Dalea AI
Dalea AI is a web app for creators, freelancers and small businesses that sell through short-form video: vertical videos of a few seconds to a few minutes on Instagram Reels and TikTok. The user connects an Instagram or TikTok account through OAuth, a standard login flow that lets one app read another app's data without seeing the password. Dalea then reads the user's posts and metrics, plans two weeks of content, writes video scripts in the user's voice, designs carousels (posts of several images that the viewer swipes through) and edits the talking-head videos that the user records. Its library, which the FAQ says holds more than 50,000 viral videos from other creators, shows each video's transcript and an analysis of its hook, the first one or two sentences that make a viewer stay, and turns a chosen video into a new script for the user. It costs US$9.90 a month or US$60 a year per brand. The user still publishes the posts.
Bruno Kalil, a Brazilian founder whose earlier education app had more than 100,000 downloads and came close to US$2,000 a month, released the first version, the MVP (minimum viable product: the smallest version that customers will pay for), on 20 March 2026 under the name SagaAI. He charged the lowest price he could, did demo calls with the first ten customers and used one acquisition channel, short-form videos. On 14 April 2026 it had 16 active subscriptions and US$104 of MRR, monthly recurring revenue: the subscription money that repeats every month, with a yearly plan counted as one twelfth of its price. Renamed Dalea AI, it went from 33 to almost 286 subscribers in the month to 10 August 2026, after he found what he called the right channel for his ICP, his ideal customer profile: the exact kind of buyer the product is for. On 15 October 2026 TrustMRR, a site that reads a startup's payment account through an API key and publishes the figures, showed US$6,732 of MRR, 1,027 active subscriptions and US$14,351 of revenue in the last 30 days, all from Stripe.
The money figures are grade A, because TrustMRR reads them from Stripe. Two points need care. First, the revenue of the last 30 days is about twice the MRR, because a yearly plan is paid at once, US$60, while MRR counts it as US$5 a month. Second, Dalea is not bootstrapped, which means funded only by its own revenue: it is one of 12 companies in the portfolio of Shiva, a Brazilian programme that pays founders monthly stipends for up to 12 months in exchange for equity, a share of the company, of 5% to 15%. The founder is the only person that any source ties to the business. The page also covers the questions that a library built from other creators' videos raises: platform rules on unoriginal content, automated data collection and copyright.
The numbers, graded
Each row shows the evidence grade and the source numbers from the list at the end of this page. The grades are explained in How Aiolum verifies.
| Fact | Value | Grade | How we know | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly recurring revenue (MRR), 15 October 2026 | US$6,732 | A | TrustMRR, read from Stripe through an API key; revenue last synced on 15 October 2026. TrustMRR shows MRR growth of 20.7% over the last 30 days. | [1] |
| Revenue in the last 30 days, to 15 October 2026 | US$14,351 | A | TrustMRR revenue table. The snapshot stored on the same profile is US$14,556, the figure in the lead for this story. Growth over the previous 30 days: 34.7%. | [1] |
| Active subscriptions, 15 October 2026 | 1,027 | A | TrustMRR. The home page says the product is used by more than 1,500 creators, and the founder-written profile estimates 1,500 users. | [1, 11] |
| Run rate from the MRR | US$80,784 a year | calc | Calculated: US$6,732 times 12. This is the headline number in outcomeUsd. | [1] |
| Why the 30-day revenue is about twice the MRR | 2.13 times | calc | Calculated: US$14,351 divided by US$6,732. A yearly plan is paid at once, US$60, and all of it counts as revenue on the day of payment, but MRR counts it as US$5 a month. MRR per active subscription is US$6.56 (US$6,732 divided by 1,027), between the yearly US$5.00 and the monthly US$9.90. If those were the only two prices, about 68% of subscriptions would be yearly. Extra brands, regional prices and refunds are not in this simple model, so 68% is an estimate. | [1, 11] |
| Revenue by month, 2026 | March US$17.99, April US$168, May US$290, June US$289, July US$2,647, August US$9,176, September US$13,041, 1 to 15 October US$6,995 | A | TrustMRR monthly revenue timeline. Calculated on this page: 97.4% of all revenue came from July onward, and September was 42.1% above August. | [1] |
