With AI changing into extra superior, many conventional issues have gone digital. A single instance of that’s getting a skilled photoshoot. Why go to a photographer for those who might get footage made in a couple of minutes out of your laptop computer?
Danny Postma, among the finest indie hackers in recent times, is behind the concept of “constructing the picture studio of the longer term” that revolutionizes the modern world of pictures via AI. (amongst loads of different issues)
You would possibly’ve already used a minimum of one in every of his startups’ state-of-the-art services and products, which we’ll get into quickly. You would possibly’ve additionally heard about him changing into an instantaneous millionaire inside only one 12 months as a solo technopreneur.
As of at this time, he has over 101,000 followers on Twitter. From 500 in January 2019, he is come a good distance in just some years.
Danny would not embody a typical success story about “pure laborious work”; his story is sort of totally different. Postma is a person of sources and a real epitome of good decision-making. Right here’s his story.
Earlier than Turning into a Solopreneur
Postma was an extraordinary man from a reasonably small metropolis within the Netherlands. After school and earlier than his full-time indie hacking journey, he took on part-time and freelance roles at a number of corporations.
Danny’s first skilled expertise was changing into a product supervisor at DOE Groningen in 2013. His function comprised hands-on collaboration with cross-functional groups and stakeholders, which appears considerably dissimilar from his present work setup, proper?
Possibly that’s the place he acquired most of his management expertise from.
Whereas working as a product supervisor at DOE Groningen, he additionally labored at Customized Web site, the place he centered on conversion fee optimization as a CRO specialist, net designer, and did work in front-end improvement.
In 2014, he continued his net design and CRO profession at Conversion Heroes and dove additional into on-line advertising and marketing at *bliep. The next 12 months, nonetheless specializing in CRO and product improvement, Danny began working at FIT.
FIT is the Netherlands’ main health and well being platform, one of many final corporations together with Mediahuis he labored for with different folks in a staff.
Danny quitting his former jobs for a extra individualistic profession doesn’t essentially imply he remoted himself although. He simply discovered a method to create a enterprise of his personal.
Leaving The Rat Race
Via years of accumulating and stacking related expertise, Danny constructed a strong basis for his personal quest—one thing larger than his earlier works mixed.
He wrote an eBook titled Headline Formulation together with his buddy Gijs Wierda to assist entrepreneurs spend much less time crafting headlines and obtain larger conversion charges and a photographer too! These additional bolstered Danny’s odds of constructing an empire he can name his personal.
In 2018, whereas nonetheless working for his purchasers and different corporations, he based a private holding firm known as Postcrafts, which featured his AI-powered startups.
He started accumulating and curating the net’s greatest touchdown web page designs and posting them on Landingfolio, a Postcrcafts startup, for LP design templates and inspo. He was solely 21 at this level.
After deciding he was able to enterprise alone, Danny stepped out of the rat race and labored on changing into a digital nomad. So how did it begin?
It went like this:
When he was 25, he bid farewell to the town of Groningen after reserving a flight to Bali, Indonesia, drunk. As somebody who additionally likes backpacking and touring backwards and forwards, Danny spontaneously booked travels, finally main him to the place to spark the following chapter in his life.
When he acquired to Bali, he found a co-working area that fostered the indie hacking tradition. Since then, he started embracing the journey towards bootstrapping his startup and the liberty of taking the enterprise factor into his personal arms.
Wasn’t {that a} play of future? Who would’ve thought that an alcohol-driven resolution can be the game-changer for this now extremely acclaimed indie hacker?
Postma has managed and mastered the artwork of changing into a single-person staff. Coding, design, optimization, advertising and marketing, and pictures—all important expertise that made him thrive and excel at what he does.
It was solely not too long ago when he began to delegate and increase, which he claims was tremendous useful when the due time got here.
His web optimization Technique
Enjoying by that rule that he made his personal, Danny approaches his web optimization duties cleverly. Via programmatic web optimization, he generated a whole bunch of net pages for various international locations and cities, for example, referring domains, which massively helped his rating go up in searches.
Along with this method, based on the Indie Hackers e-newsletter, Danny targets one key phrase in his weblog posts. An instance is mentioning the phrase “Headshot” throughout a number of weblog titles. Backlinks additionally got here into play fairly giant. A majority of his website progress got here from web optimization & the group he constructed whereas creating in public (aka Twitter).
Making and Promoting Headlime
Headlime is an AI-powered copywriting software he developed in 2020. Though it wasn’t the very first startup he based, it was the primary one which boomed.
