mix them and the record starts performing, and people can tell.

below: what build in public marketing is and is not, why it works, what to share, where, the trap most founders fall into, how to measure it, and how underway keeps the two halves side by side without letting one bend the other.

what build in public marketing is, and what it is not

most of page one for this search defines building in public as sharing your progress, revenue, decisions and setbacks with an audience as you go. that is right as far as it goes. what it leaves out is that it is marketing, and saying so plainly makes it easier to do well.

a founder documenting a build is building an audience and a reputation. that is the point, and there is nothing to apologise for in it. what the approach rejects is not marketing. it is hook-chasing: rearranging the story so the most clickable line comes first, inventing drama, posting the win and hiding the week it nearly died.

it is: what you did, what went wrong, what you decided and why, in the order it happened.
it is: a rhythm, so the people following know there will be a next part.
it is: the material made on purpose to be found, labelled as what it is.
it is not: a highlight reel. a record with the bad weeks taken out reads as an advert.
it is not: a metrics feed. a screenshot of a revenue chart with no story around it gives nobody a reason to come back.
it is not: one launch post. the value is in the accumulation, and a single post accumulates nothing.

why build in public marketing works

there are three reasons, and none of them needs a growth hack.

the first is trust over time. an advert asks a stranger to believe a claim. forty updates in a row show them how you think, what you do when something breaks, and whether you finish things. that is a different kind of evidence, and it is the kind buyers, investors and the people you want to hire actually weigh.

the second is that it is serial. people who saw part twelve want part thirteen. they come back for what happens next, not for a clever opening line, which means the work is to keep going rather than to be brilliant every time.

the third is that it piles up. every update is another page, video or post someone can find through a search months later. an archive of a real build is something nobody can produce after the fact. you cannot go back and film the beginning.

a real episode cover from underway's own build in public series. the record is the part that earns trust: one numbered episode after another, in order.

what to share when you build in public

the useful test for any update is whether someone who followed the last one learns something new from this one. that rules out most filler and lets in a lot of things founders assume are too small.

the decision you went back and forth on, and what tipped it.
the thing that broke, what you tried first, and what actually fixed it.
what a customer said that you did not expect.
the number that moved, with the story of why, once in a while. a number with a story is news. a number on its own is a dashboard.
what you are about to try, before you know if it works.
the thing you shipped, shown rather than described.
what you stopped doing, and why.

what you leave out matters as much. customer names without permission, anything under a contract, a colleague's mistake told as a story, and keys or passwords on a screen you share. building in public is about your work, not other people's.

where to post build in public marketing

each place rewards a different shape. the same week can go to all of them if the words change for each, which is cheap. the video mostly does not need to change: a vertical cut serves the short-form apps, and a landscape one suits youtube and linkedin.

	place	what it is good for
x	conversation with other builders, fast feedback	a short thread or a single post with one point
linkedin	buyers, hires and investors who know your industry	a longer first-person post, no thread structure
youtube	being found through search for years	a video titled with the words people type
tiktok, instagram, shorts	reaching people who have never heard of you	a vertical clip that makes sense in its first seconds
a newsletter	the people who already care, reliably	the week in writing, with links back to the videos
your own page	the whole archive in order, owned by you	every episode, numbered, with its date

pick one place to be consistent on before trying to be everywhere. a series that appears on one network every weekday beats one that appears on five networks when there is time.

the trap: letting the numbers write the diary

here is how build in public marketing usually goes wrong. a founder posts honestly for a few weeks. one post does far better than the rest. the next week they try to repeat it. a month later every update is shaped like the one that performed, and the record has quietly become an ad campaign. the audience notices before the founder does.

the fix is structural rather than a matter of willpower. look at your numbers, because they tell you whether the effort is worth sustaining. but keep them out of the room where you decide what to say about your week. decide what happened first. then, separately, decide what to make for strangers.

judge the whole by totals that grow, not by your best post. thirty updates and a few hundred people following, none of which existed two months ago, is a reason to keep going. a ranking of your posts by reach is the same data arranged to make you chase your best day.

how underway keeps build in public marketing beside the diary

underway has two sides with two names. document is the diary: once a day, whenever suits you, an interviewer asks about your day, you answer on camera or by voice, and the answers become a numbered episode, in the order you said them, nothing reordered for a hook. promote is the shop window, its own tab in the bar at the top of the app, on the web and the phone, and under beyond the episode in account.

promote opens on a set of choices, each its own page:

your marketing brief, on every plan: who it is for, your positioning, your messaging, where to spend the effort and your next 30 days, read from your website and your episodes, with correct this on every part.
found in ai answers, part of series: the questions your buyers ask ai assistants, asked once a month, and whether the answers name you or someone else.
videos to film, part of series: what your audience types into youtube, checked against what ranks for it now, with how to film each one.
ad answers, part of series: once a month, a few questions about what you are building, asked out loud, each answer you keep cut into its own captioned vertical clip.
marketing assets: your ads, launch films, demos and graphics, uploaded and kept beside the diary, the same shelf as the vault's assets filter.
reach, part of series: everyone you reach, followers across your connected accounts added up, and what each post you sent from an episode did.

under them sits get featured in our ads: once five of your episodes are public on your page, your build can be featured in the facebook and instagram ads underway runs to its directory of builds. it is free and automatic, and you can switch it off in settings, under publishing.

a real clip cut from one of underway's own episodes. the episode stays in order; a clip is an advert for it and may open on any line the founder said.

the walls between the two

nothing on promote is numbered. a promote video, an ad answer or an asset never takes an episode number and never sits between episode 47 and 48.
nothing on promote counts towards your streak. the streak is the diary habit, counted against the rhythm you chose.
promote's research never reaches your interviews. the questions you are asked come from your day and your season, never from what people search for.
your numbers are shown to you and given to the interview and the edit as context. your words and their order never change.
an asset shows on your page only when you switch show on your page on, in its own row below your episodes, never among them.
anything made with ai is labelled made with ai wherever it shows.

the two sides serve each other. someone finds a clip or a video answering their search, follows it to your page, and lands on a numbered archive of the real thing. today stays the diary's page: the record button first, then your progress, then the few things most worth doing next, some of which come from promote's findings.

an earlier version of an episode's share tab in underway. the wording has changed since, but the job is the same: every episode is private until you say otherwise, and the words for each place are written from what you said.

how to measure build in public marketing

the record first: how many updates you have made, and whether the rhythm held. this is the part you control.
followers across every place, added up, and the change over the week.
times seen, kept separate, since views, search impressions and site visits count different things.
searches you show up on page one for, which grow slowly and keep paying.
whether ai assistants name you when a buyer asks about your market.

in underway, today shows these as a strip of running totals under the record button, each with the week's change, and never a ranking of episodes.

what it costs

every new account starts with a 7-day free trial of founder, series or studio, with a card added at the start and nothing charged until day 8. founder is $29.99 a month and covers the daily episode, the words for every place, one tap to post to each connected network and your own page. series is $79.99 a month and adds, among other things, ad answers, found in ai answers and reach. the marketing brief is on every plan.

the tools for doing it, compared honestly: build in public tools.

what is build in public marketing?

sharing the real work of building a business as it happens, in order, so people get to know you before you sell to them. it is marketing, and it works best when the record stays honest and the material made to be found is kept separate and labelled.

does building in public actually work as marketing?

it builds trust over time, gives people a reason to come back for the next part, and leaves an archive that can be found long after. it rarely works in a week. it works over months, if the rhythm holds.

what should i not share when building in public?

anything that is not yours to share: customer names without permission, contract terms, someone else's mistake told as a story, and passwords or keys visible on a screen.

do i have to use promote in underway?

no. it is a door, not a step. plenty of founders only ever film the diary, and that is the product working.

does anything on promote change my episodes?

no. nothing on it is numbered, counts towards your streak or reaches your interviews or the edit.

real series and what they share: build in public examples.

the brief behind every piece of marketing: how to write a marketing brief.

Originally published at https://underway.life/build-in-public-marketing

How to write youtube title and description for search

underway — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 10:40:03 +0000

how to write youtube title and description, in short: lead the title with the words people actually type, keep it under 60 characters, and promise only what the video delivers. then open the description with a sentence or two that say what happens in the video in those same words, so the first lines youtube shows make sense on their own.

most of page one for this search is a list of tips: put the keyword first, write 200 words, add timestamps, end with a call to action. the tips are sound. what they skip is where the keyword comes from, and what to do when the honest description of your video is not something anyone types. this guide covers both, with the rules underway uses to name every episode.

how to write youtube title and description: start from what people type

a title has two jobs. it has to be found, and it has to be clicked. youtube matches the words of a search against your title, and people scan the first few words of each result before deciding, so the front of the title does both jobs at once.

the words at the front should be ones people type, not ones you would use. you find them in youtube's own search box.

write the subject of your video as the start of a search: onboarding, cold email, stripe webhook, opening a cafe.
type it into youtube's search box and stop. read the suggestions that drop down. each one is something people search.
pick the suggestion that truly describes what your video covers. if none does, try another way of saying the subject.
put that phrase at the front of the title. add your own specifics after it.
if nothing anyone types fits the video, do not force one. a plain, honest title is better than a searched phrase the video does not deliver.

an example from underway's own manual: a title like why new users get stuck in app onboarding opens on words people search, says exactly what the video is about, and promises nothing it does not answer.

the rules for a youtube title, in order

under 60 characters. longer titles are cut off in search results and on phones, and the cut usually lands on the part that mattered.
the searched words first. youtube and the viewer both weigh the start most.
a concrete noun. the thing, the tool, the problem. not it, this or that.
only what the video delivers. a title that over-promises gets clicks and then loses the viewer in the first seconds, which tells youtube the video did not satisfy.
no puns or in-jokes. they mean something to you and nothing to a stranger.
episode numbers and the series name go last, or in the description. the front is for the search.

