Bite

Building Bite took me way beyond product design: cutting costs without sacrificing quality, wiring up API integrations and voice models, and applying for additional API quotas from Google. It also got me a $25K grant from Microsoft.

The idea for Bite came from a problem I had myself. The videos and podcasts I wanted to learn from were two hours long, and my attention span was not. I don’t think I’m alone in that: there is more content than anyone can keep up with, and it’s easy to feel left behind.

I tried the YouTube summarisers that already existed, but I wasn’t happy with the output quality. Most of them use cheaper LLMs to save on API costs and give you a five minute read, rather than actually helping you digest the whole story. Tools like Claude and ChatGPT can give solid results too, but only with the right prompt, and there is other friction like downloading the transcript manually.

In the end, I decided to build Bite as a weekend project. I built the first working version in a day, started using it and shared it with friends who I knew would be interested. The feedback I received encouraged me to continue working on it and bring it to a point where I’d proudly display it in my portfolio, both as a product designer and as a product owner.