| Daily revenue in October against September | 11.5% higher | calc | Calculated: 1 to 14 October, US$6,785 in 14 days, or US$484.6 a day, against US$434.7 a day in September (US$13,041 divided by 30). 15 October is a partial day and is left out. | [1] |
| Revenue since launch, to 15 October 2026 | US$32,698 | A | TrustMRR, all time. | [1] |
| MRR on 14 April 2026, under the name SagaAI | US$104, with 16 active subscriptions | B | TrustMRR's own post on X when SagaAI joined, with US$98 of revenue in 30 days. The founder wrote the same day that it had passed US$100 of MRR with 15 subscribers, three weeks after the launch. | [3, 2] |
| Growth from 14 April to 15 October 2026 | MRR 64.7 times, subscriptions 64.2 times | calc | Calculated: US$6,732 divided by US$104, and 1,027 divided by 16. | [1, 3] |
| Subscribers, July to August 2026 | from 33 to almost 286 in one month | C | Founder's post of 10 August 2026: "in just a month Dalea went from 33 to almost 286 subscribers, and 10x the revenue". He gives the reason as finding "the right channel for your ICP" but does not name the channel in the post. | [5] |
| MRR in local currency, 11 August 2026 | more than 10,000 | C | Founder's post: "hit 10k MRR", then "it's in your local currency". He works from Brazil, so the currency is the real. He gave no US dollar value. | [6] |
| Customers outside Brazil, 6 October 2026 | more than 100, in 24 countries | C | Founder's post in Portuguese: "Dalea já teve mais de 100 clientes gringos em 24 países" (Dalea has already had more than 100 foreign customers in 24 countries). On 11 August he wrote of subscribers in 19 countries. | [8, 6] |
| Visitors on the best day, 11 to 12 August 2026 | 2,300, with 25 new subscriptions | C | Founder's post. He wrote that conversion had been above 2% but that the traffic from X lowered it. | [6] |
| A week in June 2026 | 250 visitors, 29 signups, 2 subscribers | C | Founder's post of 24 June 2026, still under the name SagaAI. | [4] |
| Price | US$9.90 a month, or US$60 a year (US$5.00 a month), per brand | C | Company pages, 15 October 2026. The founder-written TrustMRR profile gives the same prices. Prices are shown for the visitor's region. | [11, 13, 1] |
| Size of the viral video library | more than 50,000 videos | C | Company FAQ. The founder-written TrustMRR description says "Explore and remix +10.000 viral contents and creators". The two counts differ and neither page is dated. | [13, 1] |
| Limits and languages | 30 carousels and 20 edited videos a month per brand; 23 languages | C | Company FAQ. The video editor recognizes speech in 8 languages and accepts videos of up to 5 minutes. | [13] |
| Direct publishing to Instagram or TikTok | not yet available | C | Company FAQ: "Today Dalea creates, plans and edits, and you publish on Instagram or TikTok yourself. Direct publishing from Dalea is coming in the next few weeks." The company's comparison page with Buffer marks auto-posting as available; this page follows the FAQ. | [13, 19] |
| Team | 1 founder | C | TrustMRR lists one founder. The October 2026 post that announces his panel describes it as "um painel sobre solopreneurs construindo produtos globais" (a panel about solopreneurs building global products). No source names a co-founder or an employee. | [1, 8] |
| Outside money | a stipend for equity from Shiva; amount not public | C | Shiva's July 2026 portfolio update lists Dalea AI among its 12 "Stars". The press reports that Shiva pays "bolsas mensais, concedidas por até 12 meses em troca de participação acionária" (monthly stipends, granted for up to 12 months in exchange for equity) and takes 5% to 15% of each company. Shiva raised US$10 million led by Monashees with Endeavor Catalyst. Dalea's own terms are not public. | [7, 9, 10] |
| Operating company | not named | C | The terms of use name no legal company. They say Brazilian law applies and disputes go to the courts of São Paulo. No company register entry for Dalea was found. | [15] |
| The founder's earlier product | an education app with more than 100,000 downloads | C | Founder's post of 23 February 2026: "even though I almost got to $2k/month, the perspective wasn't great to keep growing". He advises against selling to students, who have little money and leave when they graduate. | [6] |
| Time from launch to the October 2026 figure | 7 months | calc | Calculated: 20 March 2026 to 15 October 2026 is 209 days, about 6.9 months. | [1, 2] |
How to read this table: a grade A value comes from TrustMRR's connection to the company's Stripe account. The grade B value is TrustMRR's own post of its figures on an earlier date. A grade C value is the founder, the company's own pages, or Shiva and the press about Shiva. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows that its note names.
| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| One brand | 5.00 | 9.90 | all features; up to 30 carousels and 20 edited videos a month |
| Each extra brand | 5.00 | 9.90 | the same limits for each brand |
One plan with every feature. A brand is one profile with Instagram and TikTok connected. The yearly plan is US$60 billed at once, and the page labels yearly billing "-49%". The page says the price shown is the one for the visitor's region and is the final price; our download showed US dollars, so the price in reais could not be read. There is no free plan and no free trial, payment is by card only, and the Portuguese FAQ mentions a 7-day guarantee for a refund.
The timeline
From a waitlist in February 2026 to 1,027 paying subscriptions in October 2026, seven months after launch. Each entry carries its grade.
- 22 to 27 February 2026CBuilding in public on X as SagaAI: more than 30 waitlist signups in a week, ten demo calls booked in a week, and a landing-page test that raised conversion by 70%. [6]
- 20 March 2026CThe MVP is released under the name SagaAI. TrustMRR later records this date as Dalea AI's founding date. [2, 1]
- 14 April 2026BUS$104 of MRR and 16 active subscriptions when it joins TrustMRR. The founder names three lessons: the lowest possible price, demo calls for the first ten customers, and one channel, short-form videos. [3, 2]
- 18 June 2026CThe founder's blog post on reaching his first 1,000 Instagram followers in 98 videos and three months, with simple one-take videos. [18]
- 24 June 2026CA slow week: 250 visitors, 29 signups and 2 subscribers. Revenue for June is US$289. [4, 1]
- July 2026ARevenue rises to US$2,647. [1]
- 10 August 2026CNow called Dalea AI: from 33 to almost 286 subscribers in one month. Second place in TinyLaunch's ranking of launches for 3 to 9 August. [5, 6]
- 11 to 12 August 2026CMRR passes 10,000 in local currency. Subscribers in 19 countries. A record 2,300 visitors in a day, with 25 new subscriptions. [6]
- August 2026ARevenue of US$9,176. On 1 September the founder writes "so close to $10k". [1, 6]
- 1 September 2026CShiva's founder, Lucas Marques, posts the July 2026 portfolio update that lists Dalea AI among 12 Stars. The founder reposts it. [7]
- September 2026ARevenue of US$13,041, 42.1% more than in August. [1]
- 6 October 2026CMore than 100 foreign customers in 24 countries. The founder is announced for a Shiva panel on solopreneurs in São Paulo on 17 October. [8]
- 15 October 2026AStripe-verified: US$6,732 of MRR, 1,027 active subscriptions, US$14,351 in the last 30 days and US$32,698 since launch. [1]
Why it worked
Four causes, in the order they mattered. Each one is a reusable lesson.
One channel, where the buyers are
In February 2026 the founder was posting on X, where other founders are. By April he had stopped, because his buyers are "more on Instagram/TikTok", and he named "Focusing only on one acquisition channel (short-form videos)" as one of the three things that helped most. He already knew the format: in 2025 he grew a page for his earlier app to more than 25,000 followers with more than 200 videos. In August he wrote that a post that went viral on X brought visitors who rarely signed up.
A low price, sold in every country from the start
US$9.90 a month, or US$5 a month on a yearly plan, prices set per region, an app in 23 languages, and customers in 24 countries by October 2026. In April the founder put "Charging the lowest possible price on launch" first among his lessons. In August he advised other founders to "go global from the start".
