Hi Danny! Who are you and what are you currently working on?
Hey there, I am Danny Postma. A 28-year-old Full Stack Maker from the Netherlands, founder of HeadshotPro, a Singapore-based AI photography company, after traveling the world for a few years.
I’ve founded a few startups (Landingfolio and Inspireframe, to name a few), but my main success story has been Headlime, an AI-powered copywriting software as a service that writes marketing copy for you automatically, which got acquired back in March 2021 for a 7 figure sum.
I’m currently working on Rareblocks.xyz, a soon-to-be decentralized marketplace for website components and templates.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
My story begins in 2015, when I started my first side project, a design gallery highlighting the coolest landing page designs on the internet (I was 21 at the time). When I was working as a freelance Conversion Optimization Specialist, I couldn't come up with solid ideas for landing pages for clients. As a result, I decided to start my side project, called Landingfolio, solving this personal challenge.
Make something you'd like to use yourself. Even if no one buys it, it's still worth something to you. Furthermore, you are the most knowledgeable customer and know exactly what you want.
Landingfolio expanded rapidly to become one of the most popular landing page inspiration websites, with over 1000 visitors each day. Inspiration websites are extremely difficult to monetize because designers typically visit for inspiration and then leave. I've been running the website for four years without making any money from it, focusing instead on client work.
A year ago, I began my journey as a digital nomad, traveling around the world and meeting plenty of talented individuals who have built great online SaaS companies. These folks motivated me greatly, and I realized how successful a startup could be if I only knew how to code.
As a result, I had to make a difficult decision. Reduce my client work to two days per week and devote the remaining four days (plus one day off) to learning to code. As a result, I embarked on an eight-month full-time trip to learn to program.
I leveraged everything I learned from Landingfolio to create Inspireframe, which was launched in June 2020. In this launch, I tried a lot of different techniques, documented them all for later use, and then used them all in my most recent and successful product launch.
How did you go from idea to product?
Headlime started back in the depths of a global pandemic while in lockdown. I was sitting in the kitchen, drinking cold matcha and writing down ideas I could start working on next. Ideas that would be easy to build and validate before wasting years on them.
Then I remembered: Three years ago, a friend and I wrote a book, called Headline Formulas, which has sold a few hundred copies.
That's when I decided to turn Headline Formulas into a tool. I decided to focus on this for two simple reasons: 1) books are worth less than tools, and 2) it would be easy for me to build it, as I already had all the content ready.
One month of building late, version one of Headlime was finished. It was a simple “content spinner”. The site had 200 formulas, which you could customize quickly by filling in different variables. The tool would then output 200 customized headlines to use in your marketing content.
The launch was an instant success, with over $60,000 in sales in the first few weeks. Most of this was thanks to a limited deal I launched, which gave customers access for a one-time fee instead of paying a subscription fee. It honestly blew me away as this was my first ever successful product launch.
I think what I did right here is mostly listening to customer feedback. Their vision of the product was beyond my wildest ideas. Customers did not only want headline templates. They wanted all types of content, like emails, Facebook Headlines, and Google Ads. So from that day on, I went on a shipping spree, launching new features, content and updating the tool to users their wishes.
I couldn’t have been in a more perfect industry at the right time. Two months after launching Headlime, OpenAI launched their new flagship AI product, GPT-3. A neural network that can write content. And boy, was it powerful.
I messaged the CTO of OpenAI to get access and got it. I quickly realized that this AI was insanely good at producing marketing copy. With the proper training, you could explain your business, and the AI would output almost perfect marketing copy for ads, blogs, websites, etc.
I saw the writing on the wall. Content spinners are done. AI-generated content is the future. So, I decided to go all in: Headlime would turn into an AI-powered copy generator. I went off the grid for five months and started using all my working hours (and free time) to build version 2 of Headlime.
