CapCut launched in May 2020, originally as Jianying in China, and was released globally as CapCut shortly after. ByteDance — TikTok's parent company — launched it with a precise understanding of a problem they had created: TikTok's explosive growth meant hundreds of millions of people were trying to create short video content on mobile phones with tools that were not built for the format. iMovie was too complex. Instagram's built-in editor was too limited. There was a gap exactly the size of CapCut.
The watermark distribution strategy was not accidental. Every video exported from CapCut included a small "CapCut" watermark by default. Users could remove it, but most did not — either because they did not know, did not care, or liked the association with the tool their favourite creators used. The result was millions of TikTok videos serving as organic advertisements for CapCut every day. The app's growth curve was nearly vertical without any paid user acquisition.
The product strategy was equally precise. CapCut was not trying to replace professional editing tools like Premiere Pro or Final Cut. It was built specifically for the TikTok content format: vertical video, music synchronisation, transitions and effects that matched the aesthetics of trending TikTok content, and AI tools (background removal, auto-captions, green screen) that required no technical knowledge. The entire feature set was a direct product of studying what TikTok creators needed to do their best work.