Lowerated's Launch: What It Took to Get Here
- Lower Rated
- Jun 6
- 5 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
By Muhammad Wisal
The Start of It
I’m not going to turn this into one of those dramatic “against-all-odds” stories. This post is about what really happened, what went wrong, what worked, and how Lowerated reached its first beta launch.
If you're reading this, you probably already know what Lowerated is supposed to be: a platform to help filmmakers with the entire filmmaking process, from planning all the way to distribution. But that’s the big picture. What I’m launching right now is the first part of that picture: the scriptwriter tool.
I’ll link another blog post specifically about what this scriptwriter does. For now, this post is about the journey, how I got here.
Learning the Hard Way
Before I started building anything, I spent around six months just talking to people. I reached out to over 800, maybe even 900, investors. These weren’t random people; I filtered for people who were connected to media, film tech, AI, or something relevant. I didn’t spam. I cold messaged, warm messaged, sent them videos, customized pitches. And still, almost all of them passed.
And yeah, I made mistakes. I said stuff I shouldn’t have said. Like offering guarantees about returns, which I later found out is illegal. I also didn’t fully understand how investors process repeated contact. if they say no once and you come back with the same thing again, that’s not persistence, it’s just noise. Unless something really changes, you shouldn't go back.
Still, those rejections helped shape Lowerated. I started to understand what investors are looking for these days. Not just an idea. Not just a prototype. They now want a working MVP, already launched, with people actually using it. And I get it, too many people talk, not enough actually build.
The Shift From Idea to Something Tangible
This idea of Lowerated didn’t come out of nowhere. I’ve been evolving it over three years. In January 2024, I locked down what the core platform should be and got to work on it. I designed it, hired people to work on the UI, and found young developers who were interested in building something new.
But interest isn’t enough if people aren’t getting paid. I gave up most of my salary just to keep things moving. And once the design was done, the real work started: writing docs, MRD, PRD, BRD, all those things I had never done before, but had to figure out because nobody else was going to.
And at the same time, I was still reading up on how funding works; how angel investors think, how private equity firms decide, how hedge funds even get into this. I’m a data scientist and AI engineer by trade, not a business guy, but I had to become one, fast.
They Said “What do you know about Scripts” So I Wrote One
Every time I pitched the scriptwriter tool, I kept hearing the same thing: “Do you have experience with script writing yourself?”
No, I hadn’t. But I always wanted to. So I sat down and wrote a movie I had been thinking about for years: Heart of a Creator. That was the first time I wrote a full draft, just using Story Architect and my own scattered notes on Miro.
I told my friends, “This first draft is all me. But the second draft, that’s going to be written on Lowerated Platform.”
That was the goal. The tool had to be ready before that.
Coding a Full Platform With Almost No Budget
I couldn’t find a co-founder who could do full-stack development. I was looking for one. I even thought about bringing someone on just for coding. But most of the people I found were either busy or not interested unless there was big money involved. And I wasn’t sitting on a pile of cash.
So I decided to do it myself.
I already understood AI, so I used everything available tool to see if I can make it with no code platforms. That didn't work. So I did it the professional way, using AI and my coding, GPT, Claude, Gemini to support the dev work. I learned how Next.js works, connected front-end and back-end, and slowly got the platform up. I learned to write commands, deploy to the cloud, test things, fix bugs. I wasn’t a professional developer when I started. But I became one, just to get this done.
64,388 Lines of Code Later
After months of work, sleepless nights, and working my job during the day while coding at night, I wrote over 64,000 lines of code. And the platform is live. You can check it out here: platform.lowerated.com
It’s still beta. It’s not perfect. But it works.
The Company Side of Things
Another obstacle: Lowerated had to be legally registered in the U.S. if I wanted to qualify for more investor interest. That meant I needed $500. At the time, I was making less than that.
Luckily, I found out about Microsoft for Startups, which gave me credits, and a friend mentioned that Stripe Atlas had a 50% discount code floating around. That helped. I applied, got approved, and finally registered Lowerated in the U.S.
Then the IRS held back my EIN number for months. That delayed access to other tools and benefits. I couldn’t even get the Microsoft credits activated fully until that came through.
But I kept going. I didn’t stop coding, even during that wait.
Team?
There’s no large team here. It’s just my brother, Muhammad Ali and I. I focus on product, business, and development. He works on the brand, content, and how we present Lowerated publicly.
What Lowerated Is Right Now
Right now, Lowerated is one tool: the scriptwriter. But that tool is meant to be the foundation for everything else, production planning, budgeting, casting, location scouting, post-production workflows, and finally, distribution.
This blog post doesn’t go deep into how the scriptwriter works. That deserves its own post. I’ll link it once it’s live.
What’s Next
We’ve also started a new social series called Film Talks, quick insights, facts, and thoughts about the film industry. It's Ali’s idea, and it helps us stay active online while we keep building.
We’re still at the beginning. We’ll keep adding features. We’ll keep shipping. And I’ll keep writing; both code and scripts.
This launch is just a checkpoint. Not a destination.
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