	a title like this	why it struggles
it finally works	no subject, nothing anyone types	fixing a stripe webhook that fires twice
episode 12: big news	the number takes the front, the news is vague	first paying customer for a saas app · episode 12
the onboarding saga continues	only makes sense to someone who saw the last one	why new users get stuck in app onboarding
you won't believe what happened	promises a surprise, names nothing	what happened when we raised our prices

the examples in that table are made up to show the shape, not titles from a real channel.

one of the pro thumbnails underway drew for episode 65 of its own series. the title and the thumbnail are read together, so they should not repeat each other word for word.

how to write a youtube description that answers the search

the first lines of a description are what youtube shows in search results and above the fold on the watch page. that is the part most people read, and it is the part answer engines and google quote. write it to stand on its own.

the first sentence answers what happens in this video, naming the thing worked on and, where it matters, your product. someone who reads only that sentence should know what they would get.
use the searched phrase once or twice, where it reads naturally. repeating it more reads as stuffing to people and to youtube.
then say what else it covers, in a short list or a few sentences.
add chapters if the video is long enough to need them. youtube's rule is timestamps in the description starting at 0:00, at least three, each at least ten seconds long.
links come after the words, not before them. a description that opens on a link wastes the lines people read.
one or two hashtags that name the subject are plenty. youtube can show the first few above the title, so ten generic ones help nobody.

how long should it be? long enough to say what is in the video. youtube allows 5,000 characters and the title 100, but length is not the goal. a 200-word description that is mostly keywords does worse with a reader than 80 words that answer the question. tags, for what it is worth, play a minor role in discovery by youtube's own account; the title and the opening lines of the description do the work.

titles for a series: the number goes last

a series has a problem a one-off video does not. the people following it want the episode number and the next chapter of the story. a stranger has never heard of you and only knows what they typed. a title written for the followers, such as the onboarding saga continues, is invisible to everyone else.

the answer is one title that does both, in order: the searched words at the front for the stranger, the episode label at the end for the follower. the followers find the next episode anyway, through your page, your feed or a notification. strangers only ever find it through the front of the title.

an earlier version of the episode screen in underway's phone app. episode 46's name, connecting x to underway, is the kind of diary name underway no longer writes for youtube: it names the product and nothing a stranger types.

how to write youtube title and description in underway

underway writes both for every episode, from what you said on camera, so you start from a draft that follows the rules above rather than a blank box.

an episode has one title, its name: the same words on your page, in the directory, on youtube and in google.
three titles are written for every new episode, each aimed at a different search, and the one whose opening youtube's own suggestions confirm is used. a title passes only when youtube completes its opening words with words that say what it is about; when none passes, the first draft stays.
a name is checked against the rules in code: under 60 characters, no episode or day number, and not the series, the product or your own name unless the search itself contains it. a name never opens with the kind of episode, such as watch me work.
youtube's title box starts with the name, then the episode label, so the number sits at the end.
under the name on details, and under the youtube box on share, one line says which search the title is written for, and 2 more ways to title it opens the others, each with use this, which renames the episode everywhere.
the youtube description is written from your transcript, the fullest of the posts for each place, opening on a sentence that says what happened. where an episode has chapters, they are added under it when it posts.

every box is yours. a name you type or choose with use this is never changed by underway. typing in the youtube box changes youtube only. post the full episode to youtube sends the title and description, and update on youtube sends a changed box to a video already up.

what it never does

it never bends a fact to fit a search. a phrase is used only when it truly describes what you said.
it never adds anything you did not say. the facts in the description are yours.
it never reorders, trims or changes the episode itself. only the words around it.
it never uses a paid keyword tool. the phrases come from youtube's own suggestions.

if you want the edit done for you as well as the words: an ai that edits your videos.

how long should a youtube title be?

under 60 characters is a safe target. youtube allows 100, but longer titles are cut off in search results and on phones, usually at the part that mattered.

where should the keyword go in a youtube title?

at the front. people scan the first few words of each result, and youtube weighs them most. episode numbers and your series name go at the end.

how long should a youtube description be?

long enough to say what the video covers. the first one or two sentences matter most, because they show in search and above the fold. youtube allows up to 5,000 characters, but more words are not better words.

can i still write my own title in underway?

yes. the name, the description and the youtube title box are all yours to edit, and a name you type is never changed.

what about episodes already on youtube?

they stay as they were posted. update on youtube sends a changed title and description to a video already up, if you want to change one.

before you write the title, find the search: how to find what people search on youtube.

more on the title on its own: how to title a youtube video.

Originally published at https://underway.life/how-to-write-youtube-title-and-description

How to edit a video on your phone by typing

underway — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 10:40:02 +0000

how to edit a video on your phone depends on what is in the video. for a clip of a day out, the photos app already on your phone does it: open the video, tap edit, drag the handles to trim the ends, save. for a video of you talking, the ends are rarely the problem. the problem is the middle: the um, the false start, the sentence you wish you had not said. that is far easier to edit as words than as a timeline you scrub with your thumb.

this guide covers both. first the tools your phone already has, on iphone and on android, step by step. then the free editing apps people move to when those run out, and what each is good at. then the way that suits talking to camera on a small screen: edit by the transcript, or type what you want changed and let the edit be made for you, which is how underway works on the phone.

how to edit a video on your phone with the apps it already has

every phone ships with a basic editor inside its photos app. it trims, straightens, adjusts the light and adds a filter. for most everyday clips, that is all the editing a video needs, and it costs nothing.

on an iphone, in the photos app:

open the video and tap edit.
drag the handles at either end of the frame strip inwards to choose where the video starts and stops.
tap the dial to adjust exposure, brightness, contrast and colour, and the three circles for a filter.
tap the crop button to straighten, rotate or reframe, which is how a sideways video gets turned upright.
tap done, then choose whether to save over the original or save it as a new clip.

on an android phone, in google photos:

open the video and tap edit.
drag the trim handles to keep only the part you want.
tap enhance to improve colour and light, or stabilise to steady a shaky shot.
add text or an effect if you want one.
tap save copy, so the original stays as it was.

what neither does well is cut from the middle. trimming takes the start and the end. if the stumble is forty seconds in, you are left exporting two trimmed copies and joining them somewhere else.

when you need more: free editing apps on the phone

the next step is a timeline editor. imovie is apple's free one for iphone and ipad: you can split a clip, delete the piece in the middle, add titles and music, and export. capcut is a popular free editor on both platforms with a timeline, splitting, templates and automatic captions. both are good tools, and for a video built from lots of short shots, a timeline is the right shape.

the trouble starts when the video is one long take of someone talking. a timeline shows you a waveform and some frames that all look the same. to cut a sentence you scrub to find where it starts, split, scrub to where it ends, split, delete, and play it back to check you did not clip a word. on a laptop with a mouse that is tedious. on a phone with a thumb it is the job that makes people give up and post the raw take.

	photos app	timeline app (imovie, capcut)	underway on the phone
trim the start and end	yes	yes	done for you, on full sentences
take out a sentence in the middle	no	yes, by splitting and deleting	tap the sentence, or say which one
remove ums and false starts	no	by hand, one at a time	removed automatically on every cut
captions	no	capcut can generate them	lit word by word, in your series' style
find a line by what was said	no	no, you scrub	yes, every answer is its words
reorder what you said	no	yes	never: it stays in the order you said it

why talking videos are hard to edit on a small screen

a video of you talking is made of words, but a timeline only shows you time. a two-minute answer is a few hundred words, and the edit you want is usually about five of them: an um here, a restart there, one line that went on too long. finding those five by ear, on a screen the size of your hand, is the slow part.

if you are editing by hand anyway, these habits make it faster:

cut in the pause before a sentence, not on its first word, so the consonant is not clipped.
keep the order you said things in. a talking video that jumps around reads as produced and loses the thread.
take out filler and restarts, but leave the breaths. a cut on every breath sounds robotic.
add captions. many people watch on mute, and a talking video with no captions loses them in the first seconds.
watch it once with the sound off before you post, to see what a muted viewer sees.
export at the size you filmed. making it smaller to save space shows on every big screen it lands on.

how to edit a video on your phone by its words

the faster way is to edit the transcript instead of the timeline. the video is transcribed, every sentence is a line of text, and taking a line out of the text takes it out of the video. you read rather than scrub, and you can see a stumble in a sentence before you hear it.

underway is built this way because every episode is an interview: questions asked out loud, your answers, one after another. open an episode on the phone and the cut tab is the player, then your answers, one row each with one switch. turn an answer off and it leaves the episode. tap an answer and you see every sentence in it, and you can strike one or restore one. nothing is ever destroyed: the cut is a recipe made from your takes, so anything you strike can come back, and the file is made again from the recipe when you are done.

an earlier version of the episode screen on underway's phone app. the tabs have since become the cut, details, cover, share, shorts and footage, and the cut now has the say what to change box.

type what you want changed instead of finding it

the cut tab also has a box headed say what to change. write what you want in plain words: take out the um after i said not here, cut the last line, put back the bit about pricing. press change this cut.

it reads the episode as it is cut, every line in order, finds what you pointed at, and changes only that. everything else you did to the cut stays exactly as it was: the answers you switched off, the sentences you struck. a line under the button says what changed. if it cannot tell what you meant, it says so and changes nothing, because a guess would lose your work.

it can only take your own words out and put them back. it never moves a line, never reorders an answer and never adds a word, so the episode stays in the order you said it. then the file makes itself again, and the counter at the top shows it rendering.

next to it is start the cut again, which is a different job. it asks the director to choose the lines afresh from everything you said, and anything you edited by hand goes with it. when the cut is nearly right, change this cut is the one you want.

film one answer again instead of editing it

sometimes an answer is not worth rescuing. on the footage tab, every answer has re-record this answer under it, and a question you skipped has record this answer. press it and the interview opens on that one question, asked out loud again, in the same frame as the rest of the episode. answer it, look at the take, retake it if you want another go.

press use this answer and the episode is cut again from your answers with the new one in its place. the old take is gone: a retake replaces the earlier answer outright. back to the episode leaves without changing anything, as long as you have not filmed a new take. if you had struck single words by hand, check the cut afterwards, because the episode was cut again.

