Danny Postma Sold Headlime, Then Built HeadshotPro

What a Reference Site Taught Him

In 2015 Danny Postma, who is from the Netherlands, was working as a freelancer improving purchase and signup conversion on client websites. He had trouble finding design references while laying out landing pages, so he built Landingfolio, a site that collected examples himself. Daily visitors passed 1,000, but he later recalled making no money from the site for about four years. There was a gap between people coming to look at references and selling them something.

He kept freelancing about two days a week while learning the skills to build his own product. Rebuilding Landingfolio, he implemented the pieces he needed one at a time: server, database, login, image uploads. When he hit something he did not know, he studied it then and applied it to the product right away. Income from existing clients bought him the time to test a new business.

Turning an Ebook Into Software

In 2020, while considering his next product, Postma remembered an advertising headline ebook he had made with a friend and sold for $19. Moving the headline formulas he had already written into software would let users get copy suited to their own business more easily. He decided to turn knowledge sold as a single book into a work tool that could be used repeatedly. That product became Headlime.

The first version, finished in about a month, was a simple tool that slotted user input into 200 headline templates. Revenue passed $60,000 in the weeks after launch, and much of it came from a limited-time sale that let buyers pay once and keep using it. Buyers wanted copy not only for headlines but also for emails and Facebook and Google ads. Those requests set the product's next development direction.

How GPT-3 Changed the Way Copy Was Made

Then Postma got the chance to use GPT-3 and changed how copy was produced. To a product that swapped parts of prewritten sentences he added the ability to generate new sentences. Users describe their business and product and get a draft for an ad or website, which they can edit. Headlime expanded from a headline tool into a service handling several kinds of marketing copy.

The second version, with the AI feature, was finished in December 2020. The monthly recurring revenue Postma published rose from $1,000 early that month to $20,000 in February 2021. He posted the features he was building, demo scenes, and progress on Twitter, and people who saw them shared the product again. The process of building the product itself became promotion that showed potential customers how it was used.

Choosing to Sell

As growth accelerated, customer support, feature development, and responding to competition all competed for his time. While competing products appeared, requests from existing customers kept coming. He had to choose between raising money to grow an organization, hiring from his own revenue, or selling the business. Postma did not want to spend a long time running a large organization, and he accepted an acquisition offer that came in.

On March 30, 2021, he announced he had sold Headlime to Conversion.ai. The disclosed deal size was seven figures, meaning more than $1,000,000. The acquirer had learned about the product through his Twitter activity, so the work he published to reach customers also created the contact with the party that would take over the business. After the acquisition Postma took a role helping with product integration and transition.

Image Generation Experiments and HeadshotPro

In 2022, experimenting with image generation, he started building several products again. The first attempt, Stock AI, tried to offer stock photos, but the quality of the results fell short of expectations. Next, ProfilePicture.AI, launched in about 30 hours, drew interest and sales with a feature that turned a face into profile images in various styles. But as the initial excitement faded, revenue declined, and he looked for the next use of image generation.

The products that came out of his collaboration with developer friend David were Deep Agency and HeadshotPro. Deep Agency, introduced in 2023, drew press interest by pitching virtual models and a change to photo shoots, but sales fell short of expectations. According to Postma, the purchase conversion rate of HeadshotPro, which makes business profile photos, was about ten times that of Deep Agency. He focused on HeadshotPro, where real orders came in better.

A Photo Order Paid Once

What HeadshotPro delivers is a portrait for LinkedIn, company pages, sales material, and the like. Users upload their own photo, choose the background and clothing style they want, and pick which of the generated photos to use. The process of finding a studio and scheduling a shoot shrinks to an online order. Customers get the photos they need without learning how to operate AI.

For this product Postma chose a one-time payment. A structure where the transaction ends once you order and receive photos fit the way profile photos are used. In a 2023 interview he explained that alongside software used continuously, he was interested in a business that produces and delivers results through an automated system.

Choosing a Business With Search Data

Search data was important evidence in finding customers. Even before building a product he looked at what phrases people search for and how fierce competition was relative to search volume. Confirming demand and the possibility of entry in searches related to "headshots," meaning business portraits, was part of why he chose HeadshotPro. Search optimization was used both for promotion after launch and for choosing which business to build.

He also used free tools related to the paid product to bring in customers. The approach was to solve an adjacent problem, such as a tool related to LinkedIn profiles, and introduce HeadshotPro to the people using it. He designed it so the people using the free tool overlapped with the people who would buy business photos. The time spent developing went not only into product features but also into a path to meet potential customers.

Not every attempt to grow search traffic succeeded. Postma described as a failure the strategy of auto-generating pages targeting "headshots near me." The cause he pointed to was a lack of content depth and delivered value. Making many pages matching a search term did not by itself solve the problem of the person who made that search.

Quality Control and Operations Automation

Improving photo quality required processing around the generation model too. In a 2024 interview he explained that LLaVA checks unsuitable input photos or outputs, and CodeFormer corrects artificial traces on faces. Work continued to refine results by combining public models with his own components. The product scope also stayed focused on business portraits, and widening it to dating photos or fun avatars was put off.

Stabilizing operations followed. Early on the server would stop while Postma slept, and afterward he built a structure that scales server resources with load. His wife helped with customer support, and he automated the refund process so issues were handled even during vacations. Sorting out the response after photo generation and delivery was needed to get closer to a business that did not require the founder to keep waiting.

A Small Team and Enterprise Orders

As the business grew he made a choice different from the Headlime days. Instead of selling again or continuing to run it alone, he began working with contractors and part-time staff first. In a 2024 interview he said he was already running a small team and that its members were doing things he could not have done alone. After acting on a decision he had put off out of fear of hiring and managing, he reflected that he should have built a team earlier.

HeadshotPro added enterprise management features to individual photo orders. A company administrator sets the backgrounds and clothing range to use, and employees each upload photos and receive results on the same basis. The administrator can check progress and download finished photos, and can apply a style consistent with existing members to new employees. Companies buy as many credits as they need, so a transaction selling one person's photo expands into an order at the organization level.

From One Photo to Organization-Level Orders

The technology services company Solugenix, presented as a 2025 adoption case, was struggling to manage photos of executives scattered across regions. It had to hire local photographers in each place, and lighting, background, and framing all varied. According to the case the company published, after adopting HeadshotPro executives in each region submitted photos remotely and received results in a unified style. For this customer the effect was cutting not only shooting costs but also the administrative work of booking, scheduling, and collecting photos.

As of September 2026 the official site sells personal photo packages for $29 to $59 and states it provides 30 to 70 results depending on the price. The company says it has more than 250,000 customers.

What links Postma's two businesses is the way he turns new technology into a concrete product customers can buy. He turned an ebook into a work tool and arranged image generation into a photo ordering service, choosing different payment models and operating organizations along the way. His path shows that within the goal of running a business independently, selling, automating, and running a small team can each be a valid choice.