Interview with the founder of Pika Style

About

Pika Style is a useful web-based tool designed to assist designer/developers in creating screenshots effortlessly. It currently generates $2500 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR). In this interview, we have a conversation with the founder of Pika Style, Rishi Mohan.

How did you come up with the idea for the business?

As a designer and creator, I often share my work on Twitter. Before, I'd snap screenshots of my designs and then jazz them up in Figma for a better look. It got repetitive – opening screenshots in Figma, tweaking backgrounds, adding shadows, then exporting. About 20 to 30 minutes each time. So, I had an idea. Why not create an app to do this quickly?

That's when Pika was born. Pika turns bland screenshots into polished, high-quality images. It's all about speed too. My aim? Solve this design hassle. It began with just me needing it, but now, thousands use Pika in different ways. From a personal solution to a tool embraced by many – Pika's journey continues, one user at a time.

How did you build the product?

After having the idea in mind, I just fired up VS Code and started a new Next.js project. Having some experience writing React and designing, it wasn’t hard for me to build the MVP.

How big was your team when you started?

There was no team, it was just me 😅.

How did you launch the business?

I was sharing about Pika on Twitter as I was building it. That includes components I designed, or how the app can help users. I launched it on ProductHunt some time later and to my surprise, it had received more than 600 upvotes

How have you grown the business since its launch?

Initially there was no plan to monetise Pika. It was yet another side-project.

But as I kept building it and sharing the process on my Twitter, I started getting more and more specific feedbacks, feature requests etc. This gave me idea to sell those feature requests before even implementing and that’s what I did.

I kept adding more and more features, options for users and that helped Pika grow in terms of paid users.

What are the main marketing channels that work out for you?

As I’ve mentioned earlier, the thing that worked for Pika best is building it in public. That helped Pika get initial paid users, and then it was product-led growth that helped Pika grow.

I wouldn’t say I have tried any other forms of marketing seriously yet, but I plan to.

Which tools do you use most often to help grow your business?

Stripe for handling and managing payments and subscriptions. I use Vercel for hosting my apps and I find it really useful. Supabase is my service of choice for adding auth and DB. Crisp helps in talking with customers and is incredibly useful too.

What is the business model (ads/subscription etc)?

Pika primarily has subscription business model where users pay to access paid features. I had started experimenting with ads for free users in February, and it worked pretty well so Pika also runs ads.

What do your finances look like?

Pika is currently at around $2.5K MRR. Most of it is profit since I’ve optimised the app for less expenses.