what is done before you open the editor at all

most of what people open an editing app to do is done when the episode is made, so on most days there is nothing to edit:

filler is removed automatically on every cut.
captions are lit word by word, in your colours and typeface.
the episode opens on its card and its number: episode 12, episode 13.
transitions, dialogue clean-up and face smoothing are chosen once under polish and applied to every episode, so a series looks the same from week to week.
on the phone you can flip to the back camera mid-answer to show where you are, and the take stays one take.

the point of editing on the phone: the fix happens wherever you are, not later at a desk. an ai illustration, not a customer.

what still needs a bigger screen

striking single words. the phone strikes and restores whole sentences and whole answers. the word-by-word editor is on the web, under the same cut tab, once fine edit is switched on under polish: click a word to cut it, nudge the end of a line a tenth of a second at a time for a breath or a half-word the transcript never caught, and press remove the ums and ahs for any filler that survived. it needs a pointer and room for the loudness strip, so it stays on a computer.

a two-minute routine for editing on your phone

watch the episode once on the cut tab, start to finish.
switch off any answer that went nowhere.
tap the answer with the stumble and strike the sentence, or type what to change in the box.
if an answer is wrong rather than messy, re-record it from footage.
check the name and description on details, then post from share, or keep it in the vault.

most fixes to a video are small. if fixing one means waiting until you are at a desk, it waits, then it gets posted as it is or never gets posted at all. editing on the phone, by the words, is what keeps that from happening.

how do i cut out the middle of a video on my phone?

the photos app on iphone and google photos on android only trim the ends. to take out a piece in the middle you need a timeline editor such as imovie or capcut, where you split the clip either side and delete the part between. for a video of you talking, editing by the transcript is faster: strike the sentence and it leaves the video.

what is the easiest way to edit a talking video on a phone?

edit it as text. in underway each answer is its sentences, so you tap the one to remove, or type what you want changed under say what to change and only that changes.

does change this cut change what i said?

no. it only takes out or puts back your own words. it never adds a word, never moves a line and never reorders an answer.

does re-recording keep the old take?

no. a retake replaces the earlier answer outright, on the phone and in your account, and the episode is cut again with the new one.

can i download the raw video to edit elsewhere?

yes. footage has download raw for every take, on every plan, so you can always take your own recordings into another editor.

what an editor that works from your words does for you: ai that edits your videos for you.

show where you are without stopping the take: switch camera while recording on iphone.

Originally published at https://underway.life/how-to-edit-a-video-on-your-phone

Founding membership: series for the founder price

underway — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 10:40:03 +0000

the short version

founding membership is everything in series for $29 a month, the founder price, instead of $79.99.

it is the same series membership: the weekly round-up, the month in one film, ad answers, compilations, the podcast feed, one tap to every connected network, your audience numbers and the series deck. nothing is held back and nothing is a lighter version.

the price holds for as long as your membership stays active. if it ends, the founding price ends with it, and coming back later is at the standard price.

why there is a founding price

underway is early. the people who join now are the ones whose episodes shape what it becomes: which questions land, which edits feel right, what a series page needs. that is worth something to us, and the honest way to say so is a lower price for as long as they stay.

it is also the same argument the product makes to you. the beginning is the part nobody can film later. joining at the beginning of underway is the version of that we can offer on a price tag.

there is no countdown on it and no made-up number of places. it is offered on our founding-member pages, and it is a monthly plan.

what you get

the interview, whenever suits you, asked out loud, by voice, on camera or with your screen shared
a finished, numbered episode minutes after you stop, in the order you said it
the podcast version of every episode, and the podcast feed that sends them to apple, spotify and the rest
the weekly round-up, the month in one film and compilations, made from episodes you already have
ad answers once a month: a few questions asked aloud, each answer cut into its own clip
one tap to youtube, linkedin, tiktok, instagram and x, and the audience numbers that come back
the series deck, a page an investor or a hire can read in two minutes
the vault: everything private until you choose, then released whole, in order

your original recordings stay downloadable on every plan, this one included. what you pay for is the processing, never access to your own face and voice.

what continuously active means

it means the membership has not ended. renewal after renewal, month after month, the price stays $29.

a card that fails is not the end. whop retries it for five days and you keep everything while it does; update the card from your account and nothing changes.

if you cancel, you keep access to the end of the month you paid for. after that the membership ends, and so does the founding price. changing to another plan gives it up too, because the founding price belongs to the founding membership.

where you see it

your account page says founding member, everything in series for $29 a month, on the web and on the phone. everything else in the app treats you exactly as series: every series feature unlocks, the same way.

is it a trial?

no. it is a paid monthly membership from the first month. anyone who wants to try underway first starts with the 7-day free trial: a card, nothing charged until day 8.

is there a yearly version?

no. founding membership is monthly only.

can i switch from founder or series to it?

it is offered on the founding-member pages. if you are already paying, cancelling one membership to start another is your call, and the founding price only holds while the new one stays active.

will the price go up later?

not while your founding membership stays active. that is the whole promise.

everything in series, every plan side by side, is on the plans page. see the plans.

Originally published at https://underway.life/founding-membership

Youtube thumbnail with face: three for every episode

underway — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 10:40:03 +0000

a youtube thumbnail with face works because people look at faces first: a clear, close face with one honest expression, looking at the viewer or at the thing the video is about, with at most a few big words beside it. make the face large enough to read at phone size, light it well, match the expression to what actually happens in the video, and use the same person in the same style on every video so the channel is recognised in a grid.

that is the method. below is how to do each part by hand, the mistakes that make a face thumbnail look cheap, when a face is the wrong choice, and how underway draws three thumbnails with your face for every episode on its series plan, from portraits of you that you approved.

why a youtube thumbnail with face gets noticed

a results page is a wall of small pictures. the eye goes to faces before it goes to text or objects, and an expression tells a viewer something about the video before they read a word: this went wrong, this surprised me, this worked. a face is also a promise of a person, and for a lot of searches people want a person explaining, not a slideshow.

there is a second reason that matters more over time. a channel that uses the same face, framed the same way, becomes recognisable at a glance. someone who watched one of your videos spots the next one in their feed without reading the title. that recognition compounds the way a series does.

how to make a youtube thumbnail with face, step by step

start from a sharp picture of your face, not a blurry frame grabbed from mid-sentence. a photo taken for the purpose, or a still where you are mid-expression and in focus.
pick one expression that matches the video: surprised for a result you did not expect, frustrated for a problem, pleased for a win, thinking for a decision. one feeling, not a mix.
cut yourself out from the background, or use a plain background, so the face separates from everything else.
make the face big. head and shoulders filling a third to a half of the frame. small faces disappear at phone size.
put the subject of the video on the other side: the product, the screen, the object, the logo of the tool you talked about. look or point towards it.
add at most three or four words, large and high contrast. they should add to the title, not repeat it.
export at 1280 by 720, 16:9, as a jpg or png, under youtube's size limit, and check it at the size of a phone result before uploading.

custom thumbnails need a channel with its phone number verified. upload one in youtube studio under the video's details, thumbnail. some channels also get test and compare there, which shows up to three thumbnails to different viewers and reports which one earned the most watch time.

one of three pro thumbnails underway drew for episode 65 of building underway, its own series. the portrait and the scene are generated from the founder's own episodes; the words come from what the episode is about.

expressions, eye line and placement

most face thumbnails use a handful of expressions. each tells the viewer something different, and the right one is the one the video actually delivers.

	expression	what it signals
surprised	something unexpected happened	a result, a discovery, a number you did not see coming
frustrated or worried	something went wrong	a bug, a lost customer, a launch that stalled
smiling or celebrating	it worked	a first sale, a milestone, a fix that landed
thinking	a decision is being weighed	a choice between two options, a plan
serious, straight to camera	listen to this	a lesson, a warning, an opinion

eye line matters as much as expression. looking straight at the camera creates a connection with the viewer. looking or pointing towards an object in the picture sends the viewer's eye there too, which is useful when the object is the subject. keep the face clear of the bottom right corner, where youtube puts the video's length.

mistakes that make a face thumbnail look cheap

a forced expression for a calm video. viewers notice the mismatch within seconds of pressing play, and that teaches them to skip you next time.
a different style every video. a new font, a new colour, a new crop. it throws away the recognition a face is meant to build.
a face so heavily edited it no longer looks like you. the person in video 3 should be the person in video 190.
too many words. a sentence on a thumbnail is unreadable on a phone.
a dark, soft or low-resolution face. lighting does more than any filter.
a fake screenshot, a fake notification or a fake message to make it look dramatic. it is a lie on the front of the video.

when a face is the wrong choice

faces are not always the answer. a product comparison, a screen tutorial or a finished piece of work can be better shown than reacted to. if the thing people searched for is a picture, show the picture. and if being on the front of every video is not something you want, a strong still of the work with a few clear words is a perfectly good thumbnail. the rule is the same either way: one idea, readable at phone size, true to the video.

how underway makes a youtube thumbnail with face for every episode

underway is a video diary for founders. once a day, whenever suits you, it interviews you about your work and cuts your answers into a numbered episode. on the studio plan, every finished episode gets three pro thumbnails by itself, each one you standing in a scene drawn from what the episode is about, with a few big words.

the face is made once, not from the day's frame. after your first episode on camera, underway takes clear frames of you from your own episodes and makes twelve portraits, one expression each: surprised, smiling, confident, thinking, pointing left, pointing right, frustrated, worried, celebrating, arms crossed, laughing and serious. you see them under faces they're drawn from. press not me under any that does not look like you and it is never used. or add up to four photos of yourself, face on and well lit, and they are made again from those.

the surprised portrait from the face library underway made for its own series, drawn from the founder's episodes. every thumbnail places one of the twelve into its scene.

a few minutes after an episode's file is made, the director reads the episode as it was cut and writes three different ideas, each with a scene, the expression that fits, at most four words a stranger would understand, and one line on who it would make click and why. each is drawn with you standing in the scene, lit by it. the best one is already chosen and marked chosen for you. the faces take turns, so the series does not wear the same look every week.

