Danny Postma had sold his AI copywriting tool Headlime for seven figures and was bored in 2021–22. When Stable Diffusion arrived in September 2022, most people used it for novelty art; he bet the paying use would be the least glamorous one — a professional headshot that must actually look like you.

Use AI image generation for the boring, practical job: fine-tune a model on a customer's selfies so their headshots look like them, and sell each shoot for $29.

He built HeadshotPro solo in about 30 days and launched in March 2023: customers upload a handful of selfies, a fine-tuned model generates dozens of studio-style headshots in different outfits and backdrops, and the customer pays once per shoot. Postma launched on Product Hunt and Twitter and let sales decide between HeadshotPro and his flashier AI-avatar sibling, Deep Agency.

Over $100,000 in the first two weeks after launch. The founder reported about $300K monthly revenue by September 2024, and the official site now counts 17 million headshots generated, 200,000+ shoots and $10M+ in cumulative revenue, with Fortune 500 teams including HubSpot rolling it out.

HeadshotPro grew out of an observation Danny Postma made after selling his GPT-3 copywriting startup Headlime for a seven-figure sum in 2021: AI image tools were being used to make fantasy art, not to do practical jobs. When Stable Diffusion launched in September 2022, he decided the practical, boring use — a professional headshot that still looks like you — was the real opportunity.

He built the product solo in about 30 days and launched in March 2023. Customers upload a handful of selfies; a fine-tuned model generates dozens of studio-quality headshots across outfits, backdrops and lighting setups; the customer pays once per shoot, from $29. He launched on Product Hunt and Twitter, and let the market choose between HeadshotPro and a flashier AI-avatar sibling, Deep Agency.

HeadshotPro passed $100,000 in revenue in its first two weeks, and the founder reported roughly $300K monthly revenue by September 2024. The official site now counts 17 million headshots generated, more than 200,000 shoots and over $10 million in cumulative revenue, with teams at HubSpot and other Fortune 500 companies using it.

Practical beats novel: a headshot has to look like you, so likeness quality — not spectacle — became the moat.

One-time $29 pricing with no subscription removed friction and matched the casual buyer's mental model of a photo shoot.

Twitter and Product Hunt distribution let a solo founder with no ad budget reach the exact audience — professionals, then teams — within days.

Team rollouts turned a consumer product into a repeatable B2B sale: consistent headshots for 50 employees is a problem every company has.

The unglamorous use of new tech is often the business: everyone demoed AI art for fun, but the first identity-critical job — a headshot that must look like you — was the one people paid for.

HeadshotPro became one of the most cited solo-AI success stories: the founder reported about $300K monthly revenue by September 2024, and the company pushed into enterprise — team credits with volume discounts, SOC 2 Type II compliance, SSO, and a 100% money-back guarantee — while the official site counted 17 million headshots generated, 200,000+ shoots and over $10 million in cumulative revenue since the 2023 launch. Postma kept building other AI products alongside it, but HeadshotPro remained his flagship.

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The sources

  1. About HeadshotPro — Our Story HeadshotPro (official) · headshotpro.com
  2. How I made $100K in 2 weeks with an AI headshot tool Startup Founder Stories (Danny Postma) · startupfounderstories.com ·