Built in 10 Days the Day After Getting Fired — How Designer Fernando Pessagno Made Taste His Moat and Turned a Portfolio of ‘Boring’ Design Tools Into $15K/Month on 4-Hour Days

Background & product

aiCarousels is a web tool that auto-designs ‘carousel posts’ for LinkedIn / Instagram / TikTok from pasted text. With templates and automatic layout, even people with no design background can produce a polished slide set in minutes — that’s the core.

It was built by Argentine product designer Fernando Pessagno (@Fer_MOMENTO). After running a design studio in Argentina for ~10 years, he moved to Malmö, Sweden. Working there on a visa, he got the ‘worst possible timing’: a layoff notice the day before leaving on vacation. Unable to relax, he started a 10-day build-in-public challenge — build it and ship it — to distract himself. No over-polishing; he launched in May 2023. Five users paid on day one for $50 MRR, and he crossed $500 MRR in 30 days.

aiCarousels landed #9 Product of the Day on Product Hunt, and he kept improving it while gathering feedback through weekly, personal update emails. In ~8 months it reached ~$5,000 MRR and 80K+ monthly users, at ~95% gross margin and essentially $0 to start — an economic shape an indie can reproduce.

Crucially, he isn’t betting on a single product. Alongside aiCarousels (AI), he runs a bundle of small tools that share one pattern — ‘design × clear search intent’: ResumeMaker.Online (launched 2018, 800K+ downloads), GeneratePPT.com for slide generation, and the free PreviewMyProfile.com. Across the portfolio he makes ~$15,000/month and $500K+ cumulative, on ~4-hour days. This is a case of quiet compounding built on a designer’s taste and patient build-in-public, not a viral spike.

From the founder (primary source)

Fernando from aiCarousels.com

@Fer_MOMENTO

·Follow

One of the November @aicarousels updates I’m super proud of is the upgrade to the AI Image Assist feature. Now it picks up on the color selection, so the suggested images are way more likely to match the #carousel style.

Watch on X

9:32 AM · Dec 6, 2024

4

Reply

Copy link

Read more on X

The repeatable playbook

1. 1Split a red ocean with ‘taste,’ not ‘features’ — productize the designer-quality output a non-designer gets just by pasting text
2. 2Ship in 10 days without over-polishing — turn layoff anxiety into a self-imposed ‘build and ship in 10 days’ deadline, and reach the payment signal fastest
3. 3Use build-in-public two ways — post the numbers on X for acquisition, send weekly ‘human’ update emails to cut churn and gather feedback
4. 4Don’t bet on one product — replicate the same ‘design × clear search intent’ pattern across boring real needs (resumes, slides, profiles)
5. 5Make free tools (PreviewMyProfile, etc.) the funnel into paid, compounding branded search via SEO
6. 6Choose a domain you’ve worked in for a decade — being the customer lets you productize the pain and judge what lands quickly

Deep dive

【Deep dive】aiCarousels was born in a red ocean — carousel/banner making — crowded by Canva and countless rivals. So why can one person sustain it? Let’s break it down.

■ The moat a designer chose was ‘taste,’ not ‘tech.’ aiCarousels doesn’t win on the AI being magical. The edge is output quality: ‘a non-designer pastes text and gets something that already looks decent.’ Fernando encoded a decade of tacit design knowledge — fonts, spacing, color, layout — into templates and auto-placement, translating amateur input into a pro-looking result. Against giants that pile on features, he narrowed to one thing: productize taste. The implication for indies is clear — embed the domain you’ve spent ten years in (your unfair advantage) into the product, and you can differentiate on quality even when outgunned on capital or team.

■ The day after being fired, shipped in 10 days — the discipline of ‘don’t polish.’ He built and launched aiCarousels in 10 days in May 2023. The clever move was converting the acute anxiety of a layoff-on-a-visa into a self-imposed deadline: ‘build and ship in 10 days.’ Don’t over-polish, don’t wait for perfect — that’s how he reached the fastest possible signal, real payment. Five users paid on day one ($50 MRR); he crossed $500 MRR in 30 days; his ‘12-month goal of $2,500 MRR’ was hit in under three months. The faster you ship, the faster you learn whether the market truly pays — this case is a textbook of it.

■ Make build-in-public work for both acquisition AND retention. Most people use build-in-public as an acquisition (awareness) tool. Fernando also aimed it at churn. On X he posts the numbers (MRR milestones) to build trust with followers; in parallel he sends users a weekly, ‘personal and human’ update email summarizing new features and fixes. Together these drive both retention and feedback, and in one phase churn fell month-over-month. Not one viral spike but the compounding experience of ‘it visibly gets better every week’ is what sustains retention in a red ocean.

■ Don’t bet on one product — a portfolio of ‘design × search intent’ niches. Fernando’s defining trait is not clinging to the one hit. aiCarousels (AI, carousels), ResumeMaker.Online (resumes, since 2018, 800K+ downloads), GeneratePPT.com (slides), the free PreviewMyProfile.com — all share one pattern: ‘work that needs design chops’ × ‘a phrase with clear search intent like resume maker.’ By replicating the same design philosophy across several boring, real needs, he dilutes dependence on any single product or channel, running ~$15K/month and $500K+ cumulative on ~4-hour days — an antifragile shape. If one falls, the whole doesn’t.

■ Free tools as funnels, compounding branded search. The portfolio includes free tools (PreviewMyProfile.com, etc.). That’s not charity — it’s an entrance. High-intent free tools accumulate organic traffic, backlinks and brand recall, then bridge into the paid tools. The more the names are known through SEO, the more branded search comes in, and new users keep arriving at zero ad spend — a decade of branding and design sense compounding straight into marketing.

■ For indie builders: taste can be copied — so stack ‘ship speed × being the customer × diversification.’ A closing caveat: the ‘designer-quality’ moat is easy to imitate as templates and AI improve, and won’t last on its own. That’s exactly why Fernando’s pattern never leans on a single moat — he buys time against copycats by layering ship speed (be in the market first), being the customer (fast judgment on what lands), and diversification (multiple niches, multiple channels). For a Japanese indie to copy this, the most reproducible start is: pick one ‘boring task you’ve done for ten years,’ ship it in 10 days, and keep posting the numbers and improvements build-in-public.

FAQ

What is aiCarousels?

A web tool that auto-designs ‘carousel posts’ for LinkedIn / Instagram / TikTok from pasted text. Even without design skills, its templates and automatic layout let you make a polished slide set in minutes.

Who built it, and where are they from?

It was built solo by Argentine product designer Fernando Pessagno (@Fer_MOMENTO), now based in Malmö, Sweden. After ~10 years of client design work, he shipped aiCarousels in a 10-day build-in-public challenge in May 2023.

Is aiCarousels free? What does it cost?

There is a free plan for up to 3 carousels/month (10 slides each). For unlimited use you upgrade to PRO ($14.95/month, up to 20 slides). (Pricing per 2025–2026 aggregator data; check the official site for the latest.)