the chosen one is the episode's cover everywhere: your vault, your page and youtube, with a portrait version for instagram and tiktok. it lives on the cover tab, between details and share. use this one makes another the cover. if the episode is already on youtube, put it on youtube now swaps it on the video. three more draws one more set, so an episode has six to choose from at most. use the plain cover instead goes back to a real frame of you.

what underway will never put on one

a thumbnail is packaging, not the diary. the episode never changes. but packaging can still mislead, so the rules are in the code:

a brand's logo only when you named it out loud in the episode.
never your own product's logo, because the image model has never seen it and would invent a fake one.
no invented screens, ads, messages or reviews made to look real.
no other people.
nothing the episode does not deliver. the words come from what it is about, and lines you struck from the cut never reach them.

the plain cover on the phone: a real frame of you with your own words. this is an earlier version of the screen, when the tab was called cards; it is now cover.

the plain cover stays one press away: a real frame of you with a line you said. on the founder and series plans, and in the 7-day free trial, which is founder, it is the cover and the youtube thumbnail. the same thumbnails are on the phone's cover tab, where you can choose photos from your camera roll to make your faces.

if you want the video edited for you, not only the thumbnail: an ai that edits your videos.

faqs

do youtube thumbnails with faces get more clicks?

faces are noticed first on a results page, and a clear expression tells a viewer what kind of video it is. whether yours does better is something only your own channel can tell you; youtube studio's test and compare, where available, is the fair way to check.

what size should a youtube thumbnail be?

1280 by 720 pixels, 16:9, as a jpg or png. keep the face and words large enough to read at the size of a phone result.

which underway plan has pro thumbnails?

studio, $129.99 a month, and company record. founder and series keep the plain cover, which is still the youtube thumbnail there.

is it my real face?

it is a portrait made from clear frames of you in your own episodes, or from photos you add. if one does not look like you, press not me and it is never used.

does it work on youtube shorts?

no. youtube does not take a custom thumbnail on a short from an app. a longer episode goes up as a normal video, and that is where the thumbnail counts.

does it change my episode?

no. nothing in the episode, its order or its words changes. it is the picture in front of it.

the title that sits beside the thumbnail: how to title a youtube video.

a cover made from your own frame instead: auto thumbnail generator from video.

Originally published at https://underway.life/youtube-thumbnail-with-face

Film what you noticed, as a moment or an episode

underway — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 10:40:02 +0000

the short version

noticed is the section on today where underway tells you something happened. a milestone crossed: your site showed up in a hundred searches, a first payment landed, a launch went live. or a line from your day that looks like news. until now each row had one way to film it, record a moment now, and when you pressed it the moment screen opened without saying what the moment was about. you had to remember, with the camera already on.

now every row has two ways to film it, and both carry the thing you noticed all the way to the camera.

film a moment

press film a moment and the camera opens with the row written big above it, in the same type as a heading, so you can read it from across the desk. under it, one line: what happened, and how does it feel? that is the whole brief. fifteen seconds to camera while it is still fresh, the way a moment always worked.

the reason for the second half of that line is simple. a moment is the founder talking about something that just happened, and the part a viewer remembers is rarely the fact. a hundred impressions is a number. being surprised, or relieved, or not sure it means anything yet, is the bit that makes episode 48 worth watching after episode 47. the question asks for it without asking you to perform.

the moment lands in today's tray like any other. the next interview can ask about it, and the episode can use it.

film an episode

some things are bigger than fifteen seconds. press film an episode and the setup opens with the row already chosen as the thread, and the kind set to just chat: nothing asked, you press record, say it, and stop. your frame is as you left it last time, so it is ready to film in a few presses.

nothing is decided for you. the setup is the same one you always see, so if you would rather be interviewed about it, or have the co-host talk it through with you, change the kind before you press record. the thread stays chosen whichever you pick.

the other two doors stay

save for my next episode keeps it, and the next interview asks about it whenever you film.
not this one drops it, at no cost. no second ask, nothing to the streak.
a milestone about the season's goal still offers close the season.

either way of filming counts as keeping it. a line of news you film becomes a fact at once, without a reload, and heads what to film, exactly as saving it did.

the bug underneath

the moment screen was always meant to show what it was about. the address carried it. but the page read the address in the instant before the browser had moved to the new one, so it found nothing and showed nothing, every time. it now reads the address once the page is on screen. a small fix, and the reason this whole thing felt broken rather than unfinished.

on the phone

the phone does the same. noticed on today has film a moment and film an episode. the moment screen's heading becomes the thing you noticed, with the same line under it, and film an episode opens the phone's setup on just chat with the thread chosen. it arrives as an update the app fetches itself: open it and press restart on the gold bar when it appears.

if a moment a day is the habit you want, the journal app for it: daily video journal app.

faqs

where is noticed?

on today, folded to start. it only appears when there is something in it: a milestone, a line from your day that looks like news, or a notice.

does film an episode start recording straight away?

no. it opens the setup ready to go, with the thread chosen and just chat set. nothing records until you press record.

can i be interviewed about it instead of just talking?

yes. change the kind on the setup screen to interview or co-host. the thread stays chosen.

does a moment filmed from noticed go in the episode?

it can. it sits in today's tray like any moment, the interview can ask about it, and the episode can use it.

what if i don't want to film it at all?

save for my next episode keeps it for the next interview, and not this one drops it. neither costs you anything.

start a series with a 7-day trial. start your 7-day trial.

Originally published at https://underway.life/film-what-you-noticed

Podcast studio software that books, researches and records

underway — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 10:40:03 +0000

most podcast studio software starts at the moment your guest clicks the link. the recording is the easy part. the work is everything around it: finding someone worth talking to, getting them to say yes, finding a time, knowing enough about them to ask a good question, and then, once it's recorded, getting it in front of people. underway's podcast studio puts all of that on one page, beside the recorder.

this page walks through what's on it, how to use each part, and how to wire it into your calendar so guests book themselves. it's written for a founder who wants a podcast to be part of how they promote the business, not a second job.

what the podcast studio software does

open Promote and choose Podcast studio. everything for your podcast is on that page, in the order you'd use it:

Record: start a podcast with a guest now, book one for later, or talk with your AI co-host.
Coming up: every guest you've booked, with Start the interview when it's time.
Your podcast calendar: a booking page just for guests, with a link to send.
Outreach: shows to be a guest on, guests to invite onto yours, and brands that would sponsor it, each with the email written.
Your podcasts: what you've recorded, with the rest in the vault.

the podcast studio, shown with underway's example series: record first, then who's coming up and the link guests book with.

recording a guest: each of you on your own machine

press Record with a guest now. you give your guest's name and pick how long it can run, 45, 60 or 90 minutes, and underway gives you a link. your guest opens it in their browser, with no account and nothing to install. before their mic goes live they agree to be recorded and published under their name, and they're asked whether they're wearing headphones.

the call is only so you can hear each other. what goes in the episode is recorded on each machine, at full quality, in short pieces that upload while you talk. so a dropped connection costs seconds, not the hour, and a guest whose tab closes can open the link again and carry on in the same seat. each side also records its microphone untouched, without the echo cancelling and noise suppression a call applies, which is what makes a remote podcast sound like two people in a room.

when you stop, underway lays the two of you side by side, host on the left and guest on the right, cleans and levels each voice on its own, takes out the stretches where you were both quiet, and captions you both. nothing is reordered and nothing you said is struck. the podcast's audio is the sound of that finished file.

the same recording technology as Riverside, and more

the reason remote podcasts used to sound remote is that they recorded the call. dedicated studios like Riverside fixed that by recording each person on their own device and uploading it as they go. underway's podcast studio software is built the same way, and in a few places it goes further.

	Riverside	underway's podcast studio
each person recorded on their own device	yes	yes
uploads while you talk	yes	yes, in eight-second pieces
a separate track for each person	yes	yes
uncompressed audio	yes	yes, 24-bit, 48 kHz, each mic
mic recorded without the call's processing	not something it states	yes: echo cancelling, noise suppression and auto gain off
both sides on one clock	yes	yes, measured over the call before you start
a dropped guest rejoins in place	yes	yes, same seat, the gap kept in the timeline
video	up to 4K	1080p
guests at once	several	one

the part that matters most for sound is the microphone. a browser call runs your voice through echo cancelling, noise suppression and automatic gain so the conversation is clear live, and those same filters are what make a recording sound thin and pumped. underway records a second copy of each mic with all of that switched off, at studio quality, on each person's own machine, and builds the episode from that. it then cleans and levels each voice on its own track, so one loud guest never drowns the other.

where Riverside is ahead, it's ahead plainly: 4K video and several guests at once. where underway is ahead is everything around the recording. it books the guest from your calendar, researches them with sources before you start, edits the conversation for you in the order it was said with the dead air taken out, captions both voices, cuts Shorts with the guest above you, and finds the next show to go on and the next sponsor to ask.

booking a guest, and combining it with your calendar

most guests can't do right now. there are two ways to book one for later, and both end up in the same place, under Coming up.

the first is you choosing the time. press Book a guest for later, pick the date and time, add their email, and write the invite in your own words (it starts you off with a note to use Chrome and wear headphones, and the link). if your Google Calendar is connected, Send the invite puts an event on your own calendar with them invited, so the invite comes from you and they press accept like any meeting. without it, it's emailed to both of you with an invite any calendar takes. you can add a video for them to watch while they wait for you to join. Move and Cancel tell your guest the same way the invite went.

the second is your guest choosing the time, from your podcast calendar. in the studio, Make my podcast calendar makes a booking page just for podcast guests, opens it to bookings, and gives you a link with Copy the link. send it in a DM, in your outreach email, or anywhere else. your guest picks one of your times, and their confirmation and invite carry the link to your recording room, not a meeting link. it's kept clear of the Google calendars you connect, so nobody books over something else. Change its times and questions opens Calendar, where you set its hours, notice, reminders and any questions you want answered first.

a podcast calendar beside your main calendar comes with Studio and Studio Plus. on other plans your one calendar can be the podcast calendar.

the same recording is on Record too: set up an episode and Podcast is its own choice.

then who's in it with you: your AI co-host, or a guest you invite. shown with underway's example series.

research on your guest before you start

a good interview comes from knowing who you're talking to. once a guest's name is in, your chief of staff can research them: it runs a few web searches and comes back with who they are, the facts it found, each with the page it read it on, threads worth pulling, questions in the order a conversation would take them, and anything to handle with care. you can correct who they are and take out any line. Add these to my notes puts the questions under your notes, and the brief sits beside the players during the call so you can glance at it.

it never runs on its own when someone replies to an invite. a guest who wrote back shows up as a step on Record with Research them, and nothing is spent until you press it. a booking made without a brief is researched for you, so it's ready when you open it.

outreach: shows, guests and sponsors

a podcast grows two ways: going on other people's shows, and bringing good people onto yours. sponsors pay for it. outreach in the studio has a half for each.