Start from the user's own account and from videos that already worked
Instead of a blank chat, Dalea reads the connected Instagram or TikTok account, keeps a brand memory of what the user prefers, and matches it with the library of viral videos. In the FAQ's words: "The scripts follow formats that have already worked, not generic text." That is its answer to the obvious competitor, a general chat assistant: "ChatGPT starts from scratch in every conversation; Dalea starts from your profile."
Yearly plans bring the cash forward
A yearly plan costs US$60 at once. Revenue in the last 30 days was 2.13 times the MRR, which suggests that many subscribers chose the yearly plan; this page estimates about 68%. That money arrived up to a year earlier than monthly payments would have brought it.
How it was built
These details come from the company's own pages and the founder's posts. They are grade C, except the Stripe connection, which TrustMRR confirms. No page names the AI models. [16, 1, 17, 6, 13, 11]
- A web app hosted with Vercel. Data is stored in Supabase, on AWS infrastructure, and the social-platform access tokens are stored encrypted.
- Instagram and TikTok accounts connect through OAuth to the Meta and TikTok APIs. Dalea receives the username, profile picture, follower count and post metrics, and says it never sees the passwords.
- Payments through Stripe, which TrustMRR reads through an API key. Cards only, billed monthly or yearly. Sign-up with a Google account.
- Product analytics with PostHog.
- An MCP server (Model Context Protocol, a standard way for AI assistants to call outside tools) lets clients such as Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code or Cursor read and change a user's brands, content calendar and scripts.
- A public roadmap where subscribers vote on features, with each vote weighted by the subscriber's plan and time as a subscriber. Almost 10% of subscribers voted in the first couple of weeks, according to the founder in August 2026.
- The pages do not name the models that write the scripts, design the carousels or recognize speech in the editor, and they do not say how the library videos and the pasted links are collected.
Tools named in the sources
Each one opens its page in the Tools tab, with every story that uses it.
The dead that came before
Five companies in the Loot Drop database built tools for posting, curating or measuring on social networks that they did not control. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.
PostRocket
The promiseBetter reach for brands' Facebook pages, by choosing when and what to post from engagement data.
Why it diedFacebook changed its API, and PostRocket had no other product to move to.
Trapit
The promiseAI that finds and curates content for people and marketers to share.
Why it diedLarge technology companies offered the same thing, and it stayed a niche tool for marketers.
ThinkUp
The promisePersonal analytics on what your Twitter and Facebook posts achieved, beyond likes.
Why it diedPeople moved to phones and to the platforms' own apps. Keeping many social-network API connections working cost too much, and marketing was neglected.
Pixelpipe
The promisePost photos, videos and audio to many social networks at once.
Why it diedThe social networks closed their APIs and built cross-posting in themselves.
Memolane
The promiseOne timeline of your posts, pulled from many social networks.
Why it diedIt depended on third-party APIs that changed and limited requests, and it found no way to make money from the timelines.
What changed
All five depended on social networks that could change their rules, close an API or build the feature themselves, and that is how most of them ended. Dalea depends on Instagram and TikTok in the same way: for the account connection, for the metrics that it analyzes, and for the viral videos in its library.
Two things differ. First, the AI writes the script and edits the video, so the product does the production work that the creator or a freelancer did before, which a scheduler or an analytics dashboard did not do. Second, the customer pays from the first day, at US$9.90 a month, and the founder sells in many countries and languages at once. The five predecessors raised between US$610,000 and US$21.5 million in the database; Dalea made US$32,698 of Stripe-verified revenue in its first seven months, with a stipend from Shiva as its only known outside money.
Can one person copy it now?
The method, yes. The library, with care.
The method is repeatable: pick one kind of buyer, sell on the platform where that buyer already spends time, charge a low price from the first day and sell in many countries at once. Copy the library idea with care: ideas and formats are free to reuse, but the videos and their exact words belong to their creators, and the platforms limit automated collection.
