With AI getting to be far more superior, numerous standard issues have gone digital. A single illustration of that is obtaining a skilled photoshoot. Why go to a photographer if you could get images created in a couple of minutes from your laptop?
Danny Postma, a single of the ideal indie hackers in latest many years, is behind the notion of “developing the photograph studio of the potential” that revolutionizes the modern globe of photography via AI. (amid a whole lot of other issues)
You might’ve currently utilised at least a single of his startups’ state-of-the-artwork goods and providers, which we’ll get into quickly. You might’ve also heard about him getting to be an immediate millionaire inside just a single yr as a solo technopreneur.
As of these days, he has above 101,000 followers on Twitter. From 500 in January 2019, he is come a prolonged way in just a couple of many years.
Danny does not embody a common good results story about “pure difficult operate” his story is fairly diverse. Postma is a guy of sources and a accurate epitome of intelligent determination-creating. Here’s his story.
Just before Turning out to be a Solopreneur
Postma was an ordinary man from a relatively modest city in the Netherlands. Following university and ahead of his total-time indie hacking journey, he took on element-time and freelance roles at many organizations.
Danny’s first professional experience was getting to be a solution manager at DOE Groningen in 2013. His position comprised hands-on collaboration with cross-practical teams and stakeholders, which looks relatively dissimilar from his existing operate setup, appropriate?
Possibly that is the place he received most of his leadership expertise from.
Although operating as a solution manager at DOE Groningen, he also worked at Custom Website, the place he targeted on conversion charge optimization as a CRO expert, world wide web designer, and did operate in front-finish improvement.
In 2014, he continued his world wide web style and CRO job at Conversion Heroes and dove more into on-line advertising at *bliep. The following yr, even now specializing in CRO and solution improvement, Danny began operating at Match.
Match is the Netherlands’ top fitness and wellness platform, a single of the final organizations which includes Mediahuis he worked for with other folks in a crew.
Danny quitting his former jobs for a far more individualistic job does not automatically imply he isolated himself however. He just discovered a way to develop a enterprise of his personal.
Leaving The Rat Race
By way of many years of accumulating and stacking related expertise, Danny constructed a sound basis for his personal quest—something greater than his earlier operates mixed.
He wrote an E-book titled Headline Formulas with his pal Gijs Wierda to aid marketers devote much less time crafting headlines and obtain greater conversion costs and a photographer as well! These more bolstered Danny’s odds of developing an empire he can contact his personal.
In 2018, even though even now operating for his clientele and other organizations, he founded a individual holding organization known as Postcrafts, which featured his AI-powered startups.
He started collecting and curating the web’s ideal landing web page types and posting them on Landingfolio, a Postcrcafts startup, for LP style templates and inspo. He was only 21 at this stage.
Following choosing he was prepared to venture alone, Danny stepped out of the rat race and worked on getting to be a digital nomad. So how did it start off?
It went like this:
When he was 25, he bid farewell to the city of Groningen following reserving a flight to Bali, Indonesia, drunk. As a person who also likes backpacking and traveling back and forth, Danny spontaneously booked travels, ultimately top him to the area to spark the following chapter in his daily life.
When he received to Bali, he identified a co-operating area that fostered the indie hacking culture. Considering that then, he started embracing the journey towards bootstrapping his startup and the freedom of taking the enterprise factor into his personal hands.
Wasn’t that a perform of destiny? Who would’ve considered that an alcohol-driven determination would be the game-changer for this now very acclaimed indie hacker?
Postma has managed and mastered the artwork of getting to be a single-individual crew. Coding, style, optimization, advertising, and photography—all important expertise that created him thrive and excel at what he does.
It was only lately when he started to delegate and expand, which he claims was super beneficial when the due time came.
His Search engine optimisation Technique
Enjoying by that rule that he created his personal, Danny approaches his Search engine optimisation duties cleverly. By way of programmatic Search engine optimisation, he created hundreds of world wide web pages for diverse nations and cities, for instance, referring domains, which massively assisted his ranking go up in searches.
In addition to this method, in accordance to the Indie Hackers newsletter, Danny targets a single key phrase in his website posts. An illustration is mentioning the word “Headshot” across several website titles. Backlinks also came into perform fairly huge. A vast majority of his website development came from Search engine optimisation & the local community he constructed even though producing in public (aka Twitter).
Creating and Promoting Headlime
Headlime is an AI-powered copywriting instrument he designed in 2020. Even though it wasn’t the quite initial startup he founded, it was the initial a single that boomed.