Get on podcasts: press Find podcasts, with a line about which shows if you want. it searches Apple Podcasts in the US for shows your buyers and peers listen to, skips shows that are new, quiet or never have guests, scores each one for fit, and writes a pitch from your own story that opens on one of that show's recent episodes.
Guests: find people to invite onto your show, by who they are, their niche and their audience, each with a checked work email and an invite written.
Sponsors: brands that fit your show and audience, the person there who decides on sponsorships, and a pitch built from what you'd offer and what underway has really counted about your audience. it never invents a number.

every email goes from your own Gmail or Outlook, one at a time, when you press Send. it sits in your Sent folder and replies come straight to you. a new inbox sends a few a day at first and more over a fortnight, so email providers keep trusting it. a pitch gets one follow-up, offered five days later, never more. you can set any of it up by hand, or tell your chief of staff what you want ("find me jewellery brands in the US for sponsorships, mid-size, on Instagram") and it fills in the same filters.

finding people uses contacts: one person who fits what you asked for and has a checked email. your plan comes with some each month (Founder 10, Series 25, Studio 50, Studio Plus 100), and a search that finds nobody uses none.

after the recording

a guest podcast is promotion, so it lives on the Promote side of the vault and in Your podcasts on the studio page. from there it works like any episode: its own page on your series, with the conversation written up under it, a cover, YouTube, and Shorts cut from it with the guest above and you below. it also gets an Analytics tab, with how the episode and every Short of it are doing on each place they went. your guest has a reason to share it, and their audience is often exactly who you want.

the AI co-host, for the days without a guest

not every episode needs another person. Talk with your AI co-host starts a live two-voice conversation, on camera or with just your voice, where the co-host asks, listens and follows up on what you say. it's a diary episode rather than promotion, so it's numbered with the rest of your series. it's there for the weeks when booking someone isn't going to happen.

how podcast studio software compares beyond the recording

	a recorder (Riverside, Zencastr)	underway's podcast studio
guests book themselves	with a separate scheduler	yes, your podcast calendar
a brief on your guest	some draft questions	who they are, sourced facts, questions in order
finds shows, guests, sponsors	no	yes, emails sent from your own inbox
edited and captioned for you	with you in the editor	yes, in the order you spoke

if you run a panel show, record in a studio with several guests or stream live, a dedicated recorder is the better buy. if you're one founder who wants a podcast as a way to meet people and be found, the part that takes the time is everything before you press record, and that's what the podcast studio is built around.

what is podcast studio software?

software that does the job of a podcast studio: records you and your guest at good quality, then helps with the rest. underway's goes further than recording: it books guests through your calendar, researches them before you start, finds shows to go on and sponsors to approach, and edits the result.

does my guest need an account?

no. they open the link in their browser, agree to be recorded, and join on camera. the link is their whole way in.

can guests book a time themselves?

yes. make your podcast calendar in the studio and send its link. they pick one of your times and their invite carries the link to your recording room.

will outreach email people from underway?

no. every pitch and invite goes from your own Gmail or Outlook, one at a time, when you press Send, and replies come to you.

can I record a podcast on my phone?

a conversation with the AI co-host, yes. a guest podcast starts on a computer, because each side records itself in the browser. bookings, the calendar and outreach all work on the phone.

if you'd rather be interviewed than do the interviewing, an AI podcast host that interviews you.

how the recording side compares with the dedicated tools: riverside alternatives.

seven days free, then open your podcast studio.

Originally published at https://underway.life/podcast-studio-software

How to find podcast guests with an audience

underway — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 10:40:04 +0000

how to find podcast guests worth the hour: look for people your listeners would want to hear, who have done something lately worth talking about, and who have an audience of their own that will hear the episode when they share it. start with the people you already know, then the guests of shows like yours, then a search. this guide covers all of those, how to write an invite a stranger answers, and how underway's find guests does the search and the first draft for you.

the short version: a good guest is a fit, a story and an audience, in that order. find ten, invite them in a few honest lines from your own email, and expect most not to answer. the ones who do make the episode, and they bring their listeners with them.

how to find podcast guests: where to look

every guide on this search lists the same places, and they are the right places. what they rarely say is what each is good for.

your own network. people you have worked with, customers, other founders you talk to. they say yes most often, and they are the easiest first episodes to record. the risk is a show that only ever has your friends on it.
the guests of shows like yours. someone who has been on a podcast in your niche already talks well on a microphone and already fits your listeners. look at the last twenty episodes of three shows you admire.
guest-matching sites. podmatch and matchmaker.fm list people who want to be interviewed, and podchaser lets you search who has appeared where. useful for volume; be aware that many listed guests are pitching a book or a service.
people writing about your topic. the author of a post you bookmarked has already thought hard about it, and often has followers who read them.
communities. a slack group, a forum or a discord for your industry collects people with something to say in one place.
past guests. ask each guest who you should talk to next. an introduction from someone they know is the warmest invite there is.

what makes a podcast guest worth inviting

a famous name is not the test. a guest is worth an hour when three things are true.

they fit your listeners. someone a listener would describe as doing the same thing they do, a bit further on, is worth more than someone impressive in another field.
they have a story right now. they launched, fixed, grew, or got something wrong and said so. a guest with a recent turn talks about it with an energy that a career summary never has.
they have an audience of their own. when you host someone, the episode belongs to both of you, and they share it. the people who find you through them are exactly the kind of people your show is for.

the third point matters most when your show is new. episode three going out to nobody is the most common reason a series stops. one guest who shares the episode can put it in front of more people than a month of posting alone. it is not a guarantee, but it is the one thing early on that does not depend on an algorithm.

the host's side of a remote guest interview. an ai illustration, not a customer.

how to find podcast guests with underway

underway's guest interview is the episode where you host another founder on camera: they join by a link from their browser, and the episode is the two of you side by side. under its setup is find people to reach, which does the search and the first draft for you, with nothing to connect.

say who you want to reach: who they are (founders, operators, creators, coaches and consultants, investors), their niche, what they do or sell, where they are, and how big an audience they should have.
press find people. it finds people like that on linkedin and keeps the ones who fit, with the audience you asked for on their own profile.
it reads their recent posts for a story worth an episode, and passes over people whose posts are all reposts, hiring ads or advice for strangers.
for each one it looks up a checked work email and writes the invite.

for each person you get their name, what they do and where, how many people follow them, one sentence on what of theirs it read and why they would suit your show, what you would ask them about, their work email where one can be found and checked, and the invite, ready to edit. anyone it did not suggest is kept under passed over, each with why, and keep anyway puts them back if you know better.

how to write a podcast guest invite

a first message to a stranger works when it reads like a person wrote it to them, and only to them. underway's drafts follow the rules below, and they are worth following whether you use it or not.

open with what of theirs you read. one specific line proves you are not sending the same email to a hundred people.
say what the show is in a sentence, and what you would talk about.
say what it costs them: about forty-five minutes, from their browser, nothing to download.
say what they get: the episode, to share.
ask one question: would you be up for it?
no link. an invite with a booking link in it reads like a mailing. the link for the interview is made when they say yes.

underway never sends your invites from its own address. with your gmail or outlook connected, send the invite sends it from your own inbox when you press it; otherwise open it in my email opens your own mail app with the words filled in, and copy the invite copies them for anywhere else, a linkedin message included. the replies come to you, because the email came from you. nobody in the uk or the eu gets an email looked up; for them the card says to write on linkedin instead, and the invite is there to copy.

following up and booking

most people will not answer the first message, and that is normal, not a verdict on your show. one short follow-up a week later is fair; a third is not. mark each guest they replied, then booked, as it happens. set up the interview puts their first name straight into the setup, and skip takes someone off the list.

when they say yes, set the interview up: their first name, and how long it may run, 45 minutes, an hour or 90 minutes. make the invite link and send it however you like. it works for thirty days and closes two hours after the interview is finished. on their side it asks for their name, their camera and their microphone, and asks them to agree to be recorded and published before they can join.

recording a guest who is somewhere else

both sides record themselves. your machine records you at full quality, theirs records them, and neither recording goes through the call, so a bad connection makes the call worse and the episode no worse. each recording goes up in parts as it runs, so a closed tab loses seconds, not the hour. headphones on both sides keep a laptop's speakers out of its microphone.

the cut lays the two of you side by side, takes out the pauses where you both went quiet, cleans and levels each voice on its own, and captions both. nothing is reordered and nothing is struck. it works in chrome, edge or firefox on a computer, on both sides; finding people to invite works on the phone too.

a host ready to record. an ai illustration, not a customer.

what it costs, and what it never touches

every plan comes with contacts each month: founder 10, series 25, studio 50, studio plus 100. a contact is one person who fits what you asked for and has a checked email, found and written to for you; a search that finds nobody uses none. when the month's run out, 50 more are $15 and 200 are $49, and those never run out. it runs only when you press find people; nothing runs in the background.

the guest search is about who to invite, not about your diary. nothing it finds reaches your day's context, the questions you are asked in your own episodes, or the cut of any episode.

for the weeks no guest is free, a podcast with an ai host: podcast with an ai host.

where is the best place to find podcast guests?

your own network first, then people who have been guests on shows like yours, then a search. guest-matching sites such as podmatch give volume; a past guest's introduction gives the warmest yes.

how do i find podcast guests when my show is new?

invite people at the same stage as you, with a story right now and an audience of their own. they are more likely to say yes than a famous name, and they share the episode they are in.

do i need to connect anything to find guests?

no. the search is built into underway and uses the contacts your plan comes with each month. a contact is one person with a checked email; a search that finds nobody uses none.

does underway email people for me?

only from your own inbox, and only when you press send. underway writes each invite; with your gmail or outlook connected, send the invite sends it from your address, so the replies come to you.

who counts as having an audience?

over 2,000 followers on their own linkedin profile. anyone below that is kept under passed over, with keep anyway if you would like them on.

should i pay podcast guests?

it is not usual for an interview show. what a guest gets is the hour of attention and an episode to share with their own audience.

once they say yes: how to record a remote video interview.

when nobody is watching yet: build in public with no audience.

