illustration.app: Revenue, team and how it was built

Solo founder · 44 months after launch, revenue falling

A studio portrait needs a photographer, a booking and days of waiting. AI SuitUp sold the same result, a photo for LinkedIn or a résumé, for a one-time price from early 2023, with a money-back guarantee on the larger packs. It narrowed the offer to one use, professional headshots, and then built a landing page for almost every profession and a version for company teams. Stripe records US$648,649 of payments in total, but only US$35,743 of it in the last 12 months, so most of the money came in 2023, 2024 and 2025.

Team of 2 to 10 · sold 27 months after launch

Said over US$350K in totalRecords US$348.5K on StripeHeld

It entered a market that already had about ten AI headshot sites, at a lower price, and won customers through Google search and affiliate writers instead of ads. A US$4,000 order from one company showed that team headshots were the better sale. The founders sold in 2025, when a general chat model began to make similar images.

Solo founder · 4 months after launch, revenue flat

The demand existed before the app: photos that look as if a compact digital camera from the 2000s took them have been a trend on TikTok since at least 2022. Boothie sells that look without the camera, for a small weekly price, to the people who already post such photos. The founder says every user came from TikTok picture posts made by about a dozen accounts in three countries, with no paid advertising. One person could build it because the image model is rented from Google and paid for by the picture.

Solo founder · 5 months after launch, revenue falling

It sold one effect that people already wanted on social media, a real-camera look without the "AI face", and it reached buyers through TikTok. The founder's profile says the app had "over 60M views on TikTok" with zero paid ads, and his sale listing says the growth runs on a templated TikTok slideshow format that "scales by adding accounts". Revenue rose for five months and then fell by about two thirds in September 2026.

Team of 2 to 10 · 12 months after launch, revenue growing

One-shot text-to-3D generators give a mesh that is hard to edit. 3D-Agent works inside the program that 3D artists already use and builds real Blender objects that they can change. It rents the AI models instead of training its own, sells only paid plans, and limits each plan by prompts and steps, so each prompt has a known maximum cost.

Team of 2 to 10 · 20 months after launch, revenue flat

A tattoo is permanent, so people want to see it before they sit in the chair, and the app sells exactly that preview. The design is made by image models from fal.ai and OpenAI, so the company did not have to train a model. The seller says all traffic is unpaid and comes from two TikTok accounts that come with the sale.

Team of 2 to 10 · 12 months after launch, revenue falling

Said 84–97% marginRecords 41% to 78% marginDid not hold

A haircut, a dye job or a dress bought online is hard to undo, and the app sells a preview of the result for the price of a weekly subscription. According to the Flippa listing, the app made US$73,000 in net revenue in its first year mostly from people who found it by searching the App Store, with low advertising, and 80% of its iOS revenue in May 2026 came from renewals. The company also runs a website of hairstyle and colour guides in 58 languages that sends visitors to the stores.

Solo founder · 105 months after launch, revenue falling

The service has run since 2018 and keeps adding model versions, from V2 in 2022 to V8, the newest in October 2026, so the same customers come back for better results. It sells to a clear group, people with family albums, genealogy research and memorial photos, and to studios and museums. The price is a one-time pack instead of a subscription, which suits a customer who has one box of old photos.

Solo founder · 12 months after launch, revenue falling

The conversion itself is rented: the company's terms say it uses Recraft AI's vectorization, which Recraft lists at US$0.01 a request. The founder built the parts around it, machine export formats and cleanup, and wrote a search page for nearly every cutter, laser and craft use. Stripe data shows that this reached US$4,261 of revenue in June 2026 and US$2,651 in the 30 days to 25 October 2026.

Team of 2 to 10 · 11 months after launch, revenue falling

It took a narrower job than the general AI design tools, mobile apps only, for people who build apps without design skills. The three founders reused what they had learned from four earlier design tools, built it in three weeks, and showed finished designs on X before the launch. Each new Gemini model gave them a better result and a new demo to post.

Solo founder · 37 months after launch, revenue flat

For two years it was a powerful node editor that architects did not want, and it made about US$150 a month. The founder replaced it with a chat box where you say what you want, and changed one-time payments to subscriptions. Stripe revenue then grew 5.3 times from November 2025 to March 2026. His salary paid for the slow years.

Team of 2 to 10 · 2 months after launch, revenue growing

xAI released Grok Bot, a messaging app of AI agents, in beta on 11 August 2026. The two founders published their own open version about two hours later, under the name OpenGrokBot, and pitched it to people who wanted the same idea on Claude or Codex instead of Grok. Payment records show the first payment on 27 September 2026 and US$5,503 in the 30 days to 25 October 2026.

Solo founder · 35 months after launch, revenue falling

It reached people inside the chat app that they already open all day, so capturing an idea on a phone took one voice note. It aimed first at Notion users, whom the company told that ideas get lost on the phone. Ads on Facebook and Google then paid for fast growth in early 2026, until the founder stopped them in August 2026 because the costs were larger than the revenue.

Solo founder · 19 months after launch, revenue falling

Office managers who move into an unrenovated office often cannot pay an interior design studio, and generic AI image tools invent a different room. DreamOffice keeps the uploaded room and asks for a brief in fixed fields. The founder says on TrustMRR that all sign-ups came from search. The business is very small: Stripe shows US$377 in total, and the founder himself puts the real figure lower, at US$225. In November 2026 he listed it for sale for US$2,000.