Hey Devs!
I'm Alex. I'd like to share my experience building Foldwrap, a web tool that automatically generates banner animations with AI or from Figma designs, along with how I landed my first paying customer.
The Concept
As a developer with design experience, I've always been drawn to where programming meets creativity. My background in animated banner creation covers everything — from GIFs in the mid-2000s through Flash and into HTML5.
After Steve Jobs discontinued Flash in favor of HTML5, I began systematically automating my banner workflow, taking advantage of the HTML's open nature. By the late 2010s, I had developed a Python script that validated banners against platform specifications and uploaded them to a server for professional client presentations. This automation tool dramatically improved my efficiency.
Design prototype in Figma
Life Changes
In 2022, I made the decision to leave my country, which left the agencies I collaborated with in disarray. My project pipeline completely disappeared. For a while, I stepped away from work entirely, focusing instead on adapting to my new environment.
Full Commitment
One year ago, I began dedicating myself entirely to developing my SaaS product, without taking on any other paid projects or freelance assignments.
From my perspective, progress feels sluggish at times. Some days involve wrestling with a single frustrating bug for 48 hours, while others see the rapid development of exciting features using cutting-edge technologies. I enjoy this variety! 😊 Within a few weeks, I had core functionality working: converting Figma documents to HTML5 and applying animations. However, I ended up completely rebuilding the entire foundation multiple times. Over time, the website gained additional pages and a blog, and I also developed a Figma plugin.
At some time, I decided to launch on Product Hunt. Unfortunately, this launch failed to attract genuine users — instead, my launch page was overrun by bots posting AI-generated comments for unknown reasons 🤷♂️, which quickly dampened my initial enthusiasm.
Initial Users
My first authentic users — those who actually tested the tool and provided meaningful feedback — came from Reddit. I configured F5Bot to track mentions of competitors or related challenges, then occasionally contributed helpful, contextual responses to relevant discussions, which brought in a small number of real users.
While having users was encouraging, they were all using the free tier with no apparent interest in upgrading. So I pushed past my imposter syndrome and implemented a paywall that activates when users attempt to save animations longer than 5 seconds. The very next day, I acquired my first paying customer!
I now have 6 paying users, but I'm acutely aware of my marketing limitations, which I expect will present ongoing challenges 😁
I consistently find myself getting absorbed in coding rather than focusing on marketing activities.
Banner Editor interface
To those of you who are hesitant about launching or charging for your product: start small! You don’t need to have everything figured out. Test the waters 😁
Now I'm working on my Creative automation tool full-time and enjoying design and animation automation process and results.
Let's keep pushing forward 💪
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