AB-TASK

One of the most effective ways to show what your product does is… just to show it!

That’s why we started recording short demo videos of AB-TASK in action. For viewers, it feels almost like joining a live demo. There's no signup, no clicks - just play and see the app work!

We’re planning to use these videos across social media and our landing page. Since AB-TASK is designed for teams, we felt it was important that every demo looked polished and professional. After all, good production helps people quickly understand the product and imagine their team using it.

So we spent extra time figuring out a workflow that feels more professional.

We’re experimenting with AI tools like ElevenLabs and HeyGen to speed up demo production - super handy for early-stage teams like ours.

Here’s how we do it:

1️⃣ Record the product in action using OBS Studio - with two browsers to show user interactions from both sides. OBS Studio is useful because it helps us scale screen to match HD resolution.

2️⃣ Draft the voiceover, then refine it with ChatGPT for clarity and flow.

3️⃣ Synthesize the voiceover with ElevenLabs. We love their natural-sounding AI voice.

4️⃣ Create an avatar video in HeyGen and combine it with the audio for a more engaging touch.

5️⃣ Edit and finalize the video in DaVinci Resolve. We scale everything to Full HD (1920x1080).

The price for all these tools is somewhat around $60 per month.

💡 After a few runs, the whole process now takes about 2 hours per video.

👉 You can find a few demos on our AB-TASK LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ab-task

Would love to hear some feedback on our videos and how other teams approach demo videos. Any tips or tools you recommend?

I originally started developing project management software because I couldn't find a proper tool for ERP-LAB (my own small software company with a team of 5-6 people).

It's a pretty typical story: I had a problem, and I decided to solve it by writing the first version of AB-TASK.

We only needed a few things:

• A single tool for communication (for both clients and developers)

• Time tracking tied to tasks

• Report generation for clients

I was young and full of energy, so instead of struggling with integrating several clunky tools, I figured it would be easier to build my own. And I did. Just a few months later, we were successfully using our own task tracker with all the functionality we needed.

That’s how my passion for project management software started.

Of course, by today’s standards, the first version was pretty crude. The backend was pure PHP (no frameworks, an in-house MVC), the frontend was on jQuery, and real-time functionality was handled via WebSockets (also a custom implementation). It worked, but it wasn’t a strong foundation for future growth.

I temporarily switched to full-time employment and started working on the next version of AB-TASK, this time using React, Apollo Client, and a GraphQL API. After five years, the new AB-TASK finally started to feel complete.

The Bigger Picture

Over time, I realized that team collaboration isn't just about tasks and client tickets. At the very least, you also need chats and documentation.

Using multiple separate tools for this is a nightmare.

The problem is fragmentation. Context gets lost, every tool has its own interface, subscriptions pile up. Integrations between systems lead to duplicate information and often make things worse rather than better.

But team communication is essentially a shared information space where work happens. It shouldn’t be scattered across three or four different apps—it should be in one place.

Why Is This So Hard to Solve?

Creating a simple app that covers all team communication is an extremely difficult task. Team communication is messy, chaotic- you need to see the system behind it.

There are literally thousands of tools on the market. But they either solve only part of the problem or end up as bloated monsters with multiple disconnected interfaces crammed under one roof.

Take Jira - it’s strictly for task management (and it’s already a monster many dream of escaping from). Slack is just for chats. Recently, they’ve been trying to become an all-in-one tool by adding tasks and documentation, but again - it’s really just multiple separate tools packed into one.

Despite the oversaturated market, there’s still no real solution. And the demand for better collaboration tools keeps growing.

For example, Linear quickly became the go-to choice for startups. But they didn’t solve the context fragmentation problem either - it’s still just task management plus a ton of integrations. They simply made task management cleaner and better than Jira.

What Makes AB-TASK Different?

A chat, a task, a support ticket, a document... At their core, these are all information channels between team members.

We created a universal communication channel where you can:
✅ Chat in real-time
✅ Work with large content blocks
✅ Edit content together

All in one place, fully real-time. Messages stream instantly. It’s almost like a reinvention of Google Wave (though I only learned about Wave much later).

Each channel has the same interface, but different attributes.

For example:
✅ Tasks have statuses and assignees
✅ Chats only have a title

💡 But to discuss a task, you don’t need to switch to another app - comments inside a task are also a chat! And the task description? It’s a document!

All channels form an endless nested communication graph - a structured information space where context is never lost.

You don’t just see the current conversation or task - you see its entire history:
✅ Where it started
✅ What was discussed earlier
✅ What aspects are covered in documentation and so on.

This is the missing piece that modern teams desperately need. A way to consolidate context instead of constantly losing it.

AB-TASK has been in the works for the past five years, fully bootstrapped with no outside funding. It started as a simple idea, and after countless hours of development, we’re finally at a major milestone - getting ready to drop the “beta” label.

For those unfamiliar, AB-TASK is a team collaboration tool that brings together real-time talks (Slack-style channels), task management, and documentation into one app. A streamlined alternative to Slack + Notion + Jira, designed for teams that want everything in a single place.

💰 What It Took to Get Here

Building a SaaS product solo isn’t easy.

Over the past five years, here’s what went into making AB-TASK:

• Designer: $8K

• Marketing (sporadic): $2K

• Developer (my only teammate): $35.5K

• Hosting: AWS started at $220/month, but early on, AWS credits helped cover some costs. Total spent: $7.3K

And then there’s the biggest investment - my time.

In 2024, I tracked ~500 hours working on AB-TASK.

Looking back, the workload has been fairly consistent, so I estimate a total of ~2,500 hours since the start. If I had spent that time freelancing at my usual $120/hour rate, it would have been worth $295K. To keep things realistic, I’m cutting that estimate in half, which still brings the opportunity cost to $147K.

In total, getting to this point has cost about $200K in direct and indirect costs.

🚀 What’s Next?

Up to now, the focus has been on building, refining, and making sure the product is solid. Now it’s time to shift gears toward growth - getting AB-TASK into the hands of more teams and proving its value in real-world use cases.

It’s a big step, but an exciting one. If you’re interested in trying out a fresh approach to team collaboration, stay tuned - we’re just getting started.