Originally published at https://underway.life/how-to-find-podcast-guests

Riverside alternatives: guests, solo, and the price

underway — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 10:40:04 +0000

the right riverside alternatives depend on who is in the recording, and what you want to pay. Riverside is a studio for recording people: you and a guest, or a panel, each captured in full quality, now with four AI agents that prepare the session, edit it, clip it and post it. if your show is a panel, a webinar or a live stream, Riverside is hard to beat. if it's mostly just you, sometimes with one guest, the hard part isn't the recording. it's having something to say, every time, and that's the job underway was built for. underway records a guest too, each side on its own track, and its first plan costs about what Riverside's does while including the scheduling Riverside keeps for its $39 plan.

underway interviews you. it asks the questions out loud, from what it knows about your business and what you actually worked on, and you answer. then it cuts a numbered episode, in the order you said things, with captions, Shorts and the words to post. we make underway, so this page says what each tool is for, from each one's own pages on 28 October 2026, and credits Riverside where it is better.

to judge the output rather than our description of it, a real series made with underway, every episode in order, is here.

key takeaways

Riverside records people. you bring the guest and the conversation; it records each person in separate tracks, up to 4K, and its agents help with the rest.
underway records you, by asking you questions. you bring nothing but the time; it brings the questions, from your business and your day.
both now use AI before the recording. Riverside's Producer drafts questions for you to ask your guest. underway asks the questions itself, out loud, and you're the one answering; with a guest, you ask and it records you both.
for a panel, a webinar or a live stream, choose Riverside. for one founder documenting a business, alone or with one guest at a time, choose underway.
on price: Riverside Pro is $29 a month and publishes; scheduling is on Grow at $39. underway's Founder plan is $29.99 a month and includes one-tap posting, scheduled posting and a podcast feed.

what Riverside does, agents included

Riverside started as a remote recording studio, and that is still its core. each person records on their own device, so a guest on a weak connection still arrives in full quality: separate tracks, up to 4K video, uncompressed audio. around that it has a text-based editor, one-click removal of silences and filler words, Magic Clips for short vertical clips, show notes, AI thumbnails on its Grow plan, live streaming and webinars.

on 26 October 2026 Riverside launched Riverside Agents, which it calls the first AI production team built for video. there are four. the Producer preps the session and supports you while you record: Riverside's press release says it drafts interview questions, talking points, scenes, layouts and branding, and its agents page shows an example of eight questions worth asking your guest. the Editor builds an editing plan for the whole episode and works through it with you, tightening the conversation, choosing the hook, adding layouts, B-roll and motion graphics. the Clipper finds the moments worth sharing and turns each into a clip. the Marketer writes captions and show notes and posts or schedules them across your channels once you approve.

Riverside says the agents are on every plan, with a 14-day free trial, and that some of what they do depends on the plan and uses AI credits. it's a strong release. it takes the work after a recording, which used to be the reason people looked for riverside alternatives, and hands most of it to the agents.

why people still look for riverside alternatives

with editing handled, what's left is the recording itself, and for one kind of person that's the hard part. Riverside is built around a conversation that's already going to happen: a guest booked, a topic agreed, a show with a format. the Producer helps you prepare that conversation. it still assumes you're the host and someone else is talking.

a founder who wants to document their business usually has none of that. no guest, no producer, no script. just a day of work and the feeling that someone should be filming it. sitting down in front of a camera with nobody asking anything usually produces a few awkward minutes and then nothing. the reasons people give for stopping are rarely about the editor. they're about not knowing what to say, and having to decide it again every time.

so the useful question when weighing riverside alternatives isn't which one records better. it's whether you're recording a conversation with someone, or whether you need something to be the other half of the conversation.

what underway does differently

underway starts before there's anything to record. it reads what you connect, read only: GitHub, your calendar, email you forward, Slack, your shop or payments, your website. before your first episode you film episode zero, a short interview about what you're building, who it's for and where it stands, which becomes standing context for every interview after it. so when you sit down, it already knows what you're working on and what happened today.

you pick what the episode is about from topics it suggests, or type your own, then how you want to be interviewed: one question at a time, read out, 1 to 3, 3 to 5 or 6 to 9 of them, written from what it knows about the topic; or the AI co-host, a live conversation that reacts and follows up on what you say. you answer for as long as it takes; there's no countdown. with a guest, you ask and it records you both, each on your own track. both work on camera or by voice only, at any time of day that suits you.

then it cuts the episode itself: filler, restarts and dead air out, cut on full sentences, captioned, your episode card on the front, and always in the order you said things. underway never moves your best line to the front of an episode, because a diary that's been reordered stops being a diary. Shorts are cut separately, to advertise the episode, and those may open on any line. the episode is numbered, so episode 47 follows episode 46, and your page lists them in order for anyone who wants the whole story.

step one in underway today: pick the kind of episode. shown with underway's example series; the co-host cards are greyed because the example account has no co-host time.

underway also has a team of helpers, and one of them is called a Producer too, so the difference is worth being clear about. underway's Producer researches what's getting views close to your business and helps you make a video meant to be found. its Director reads what you connect and suggests what to film, its Writer helps you get found in search and AI answers, and its Bookkeeper keeps track of money in and out from the tools you connect. they work for the founder between episodes. none of them changes what you said in the episode.

riverside alternatives side by side: Riverside and underway

the two tools, on the questions that decide between them. Riverside's side is from riverside.com, its pricing page and its agents launch on 26 and 27 October 2026.

	Riverside	underway
built for	recording conversations with guests	one founder documenting a business
who asks the questions	you, the host; the Producer drafts them for your guest	underway, out loud, and you answer
what it reads first	your recordings and your session	your episode zero, your connected tools, your day
editing	the Editor plans it with you, hook included	cut for you, in the order you spoke; you review
guests	several at once, separate tracks, up to 4K	one guest by link, each side on its own track, 1080p
posting and scheduling	publishing on Pro; scheduling on Grow	one tap or a scheduled time, on every paid plan
live and webinars	yes	no
a running series	episodes you organise	numbered episodes, a streak, a public page
from, per month	$29 monthly, $24 billed yearly	$29.99 monthly, $299.90 a year
free to try	2 hours once, 720p, watermark; 14-day trial	7 days, card needed, nothing charged until day 8

riverside alternatives on price: Pro, Grow and underway Founder

price is where the comparison usually ends, so here it is plan against plan, from riverside.com/pricing on 30 October 2026 and underway's own pricing. Riverside's Pro plan publishes for you and hosts a podcast; scheduling posts for later starts on Grow. underway's Founder plan includes posting in one tap, scheduling and a podcast feed, plus the interviewer, which is the part Riverside doesn't have.

	Riverside Pro	Riverside Grow	underway Founder
per month	$29, or $24 billed yearly	$39, or $34 billed yearly	$29.99, or $299.90 a year
who asks the questions	you; the Producer drafts them	you; the Producer drafts them	underway, out loud, or the AI co-host
a guest	yes, several, separate tracks	yes, several, separate tracks	one at a time, separate tracks
edited for you	the Editor agent, with you	the Editor agent, with you	yes, in the order you spoke
Shorts	Magic Clips	Magic Clips	up to two an episode, more on Series
post to your networks	yes	yes	yes, one tap
schedule posts	no	yes	yes
podcast feed	yes, hosting	yes, two shows	yes
your own public page	not on the plan list	not on the plan list	yes, every episode in order
knows your business	your recordings	your recordings	episode zero and the tools you connect

Riverside's plans also count recording hours and AI credits, which matter if you record long sessions or lean on its AI B-roll and translation. underway doesn't sell by the hour. its higher plans, Series at $79.99 and Studio at $129.99, add Shorts and posts made for every episode, AI search, round-ups and, on Studio, pro thumbnails and motion graphics.

which is right for you

	choose	why
a panel with several remote guests	Riverside	every voice recorded at full quality, on its own track
one guest at a time, plus solo episodes	underway	it records your guest and interviews you when there isn't one
webinars or live streams	Riverside	underway doesn't do either
a regular episode about your business, alone	underway	it asks the questions and knows what you did
you never know what to say on camera	underway	you answer questions rather than present
a long back catalogue to clip	Riverside	its agents work through old recordings
a company story told in order, for investors and hires	underway	nothing reordered, every episode numbered

some founders will want both: Riverside for the interviews they run with customers and guests, underway for the episodes that are just them. there's no reason they can't sit side by side.

the other riverside alternatives, briefly

if you do record guests and still want something other than Riverside, the usual names are worth a look. we haven't tested each one on the same day as this page, so this is what each is known for, not a ranking.

