Photopea's 7000-Hour Journey
Share
A story about Ivan, the solo developer of Photopea (a browser-based Photoshop alternative), and his journey to success.
Ivan posted on Hacker News in April 2021: "Hey guys, I'm Ivan, I'm the creator of Photopea. I made almost $1,000,000 in the last 12 months, 90% from ads, the rest is from premium which is users who pay to hide ads. When you start your own project, you never know if they'll make $250,000, but if you get hired you can be quite sure that you will never make more than $250,000."
He put 7,000 hours into developing Photopea before making any money from it. Even after his success, he remained largely a one-person operation. When asked about hiring in a Reddit AMA, he said "After I did my first AMA on Reddit, lots of great people got in touch. I did end up hiring 1 guy from Prague who went to my university, but it'll take some time for him to get familiar with the code. He hasn't done anything yet."
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.