Ekaterina “Kate” Deyneka is the founder and chief executive of Reelful, an agentic video editor that turns personal photos and footage into polished short-form videos. A former Snapchat machine-learning engineer and applied researcher, she is translating advances in image generation, computer vision, and coding agents into consumer-friendly creative software.
Deyneka studied applied mathematics and physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, pursued graduate work in nanobiology at Delft University of Technology and Erasmus Medical Center, and conducted computer-science research at the University of California, Irvine. Her research encompassed bioinformatics, genome assembly, and recovering color information from infrared imagery. At Snap, she worked on image and video generation, including diffusion models.
Her independent projects include an AI-powered PDF reader for questioning and summarizing research papers and pronounce-lab, which analyzes recorded speech and provides phonetic feedback. With Reelful, she applied the same instinct for accessible interfaces to video editing. The iPhone application launched publicly in April 2026, and the company joined a16z Speedrun’s 007 cohort.
- Real-footage editing: Reelful starts with a user’s actual photographs and videos. Its agents identify meaningful moments, compensate for incomplete footage, and assemble coherent narratives while using generated audio, captions, or animated images to support the original material.
- Video compositions as code: Deyneka adapts coding-agent infrastructure to filmmaking. An agent operates inside a remote sandbox, applies specialized editing skills, and creates a Remotion-based video composition using React. Automated verification checks that the result can render successfully and sends flawed compositions back for revision.
- Creative control before automation: Media analysis and speech transcription produce a user-approved creative plan before editing begins. Directional templates, conversational changes, and a built-in editor let users guide the result without mastering conventional editing software.
Her ambition is an editing layer for everyday video creation: sophisticated enough to make credible creative decisions, yet approachable enough for anyone with a phone and a story.