Where it is still open: Other platforms and formats where small businesses must post often and run out of ideas: LinkedIn posts, YouTube Shorts, Pinterest, and markets in languages other than English.
- 1Choose the platform where your buyers are, not where other founders are, and post short videos there yourself.
- 2Charge from launch at the lowest price you can, and do demo calls with the first ten customers.
- 3Offer a yearly plan: it brings cash early, at the cost of a lower monthly figure.
- 4Start every output from the user's own data, such as the connected account and past posts, so the result is not generic AI text.
- 5Show prices per region and support many languages from the first version.
What to watch
The risks are the mirror image of the causes above.
A library built from other creators' videos
The founder-written profile says users "remix" viral content; the product pages say "adapt": "Choose a reference and use the adaptation option to create a script with your brand context, audience and tone." The library shows transcripts of the spoken words when available. The user publishes the result, and the terms say "You are solely responsible for the content you publish" and that Dalea "does not guarantee that generated content will be accurate, original, or suitable for any specific purpose."
Platform rules on unoriginal content
In April 2022 the head of Instagram said: "If you create something from scratch, you should get more credit than if you are resharing something that you found from someone else." Instagram became less likely to recommend reposts and accounts that reshare other users' content, and in 2024 it said it would label reposts with a link to the original creator and remove aggregator posts from recommendations. TikTok's guidelines list "Unoriginal Content and Intellectual Property Rights" and do not allow "reposts of copyrighted or trademarked material without permission". A script that the user records again is new content, but a close copy can lose reach.
Automated collection of platform data
TikTok's terms forbid users to "scrape, crawl, export or otherwise extract any data or content in any form, for any purpose, from the Platform using any automated system or software" unless TikTok approves it in writing. Dalea's connection to the user's own account goes through OAuth with the platforms' permission. The pages do not say how the library of other creators' videos, or a video from a pasted link, is collected, so whether that fits these rules could not be checked. Instagram's terms page could not be downloaded.
Copyright protects the words, not the idea
Brazil's copyright law says that "as idéias, procedimentos normativos, sistemas, métodos, projetos ou conceitos matemáticos como tais" (ideas, normative procedures, systems, methods, projects or mathematical concepts as such) are not protected (Law 9.610 of 1998, article 8). US law says the same in 17 U.S.C. section 102(b): protection does not "extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery". A hook format or a topic can be reused; a script that repeats another creator's exact words is closer to copying the protected expression.
Competitors, including free ones
Dalea compares itself with the schedulers Buffer and Later. Buffer's own page shows a free plan for up to 3 channels that includes an AI Assistant, and an Essentials plan at US$5 a month per channel billed yearly. General chat assistants also write scripts for free or for a subscription. Dalea's answer is its profile analysis and library, which others can build too.
Dependence on AI model providers that it does not name
No page says which models write the scripts, design the carousels or recognize speech in the video editor. At US$5 to US$9.90 a month with up to 20 edited videos and 30 carousels per brand, a rise in model or transcription prices, or a change in a provider's terms, would fall on Dalea's margin.
An investor holds a share
Dalea is in the portfolio of Shiva, which gives stipends in exchange for 5% to 15% of a company. The amount Dalea received and the share Shiva holds are not public. The founder is the only person named in any source, and his posts and Shiva's are grade C.
Young revenue, measured two ways
97.4% of all revenue came from July to mid-October 2026, so most yearly plans were sold recently and the first yearly renewals come in mid-2027; until then the renewal rate is unknown. Prices depend on the visitor's region, so the US dollar prices on this page may differ from what customers in Brazil pay.
Sources
The grade next to each source is the best grade that the source can support. "Read in full" means that the text of the page was downloaded and the numbers were checked in it.
- A TrustMRR: Dalea AI, Stripe-verified profile, synced 15 October 2026Read the markdown profile (https://trustmrr.com/startup/dalea-ai.md) in full. The revenue, MRR, subscription and monthly figures are in its Verification Sources data from Stripe (API key), grade A. The description, prices and user estimate are founder-written, grade C.