Descript: recording and editing by the transcript in one app. a good fit if you like doing the edit yourself.
Zencastr and SquadCast: remote recording studios with separate tracks for each guest, the closest like-for-like swaps for Riverside's recorder.
StreamYard and Restream: live streaming first, recording second.
Castmagic and Opus Clip: they start from a recording you already have and turn it into show notes, posts and Shorts.

every one of them starts from a recording, a guest or a stream that already exists. that's the line underway sits on the other side of.

the editing that's left after an underway interview: one switch per answer, and any sentence can be struck. shown with underway's example series, an invented founder.

what underway costs

every new account starts with a 7-day free trial of Founder, Series or Studio. you add a card at the start and nothing is charged until day 8; cancel before then and you pay nothing. Founder is $29.99 a month or $299.90 a year: the interview, the finished episode, Shorts when you press Find clips, the words for every platform, one tap to post to the networks you connect, the podcast feed, your page and every connection. Series is $79.99 a month or $799.90 a year and adds Shorts and posts made for every episode and the weekly round-up. Studio is $129.99 a month and adds things like YouTube thumbnails with your face in them and motion graphics on your episodes. your raw recordings download on every plan.

what results look like

the clearest result we can show is our own. Rich Lovatt, who makes underway, films a numbered series about building it, with it: each episode an interview about that day's work, cut and captioned without opening an editor. they're on the series page in order, which is the point. a guest show is a set of conversations. a series like this is one story, told while it's still happening.

faqs

what are the best riverside alternatives?

for recording guests, Zencastr, SquadCast and Descript are the closest swaps. for live streams, StreamYard. for one founder with no guest who wants a regular episode about their business, underway, which interviews you instead of recording an interview you run.

does Riverside have AI agents?

yes. on 26 October 2026 Riverside launched four: a Producer that preps the session, an Editor that plans and makes the edit, a Clipper that makes clips and a Marketer that writes and schedules posts once you approve. Riverside says they're on every plan.

can Riverside interview me?

Riverside's pages describe its Producer drafting questions and talking points for you to use, with the example of questions worth asking your guest. they don't describe it asking you questions out loud. underway does that: it asks, and you answer.

is underway a podcast recorder?

it can be. an audio interview keeps the questions in, so it plays as a podcast, and every paid plan has a podcast feed for Apple Podcasts and Spotify. you can also host one guest, who joins from a link and records on their own track. for panels of several guests, Riverside is stronger.

is underway cheaper than riverside?

about the same to start: Riverside Pro is $29 a month and underway Founder is $29.99. but scheduled posting is on Riverside's Grow plan at $39, and it's included in underway Founder, along with an interviewer that asks you the questions.

do I need footage before I start?

not with underway. it starts from nothing and gets the footage by asking you questions. Riverside records the conversation you bring to it, and tools like Opus Clip and Castmagic start from a recording you already have.

is underway private until I post?

yes. every episode stays in your vault until you publish it, on every plan, and your raw recordings download whenever you want them.

try underway free for 7 days

if there's no guest and the hard part is knowing what to say, try a week of being asked. sign up, film episode zero about what you're building, and see a finished episode a few minutes after you stop talking. you add your card at the start and nothing is charged until day 8. everything stays private until you choose to post it.

start your 7 days and film episode zero today.

where to go next

if you're comparing editors as well, the shortlist ranked by how much editing each leaves you is the best descript alternatives.

why a founder's own story, told as it happens, works as marketing: founder-led content.

Originally published at https://underway.life/riverside-alternatives

Loom alternatives: when the screen recording is for an audience

underway — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 10:40:04 +0000

the right loom alternatives depend on who is going to watch. Loom is built for a quick video message: you record your screen and your face, share a link in seconds, and a teammate or a customer watches it when they get to it. for that job it's very good, and if that's your job you may not need an alternative at all, just a different plan.

if your screen recordings are meant for the public, the job is different. a walk-through of what you built, or hours of real work sped up into a time-lapse, needs cutting, captions, a title someone would search for, and somewhere to post it. underway does that, and it adds the interview for the days there's no screen worth showing. we make underway, so this page says what each tool is for, from each one's own pages on 28 October 2026, and says where Loom is the better choice.

to judge the output rather than our description of it, a real series made with underway, every episode in order, is here.

key takeaways

Loom is for async messages to teammates and customers. a link in seconds is the whole point, and nothing beats it at that.
underway is for screen recordings that go out publicly as a numbered series: walk-throughs, time-lapses of real work, and interviews, cut and captioned for you.
free loom alternatives exist. Cap is open source and free for personal use on Mac, Windows and Linux.
for polished product demos on a Mac, Screen Studio zooms in on your clicks automatically.
Loom's free Starter plan allows 25 videos a person, five minutes each, up to 720p. Business is $18 a user a month. underway starts at $29.99 a month with a 7-day free trial.

what Loom does well

Loom describes itself as a way to record and share video messages with teammates and customers. you press record, talk over your screen with your face in a bubble, and the link is ready as soon as you stop. it runs on Mac and Windows, as a Chrome extension, and on iOS and Android. for a bug report, a design review or a reply to a customer, that speed is the product.

on 28 October 2026 Loom's pricing page lists four plans. Starter is free: up to 25 videos a person, screen recordings of up to five minutes, up to 720p and up to 50 members in a workspace. Business is $18 a user a month billed monthly. Business + AI is $24 a user a month billed monthly, and adds Loom AI: auto titles, summaries and chapters, filler word and silence removal, auto meeting notes and recap emails. Enterprise is priced on request, and yearly billing saves up to 17%. Loom also now offers Record for agent, which turns a recording of your screen and clicks into a prompt for an AI agent.

why people look for loom alternatives

most searches for loom alternatives come from one of three places. the free plan's five-minute cap and 25-video limit run out. the per-user price adds up across a team. or the recording is meant for somewhere Loom wasn't built for, like YouTube or a public page, and a shared link with a face bubble doesn't look finished enough there.

the first two are about price, and the list further down covers them. the third is about the job. a message to a teammate can be rough: they know the context, they asked for it, and they'll watch to the end. a stranger on YouTube knows none of that. the recording has to say what it is in the first seconds, carry captions for people watching with the sound off, have a title someone would type into search, and sit in some order so that one video leads to the next. that's editing and publishing work, and it's the work that stops most founders posting their screen recordings at all.

how underway screen records

underway is a video diary for founders: one numbered episode at a time, about the business as it's being built. several of its episode kinds are screen recordings, all made on a computer, since a phone can't share its screen.

Walk-through: share your screen and walk your audience through something, the app, the design, the numbers, talking while you click. the episode is landscape, your screen full frame, you in a round bubble in the corner, up to ten minutes.
Timelapse: your screen recorded for as long as you work, hours if you like, up to four windows. no camera is on while you work. press Mark this at a moment that matters and that stretch plays at real speed. then you talk in front of the time-lapse with your face in a bubble, pausing and jumping to each mark as you go.
screen sharing inside an interview or an AI co-host conversation, so you can show the thing you're being asked about, and the co-host can see it if you let it.

after you stop, the cutting is done for you. filler, restarts and dead air come out, captions go on, and your episode card goes on the front, all in the order you said things. the episode gets a name written with the words people search, and Shorts can be cut from it to send people to the full episode. you can post it to YouTube and the networks you connect in one press, and every episode you publish has its own page in order on your series page.

choosing the kind of episode, as the screen looked in mid October 2026 with underway's example series. the two screen kinds, Walk me through it and Watch me work, are now called Walk-through and Timelapse.

what you show stays yours

a recording meant for the public carries a risk a message to a colleague doesn't: a key in a terminal, a customer's email in a sidebar, a password manager left open. underway handles that in two ways.

first, every screen share asks what people may see. Share your screen records all of what you pick in the browser's own picker. Only part of it lets you draw boxes around the parts to show, and everything outside them is blurred and darkened as it's recorded, so the clear picture never reaches a file. second, every screen in an episode is read for keys and passwords before it can go anywhere. if something is found, the episode is held until you answer: take that stretch of screen off, or say it's fine. nothing is posted while the question is open.

loom alternatives compared: Loom and underway

the two tools, on the questions that decide between them. Loom's side is from loom.com and its pricing page on 28 October 2026.

	Loom	underway
built for	video messages to teammates and customers	a founder's public series about their business
how it's shared	a link, ready when you stop	cut first, then your page, YouTube and the networks you connect
screen recording	screen and camera bubble, on any plan	walk-throughs and hours-long time-lapses, on a computer
editing	filler and silence removal on Business + AI	cut for you in the order you spoke, captioned
hiding part of the screen	not described on the pages read	boxes around what to show, the rest blurred
when there's no screen	record your camera	an interview asks you questions out loud
a running series	a library of videos	numbered episodes, a streak, a public page
phone	iOS and Android apps	interviews on the phone; screen kinds on a computer
price	free Starter; Business $18 a user a month	$29.99 a month, or $299.90 a year

the other loom alternatives, free and paid

if your recordings are for colleagues or customers and you just want something other than Loom, these are the names worth trying. each fact is from the tool's own page on 28 October 2026. we haven't tested them side by side, so this is what each is for, not a ranking.

