For many students, the path from graduation to startup success is a long, winding road of trial and error. For Sebastian Torres, a University of Delaware computer engineering graduate, that journey began in the middle of his undergraduate career—first by navigating the technical hurdles of video editing, and then by launching a digital project that turned a simple idea into a growing online venture.
During his time at UD, Torres entered the Horn Entrepreneurship ecosystem, utilizing programs like Summer Founders and VentureOn to face trial and error with his ideas. After graduating in 2025, he balanced the growth of his AI-powered video editing copilot, InstaEdit, with the launch of two new projects, Letters By Heart and DigitalLoveLetters.com. Today, Torres is refining his approach to entrepreneurship, focusing on rapid validation and market-driven development.
We caught up with Sebastian to discuss his transition from student founder to building multiple ventures after his time at UD.
What inspired you to start both ventures?
I used to be a YouTuber, so I had some experience video editing, and I knew some of the struggles I had back then. I thought that was a problem I could directly affect, and since I already had some technical expertise in that space, it felt like a natural starting point. That is where I began building InstaEdit—taking my own firsthand frustrations with the video editing process and trying to solve them with a copilot that could make editing faster and more intuitive.
Later on, with the letters projects, the inspiration came from a much more personal, everyday scenario. A friend of mine tried to send a love letter over email for Valentine's Day, and when I saw it, I thought, "Oh, I feel like that can be improved a little bit." There was another genuine, relatable problem I found right there in front of me, and I decided to dive in and try to tackle it. Both ventures really started from just paying attention to real-world friction points—whether it was editing videos or sending a meaningful message—and figuring out how software could bridge the gap.
What have been the biggest challenges in scaling your projects?
It was tough to navigate the technical challenges of building InstaEdit, because that was one of those things where nothing existed like that at the time. My co-founder and I had to learn how to resolve editing itself a little bit better. We had to come up with our own system to control that with user input. I went through a lot of phases trying different things that were reliable. We did a lot of test cases to see what users most commonly tried, or what effects people tried to do, or what they struggled with most. We tried to tackle those first, and from there, we kind of just broadened it.
The learning curve was huge. I spent almost a full year working on it, getting customer feedback, but it wasn't super valuable until I got a Reddit post that did really well—it got close to a million views. That was a big turning point.
With the letters projects, the biggest challenge was the little, tiny quirks. When you've never done something like this before, you find out users have certain preferences, like international pricing. You have to show pricing for a specific country. It's super small stuff, but it adds up and takes up all your time. Even a software as simple as showing you a love letter ends up having a lot of these small issues you have to take time to tackle.
I can tell based on a Google search if I can make a website that can rank for a search term. Google has public knowledge of how many people look at a certain term every year. So I'm like, "Okay, there's a decent market for this, and I think I can take some of it."
That principle of finding the market first is something I want to keep working on. I've been thinking about trying other little websites, running ads, or small e-commerce things—just small tests where I see that there is a market already and that I can capitalize on it with a little bit of work.
How did your experience at UD and Horn shape your founder journey?
My experience helped a lot, especially my experience with the Horn programs and the Venture Development Center being a great resource on campus. I learned how to do customer discovery more effectively and how to bring a product to market.
With InstaEdit, it was a lot more efficient because I started working on the product before I had a wide customer base. I learned at that point that there were people in real life I knew that would be interested in this. I also learned that because I got really burnt out with InstaEdit, finding something that has quick wins really helped me out. It gave me more motivation to keep going.
My advice to students would be to find out if people actually want it in a couple of weeks and then do it. Have an audience, then if you find that a few people want it and it's low risk—you can test to see if this actually works in a couple of weeks—then just do it and see if it works. If not, it's like a month of your time wasted, and you can always try something new that you’re passionate about.
For Sebastian, entrepreneurship has become a way to turn personal creative frustrations and everyday problems into scalable digital tools. What began as an undergraduate mission to fix video editing with InstaEdit has grown into a diverse portfolio that includes Letters by Heart and Digital Love Letters, proving that a founder's path is shaped just as much by the willingness to pivot as it is by the original idea. His story is a reminder that the best ventures often start with a familiar pain point and grow through rapid validation, resilience, and a relentless focus on what people actually value.
ABOUT HORN ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Horn Entrepreneurship serves as the creative engine for entrepreneurship education and advancement at the University of Delaware. Currently ranked among the best entrepreneurship programs in the U.S., Horn Entrepreneurship was built and is actively supported by successful entrepreneurs, empowering aspiring innovators as they pursue new ideas for a better world.