- C Bruno Kalil on X, 14 April 2026: Week 3 of growing a global SaaS from Brazil (@trysagaai)Read in full through api.fxtwitter.com. Source for the 20 March launch, the first 15 subscribers and the three lessons.
- B TrustMRR on X, 14 April 2026: SagaAI by @brunokalil_ just joined TrustMRRRead in full through api.fxtwitter.com, as a repost in the founder's timeline. TrustMRR's own post of its figures on that day; the earlier profile page it links was not opened.
- C Bruno Kalil on X, 24 June 2026: Last week on @trysagaaiRead in full through api.fxtwitter.com.
- C Bruno Kalil on X, 10 August 2026: in just a month Dalea went from 33 to almost 286 subscribersRead in full through api.fxtwitter.com. The post had 21 replies, which could not be read, so the channel that he means is not known.
- C Bruno Kalil's posts on X, 22 February to 6 October 2026Read two pages of the timeline in full through api.fxtwitter.com/2/profile/brunokalil_/statuses, 39 posts with reposts. Source for the dated posts on the earlier app, the local-currency MRR, the countries, the visitors, the roadmap and the TinyLaunch ranking.
- C Lucas Marques on X, 1 September 2026: Shiva portfolio update, July 2026Read the post and its image in full. The image lists Dalea AI among the 12 "Stars no portfólio". The founder reposted it.
- C Bruno Kalil on X, 6 October 2026, quoting the Shiva Hack announcementRead in full with the quoted post, in Portuguese. The translations on this page are ours.
- C ABC da Comunicação, 2026: Shiva levanta US$ 10 milhões com Monashees para ajudar empreendedores construírem produtos globais usando IARead in full, in Portuguese. Source for Shiva's monthly stipends for up to 12 months in exchange for equity, and its definition of a Star as a team of at most three people.
- C Brazil Journal, 2026: O pre-seed da Shiva, que quer bancar startups criadas só com AIRead in full, in Portuguese. Source for the US$10 million round and the 5% to 15% stake that Shiva takes.
- C Dalea AI home page, read 15 October 2026Read in full, including the pricing section and its FAQ. Source for the features, the prices, the region note and the user count.
- C Dalea AI home page in Portuguese, read 15 October 2026Read the pricing section and its FAQ. Source for the 7-day guarantee.
- C Dalea AI FAQ, read 15 October 2026Read in full. Source for the library size, the limits, the languages, the missing direct publishing and the comparison with ChatGPT.
- C Dalea AI: Viral video library for Instagram and TikTokRead in full. Source for how the library and the adaptation option are described.
- C Dalea AI Terms of Use, updated 13 October 2026Read in full.
- C Dalea AI Privacy Policy, updated 8 March 2026Read in full. Source for OAuth, Supabase, Vercel and PostHog.
- C Dalea MCP server documentationRead the overview and the list of tools.
- C Bruno Kalil, Dalea blog, 18 June 2026: How I Got My First 1,000 Instagram Followers in 98 VideosRead in full.
- C Dalea vs. Buffer, the company's comparison pageRead in full. Its claims about Buffer were checked against Buffer's own page.
- C Buffer pricing page, read 15 October 2026Read the section on the Free and Essentials plans.
- B TechCrunch, 20 April 2022: Instagram to improve its ranking system to better highlight original contentRead in full. Quotes the head of Instagram and an Instagram spokesperson.
- C Gigazine, 2 May 2024: Instagram announces measures to prioritize original content and reduce the number of aggregator accountsRead in full. A summary of Instagram's 2024 announcement, with links to it.
- B TikTok: Policies and engagement, summary of the Community GuidelinesThe page loads its text by script; read the section on integrity and authenticity in the page data.
- B TikTok Terms of Service (United States)Read the section on what users may not do.
- B Brazil, Law 9.610 of 19 February 1998 (copyright law)Read articles 7 and 8, in Portuguese. The translation on this page is ours.
- B 17 U.S.C. section 102, Subject matter of copyright: In general (Cornell Legal Information Institute)Read section 102(b).
- C Loot Drop database export, failed startupsLocal export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.