Cap: the open source loom alternative. its code is on GitHub, it can be self-hosted, and it runs on macOS, Windows and Linux. free for personal use; a Desktop License for commercial use is $29 a year or $58 once, and Cap Pro is $12 a user a month, or $8.16 billed yearly.
Screen Studio: a loom alternative for Mac only. it zooms in automatically where you click, smooths the cursor and keeps your webcam out of the way. $29 a month, or $9 a month billed yearly.
Tella: recording, editing, sharing and viewer analytics in one tool. Pro is $13 a user a month and Premium $19, both billed yearly.

all three are recorders. they make a better video file or a better shared link. none of them decides what the video is called, numbers it, or puts it in order with the last one, because none of them is trying to. that's the line underway sits on the other side of.

which is right for you

	choose	why
a quick message to a teammate or customer	Loom	a link in seconds is exactly what it's for
free, and the code open	Cap	open source, free for personal use
a polished product demo on a Mac	Screen Studio	automatic zooms on your clicks
a public walk-through of what you built	underway	cut, captioned, named for search and posted
showing the work itself, not just the result	underway	a time-lapse of hours, with you talking over it
a story of the business told in order	underway	every episode numbered, nothing reordered

where the recordings end up: every episode numbered and kept in order, private until you publish it. shown with underway's example series, an invented founder.

what underway costs

every new account starts with a 7-day free trial of Founder, Series or Studio. you add a card at the start and nothing is charged until day 8; cancel before then and you pay nothing. Founder is $29.99 a month or $299.90 a year: the episodes, Shorts when you press Find clips, the words for every platform, one tap to post to the networks you connect, the podcast feed, your page and every connection. Series is $79.99 a month and adds Shorts and posts made for every episode and the weekly round-up. Studio is $129.99 a month and adds things like YouTube thumbnails with your face in them and motion graphics on your episodes. your raw recordings download on every plan.

what results look like

the clearest result we can show is our own. Rich Lovatt, who makes underway, films a numbered series about building it, with it: interviews about the day's work, and walk-throughs of what changed on screen, each cut and captioned without opening an editor. they're on the series page in order: one story, told while it's still happening.

faqs

what are the best loom alternatives?

for messages to teammates and customers, Cap, Tella and Screen Studio are the usual swaps. for screen recordings meant for a public audience, cut, captioned and posted as a numbered series, underway.

is there a free loom alternative?

yes. Cap is free for personal use and open source, on Mac, Windows and Linux. Loom's own Starter plan is also free, with up to 25 videos a person of up to five minutes each, at up to 720p.

what's a good loom alternative for mac?

Screen Studio runs only on macOS and zooms in automatically where you click, which suits product demos. Cap runs on Mac too. underway runs in the browser on a Mac or any computer.

is there an open source loom alternative?

Cap's code is on GitHub and it can be self-hosted. underway is not open source.

can underway record my screen like Loom?

yes, on a computer: a walk-through with you in a corner bubble, a time-lapse of hours of work that you then talk over, or a screen shared inside an interview. it's built for videos that go out publicly, not for a quick link to a colleague, which is where Loom is better.

what if my screen shows something private?

underway lets you box the parts of the screen people may see and blurs the rest as it records. every screen is also read for keys and passwords, and the episode is held until you take the screen off or say it's fine.

try underway free for 7 days

if your screen recordings are meant for an audience and the editing is what stops them going out, try a week of it. sign up, film episode zero about what you're building, then share your screen for a walk-through and see the finished episode after you stop. you add your card at the start and nothing is charged until day 8. everything stays private until you choose to post it.

start your 7 days and film episode zero today.

where to go next

if you're comparing editors as well, the shortlist ranked by how much editing each leaves you is the best descript alternatives.

if it's guests you record, the comparison with Riverside and its new agents is riverside alternatives.

why a founder's own story, told as it happens, works as marketing: founder-led content.

Originally published at https://underway.life/loom-alternatives

Riverside pricing: every plan, and what $30 gets elsewhere

underway — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 10:40:03 +0000

riverside pricing starts at nothing and runs to a custom quote. the plans most people choose between are Pro, at $29 a month or $24 billed yearly, and Grow, at $39 a month or $34 billed yearly. Pro records, cuts clips, writes show notes, hosts a podcast and publishes to your channels. Grow adds scheduling posts for later, hosting for two shows and video hosting. Webinar and Business sit above them for live events and teams.

this page lays the plans out from riverside.com on 30 October 2026, says what each one is for, and then puts underway's $29.99 Founder plan beside them. we make underway, so we say plainly where Riverside is the better buy: for panels, webinars and live streams it is. for one founder recording themselves, and sometimes one guest, the comparison comes out differently.

riverside pricing at a glance

	per month	billed yearly	built for
Free	$0	n/a	trying it out, with limits and a watermark
Pro	$29	$24 a month	podcasters and creators recording regularly
Grow	$39	$34 a month	shows that publish and schedule across channels
Webinar	$99	$79 a month	live webinars and events
Business	custom	custom	teams, more credits, private hosting

prices are in US dollars, as Riverside lists them. every plan comes with Riverside's AI agents, which launched in October 2026, and a 14-day free trial is offered. the plans differ in recording allowance, AI credits, hosting and what happens after the recording.

what each riverside plan includes

Free is for a first look: you can record and edit, with the limits and the watermark you'd expect. it's enough to judge the recorder, not to run a show.

Pro is the plan most solo podcasters land on. it removes the watermark, adds Magic Clips and AI show notes, unlimited transcriptions, podcast hosting with analytics, and publishing to YouTube, Spotify, Apple, Instagram, LinkedIn and more. it starts you with 2,000 AI credits, which pay for the heavier features like AI B-roll, translation and animated clips.

Grow is everything in Pro plus social media scheduling, hosting for two shows, video hosting and publishing video to Apple Podcasts. if you want posts to go out at a time you choose rather than when you press the button, this is the first Riverside plan that does it.

Webinar is for live events, and Business is a quote for teams, with more credits to start (12,000), private podcast hosting and the controls a company needs. if you run webinars or a team studio, these are what you're pricing, and nothing on this page competes with them.

where underway starts: pick the kind of episode, including being interviewed yourself. shown with underway's example series.

what the AI agents cost on each plan

Riverside says its four agents are on every plan. the Producer preps the session, drafting questions and talking points, with the example of questions worth asking your guest. the Editor works through an edit with you. the Clipper finds moments and cuts clips. the Marketer writes captions and schedules posts once you approve them. Riverside also says Magic Clips, Magic Audio and the agents themselves use no AI credits, while features like video enhancement, AI B-roll and translation do, even when an agent applies them. what each agent can actually do depends on the plan: scheduling, for example, still needs Grow.

so the real cost of Riverside's AI is the plan you need for the output you want, plus credits if you lean on the heavier features. for most podcasters that means Pro if you post yourself, and Grow if you want posts scheduled.

riverside pricing against underway's $29.99 plan

underway costs about the same as Riverside Pro and less than Grow, and is built for a different situation: one founder documenting a business, who needs something to ask the questions. here are the three plans side by side.

	Riverside Pro	Riverside Grow	underway Founder
per month	$29, or $24 yearly	$39, or $34 yearly	$29.99, or $299.90 a year
who asks the questions	you; the Producer drafts them	you; the Producer drafts them	underway, out loud, or the AI co-host
a guest	yes, several, separate tracks	yes, several, separate tracks	one at a time, separate tracks, 1080p
edited for you	the Editor agent, with you	the Editor agent, with you	yes, in the order you spoke
short clips	Magic Clips	Magic Clips	up to two Shorts an episode
post to your networks	yes	yes	yes, one tap
schedule posts	no	yes	yes
podcast feed	yes, hosting	yes, two shows	yes
4K, panels, webinars	4K and several guests	4K and several guests	no
knows your business	your recordings	your recordings	episode zero and the tools you connect

the line that matters is the second one. on Riverside you're the host: you decide what the episode is about and you ask the questions, with the Producer's help preparing them. on underway, when it's just you, underway asks. it reads what you connect, read only (GitHub, your calendar, your shop or payments, your website), and the short interview you film first about what you're building, so the questions are about your actual week. you answer, it cuts the episode in the order you spoke, captions it and puts it on your own page with its number.

when you do have a guest, underway records them too. they join from a link, with no account, and each side records its own camera and mic on its own track, so a weak connection doesn't spoil the recording. for one guest at a time that covers most of what a solo founder needs. for a panel, several remote guests, 4K or a webinar, Riverside is the better buy.

a finished episode, ready to post, with the words for each network written from what was said. shown with underway's example series.

is riverside worth it?

yes, if you run a show with guests: a panel, interviews with several people, or remote guests you need captured at full quality. that's what Riverside was built for, and Pro is fair value for it.
yes, Grow, if you publish on a schedule across several channels and want one place to record, clip and schedule.
yes, Webinar or Business, if you host live events or run a team studio.
less so, if you're one founder recording yourself. you'd be paying for a studio and still deciding what to say and asking yourself the questions every time. that's the part underway does.

what underway's other plans add

every new underway account starts with a 7-day free trial of Founder, Series or Studio. you add a card at the start and nothing is charged until day 8. Founder, $29.99 a month, is the interview, the finished episode, up to two Shorts an episode when you ask, the words for every network, one-tap and scheduled posting, a podcast feed, your page and every connection. Series, $79.99 a month, adds Shorts and posts made for every episode as it finishes, AI search, round-ups and the month in one film. Studio, $129.99 a month, adds pro thumbnails with your face in them, motion graphics and an article on every episode's page. your raw recordings download on every plan.

underway doesn't charge by recording hour or by credit. the costs that vary are on the plan, which is why Shorts made automatically for every episode are on Series rather than Founder.

faqs

how much is Riverside per month?

Pro is $29 a month, or $24 billed yearly. Grow is $39, or $34 billed yearly. Webinar is $99, or $79 billed yearly. Business is priced on request, and there is a free plan with limits and a watermark.

which Riverside plan has scheduling?

Grow, at $39 a month or $34 billed yearly. Pro publishes to your channels when you press the button; scheduling posts for later starts on Grow.

are Riverside's AI agents included in every plan?

Riverside says the agents are on every plan and use no AI credits themselves. what they can do depends on the plan, and features like AI B-roll and translation use credits when an agent applies them.

is there a cheaper alternative to Riverside?

for one founder recording themselves, underway's Founder plan is $29.99 a month and includes scheduled posting and a podcast feed, plus an interviewer that asks you the questions. for panels, webinars or 4K, Riverside remains the stronger tool.

does underway record guests like Riverside?

one guest at a time. they join from a link with no account, and each side records its own camera and mic on its own track. several guests at once, 4K and live streaming are Riverside's, not underway's.

try underway free for 7 days

if what you need isn't a studio but someone to ask the questions, try a week of being interviewed. sign up, film the short first episode about what you're building, and see a finished episode a few minutes after you stop talking. nothing is charged until day 8, and everything stays private until you post it.

start your 7 days and film your first episode today.

where to go next

the full comparison of what each tool records, beyond price: riverside alternatives.

if you're choosing between an editor and a recorder: descript vs riverside.

why a founder's own story, told as it happens, works as marketing: founder-led content.

Originally published at https://underway.life/riverside-pricing