With AI turning into extra superior, many conventional issues have gone digital. A single instance of that’s getting a skilled photoshoot. Why go to a photographer when you might get footage made in a couple of minutes out of your laptop computer?
Danny Postma, among the best indie hackers in recent times, is behind the thought of “constructing the picture studio of the longer term” that revolutionizes the up to date world of images by way of AI. (amongst quite a lot of different issues)
You may’ve already used at the very least one among his startups’ state-of-the-art services, which we’ll get into quickly. You may’ve additionally heard about him turning into an prompt millionaire inside only one yr as a solo technopreneur.
As of in the present day, he has over 101,000 followers on Twitter. From 500 in January 2019, he is come a great distance in only a few years.
Danny would not embody a typical success story about “pure onerous work”; his story is sort of completely different. Postma is a person of assets 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 turning into a product supervisor at DOE Groningen in 2013. His position 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 received most of his management abilities from.
Whereas working as a product supervisor at DOE Groningen, he additionally labored at Customized Web site, the place he targeted on conversion fee optimization as a CRO specialist, internet designer, and did work in front-end growth.
In 2014, he continued his internet design and CRO profession at Conversion Heroes and dove additional into on-line advertising at *bliep. The next yr, nonetheless specializing in CRO and product growth, 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 individuals in a group.
Danny quitting his former jobs for a extra individualistic profession doesn’t essentially imply he remoted himself although. He simply discovered a option to create a enterprise of his personal.
Leaving The Rat Race
By means of years of accumulating and stacking related abilities, Danny constructed a strong basis for his personal quest—one thing greater than his earlier works mixed.
He wrote an eBook titled Headline Formulation along with his pal Gijs Wierda to assist entrepreneurs spend much less time crafting headlines and obtain greater 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 shoppers and different corporations, he based a private holding firm known as Postcrafts, which featured his AI-powered startups.
He started accumulating and curating the online’s finest 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 turning 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, ultimately main him to the place to spark the following chapter in his life.
When he received 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 fingers.
Wasn’t {that a} play of future? Who would’ve thought that an alcohol-driven choice could be the game-changer for this now extremely acclaimed indie hacker?
Postma has managed and mastered the artwork of turning into a single-person group. Coding, design, optimization, advertising, and images—all important abilities that made him thrive and excel at what he does.
It was solely lately when he began to delegate and develop, which he claims was tremendous useful when the due time got here.
His website positioning Technique
Taking part in by that rule that he made his personal, Danny approaches his website positioning duties cleverly. By means of programmatic website positioning, he generated tons of of internet pages for various nations and cities, as an example, referring domains, which massively helped his rating go up in searches.
Along with this method, in response to the Indie Hackers publication, 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 massive. A majority of his web site progress got here from website positioning & the neighborhood 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 copies for companies routinely. As a consequence 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? Effectively, that turned Danny’s inspiration for this big-hit platform. In the event 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? By means of pivoting.
Danny stepped up his recreation by turning his eBook with promising progress potential right into a micro-SaaS enterprise. This micro-SaaS enterprise, Headlime, caught the fast 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 supply 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. Yet one more massive 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 develop it to an organization or any kind of massive firm. So when two corporations confirmed curiosity in buying Headlime, Danny thought of promoting it.
In March 2021, a yr 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 images. He’s truly executed plenty of inventory images for Unsplash.
The fusion of his techy and inventive sides paved the way in which for his subsequent big startup below Postcrafts with a central concentrate on 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 pictures primarily by way of paid packages providing premium artsy results in over 350 types that customers can select from. It presently has over 20k customers.
Quick forwarding to 2023, HeadshotPro turned his latest and largest mission, a digital picture studio using AI expertise. It’s a stand-alone startup but additionally extra like an extension of ProfilePicture.AI.
What units it other than ProfilePicture.AI is that it creates company headshots for skilled makes use of, producing tremendous reasonable headshots with a powerful and virtually indistinguishable resemblance to precise images.
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 massive corporations corresponding to CNN, Bloomberg, Fashionista, New York Submit, and Vice.
On the subject of the value, HeadshotPro—honest to say—isn’t so costly. It begins at $29, making it extra reasonably priced than a $200 shoot with an expert 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 below are extra of Danny’s related startups since he’s an AI images 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 seems.
- Deep Company – creates pictures of individuals that don’t exist—no actual individuals or any bodily location.
- TattoosAI – creates tattoo designs primarily based on customers’ concepts and preferences.
A Trailblazer for the Future Photograph Studio
AI has actually reworked the world. With limitless 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 business from the very starting. Being on the forefront of superior expertise, he consistently creates a brand new demand for one thing that advantages these the world over.
Spectacular Monitor Document, 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 in the present day.
I’m positive each single expertise he’s had through the years has culminated into the beast of a developer and enterprise proprietor he presently is in the present day. 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 assume his contributions finish right here. 100% somebody to look as much as!