This copywriting instrument makes use of artificial intelligence to compose advertising copies for organizations immediately. Due to its consumer-centric worth that helps make it a massive time saver for hectic organizations, it quickly took off.
Even so, Headlime did not absolutely start off from absolute zero. Don’t forget that E-book I pointed out earlier? Properly, that grew to become Danny’s inspiration for this massive-hit platform. If you ever wonder, that headline generator E-book he listed on Gumroad in 2018 was only 19 bucks, which quickly grew into million-dollar income following a couple of many years in just eight months.
How did that take place? By way of pivoting.
Danny stepped up his game by turning his E-book with promising development possible into a micro-SaaS enterprise. This micro-SaaS enterprise, Headlime, caught the quick curiosity and garnered help from his target market place with above 80 waitlist signups inside just a single day following announcing it and above $400 in income the very same day following launching it on Item Hunt.
1 of the issues he did was apply a pricing technique with a lifetime offer you of 49 bucks, which was a rather great deal. He created some increments in his pricing for his month-to-month subscription programs, which panned out fairly properly for the instrument.
The stream of ongoing income went on. Nevertheless yet another massive break took place when TechCrunch featured Headlime in 2021, doubling its month-to-month recurring income (MRR).
In spite of Headlime’s good results, Danny had no programs to broaden it to a corporation or any kind of massive organization. So when two organizations showed curiosity in obtaining Headlime, Danny regarded promoting it.
In March 2021, a yr following he began, Danny offered Headlime to Conversion.ai for above a single million bucks. The acquisition procedure only took two weeks from the starting to signing. Now that is an achievement.
AI and Photography
Apart from AI, Danny has been fond of photography. He’s truly completed tons of stock photography for Unsplash.
The fusion of his techy and artistic sides paved the way for his following giant startup underneath Postcrafts with a central emphasis on AI picture processing, which includes his most acclaimed AI photographer, HeadshotPro.
Just before HeadshotPro, Danny Postma founded ProfilePicture.AI, a profile image maker that generates photographs largely via paid packages giving premium artsy results in above 350 types that consumers can pick from. It at the moment has above 20k consumers.
Quick forwarding to 2023, HeadshotPro grew to become his newest and largest undertaking, a digital photograph studio making use of AI engineering. It is a stand-alone startup but also far more like an extension of ProfilePicture.AI.
What sets it apart from ProfilePicture.AI is that it generates corporate headshots for skilled makes use of, creating super reasonable headshots with a powerful and practically indistinguishable resemblance to real photography.
HeadshotPro acquired traction globally and at the moment has above 40k lively consumers across the globe, boasting above seven million AI headshots produced. It earned recognition from massive organizations this kind of as CNN, Bloomberg, Fashionista, New York Publish, and Vice.
When it comes to the price tag, HeadshotPro—fair to say—isn’t so high-priced. It commences at $29, creating it far more reasonably priced than a $200 shoot with a skilled photographer.
HeadshotPro has switched the landscape for pros wanting to search skilled even though barely getting to do anything at all. Postma was just the man behind the trend.
Right here are far more of Danny’s related startups considering that he’s an AI photography guru:
- HairstyleAI – lets consumers see how they’d search on particular hairstyles practically ahead of obtaining their hair minimize for actual.
- PhotoShed – lets consumers develop an avatar of themselves that is a hundred% identical to their real seems to be.
- Deep Agency – generates photos of folks that do not exist—no actual folks or any bodily place.
- TattoosAI – generates tattoo types based mostly on users’ tips and preferences.
A Trailblazer for the Potential Photograph Studio
AI has actually transformed the globe. With countless innovations, numerous standard issues have turn out to be obsolete, or ought to I say, upgraded?
Danny Postma is truthfully a single of the groundbreakers who disrupted the business from the quite starting. Getting at the forefront of superior engineering, he continuously generates a new demand for some thing that advantages these across the globe.
Amazing Track Record, Proper?
What helps make Danny Postma an outstanding indie hacker?
I believe it is that he has the courage of an incredibly calculated chance-taker. He believes in himself and trusts the procedure he does not end understanding and finding irrespective of how prolonged or how numerous jobs it took him to get to the place he is these days.
I’m confident each and every single expertise he’s had above the many years has culminated into the beast of a developer and enterprise proprietor he at the moment is these days. By no means get complacent.
Danny Postma is a jack of all trades and even now a master of what he does. He is a self-motivated indie-hacker and I really do not believe his contributions finish right here. a hundred% a person to search up to!