This copywriting software makes use of synthetic intelligence to put in writing advertising and marketing copies for companies routinely. Because of its customer-centric worth that makes it an enormous time saver for busy corporations, it immediately took off.
Even so, Headlime didn’t completely begin from absolute zero. Keep in mind that eBook I discussed earlier? Properly, that grew to become Danny’s inspiration for this big-hit platform. Should you ever marvel, that headline generator eBook he listed on Gumroad in 2018 was solely 19 {dollars}, which quickly grew into million-dollar income after just a few years in simply eight months.
How did that occur? Via pivoting.
Danny stepped up his sport by turning his eBook with promising progress potential right into a micro-SaaS enterprise. This micro-SaaS enterprise, Headlime, caught the instant curiosity and garnered help from his goal market with over 80 waitlist signups inside simply at some point after asserting it and over $400 in gross sales the identical day after launching it on Product Hunt.
One of many issues he did was implement a pricing technique with a lifetime provide of 49 {dollars}, which was a fairly whole lot. He made some increments in his pricing for his month-to-month subscription plans, which panned out fairly effectively for the software.
The stream of ongoing income went on. One more large break occurred when TechCrunch featured Headlime in 2021, doubling its month-to-month recurring income (MRR).
Regardless of Headlime’s success, Danny had no plans to increase it to a company or any type of large firm. So when two corporations confirmed curiosity in buying Headlime, Danny thought-about promoting it.
In March 2021, a 12 months after he began, Danny bought Headlime to Conversion.ai for over a million {dollars}. The acquisition course of solely took two weeks from the start to signing. Now that is an achievement.
AI and Pictures
Other than AI, Danny has been keen on pictures. He’s truly accomplished numerous inventory pictures for Unsplash.
The fusion of his techy and creative sides paved the way in which for his subsequent large startup underneath Postcrafts with a central give attention to AI picture processing, together with his most acclaimed AI photographer, HeadshotPro.
Earlier than HeadshotPro, Danny Postma based ProfilePicture.AI, a profile image maker that generates images primarily via paid packages providing premium artsy results in over 350 kinds that customers can select from. It presently has over 20k customers.
Quick forwarding to 2023, HeadshotPro grew to become his latest and largest challenge, a digital picture studio using AI know-how. It’s a stand-alone startup but in addition extra like an extension of ProfilePicture.AI.
What units it aside from ProfilePicture.AI is that it creates company headshots for skilled makes use of, producing tremendous lifelike headshots with a powerful and virtually indistinguishable resemblance to precise pictures.
HeadshotPro gained traction worldwide and presently has over 40k energetic customers throughout the globe, boasting over 7 million AI headshots created. It earned recognition from large corporations similar to CNN, Bloomberg, Fashionista, New York Put up, and Vice.
In terms of the worth, HeadshotPro—honest to say—isn’t so costly. It begins at $29, making it extra inexpensive than a $200 shoot with knowledgeable photographer.
HeadshotPro has switched the panorama for professionals eager to look skilled whereas barely having to do something. Postma was simply the man behind the pattern.
Listed here are extra of Danny’s related startups since he’s an AI pictures guru:
- HairstyleAI – lets customers see how they’d look on sure hairstyles nearly earlier than getting their hair reduce for actual.
- PhotoShed – lets customers create an avatar of themselves that’s 100% similar to their precise appears.
- Deep Company – creates photographs of folks that don’t exist—no actual folks or any bodily location.
- TattoosAI – creates tattoo designs based mostly on customers’ concepts and preferences.
A Trailblazer for the Future Picture Studio
AI has actually remodeled the world. With infinite improvements, many conventional issues have change into out of date, or ought to I say, upgraded?
Danny Postma is honestly one of many groundbreakers who disrupted the trade from the very starting. Being on the forefront of superior know-how, he consistently creates a brand new demand for one thing that advantages these internationally.
Spectacular Observe File, Proper?
What makes Danny Postma an unbelievable indie hacker?
I believe it’s that he has the braveness of a particularly calculated risk-taker. He believes in himself and trusts the method; he doesn’t cease studying and discovering no matter how lengthy or what number of jobs it took him to get to the place he’s at this time.
I’m certain each single expertise he’s had through the years has culminated into the beast of a developer and enterprise proprietor he presently is at this time. By no means get complacent.
Danny Postma is a jack of all trades and nonetheless a grasp of what he does. He is a self-motivated indie-hacker and I don’t suppose his contributions finish right here. 100% somebody to look as much as!