Let's start with a little bit about your background and when you decided to start your journey as a founder‍

I am Ousseynou and my background is in digital marketing. I have a Master's Degree in Digital Marketing and Brand Content. Right now, I'm a freelance social media manager and I work for various businesses, from local businesses to startups. I've always been interested in web development and building businesses online, so when I discovered no-code I started building things right away.

What was your first version of the product like and was it very different to the interface you have now?‍

This is pretty much the first version of the product. As I wanted it for myself, I knew what features I wanted and what I wanted the tool to look like. The truth is, I tried to build a simpler version at first. But I quickly noticed the current features were the minimum to get the product to work for me.

Was there any tech tool that you really loved working with? Something you couldn't have made PaceKit without?‍

I'm not a developer, so I use Bubble. I've been building things with Bubble for +3 years for myself and this app is a game-changer for people like me. PaceKit is also built on top of BannerBear, which handles the image generation side. It's an amazing tool for marketers : I use it for PaceKit but also to automate parts of my freelance work.

How did you reach your first 10 users?‍

I reached them mainly via Facebook groups. I'm involved in a few groups around social media marketing so all I had to do was talk directly to my target audience. One post did great and this is where I got most of my early-users.

I'm currently working on more marketing as we speak. I've noticed people on Twitter recently discovered the power of LinkedIn carousels, and LinkedIn is working on a feature to make them easier to share. Hopefully, this is an opportunity for me to talk to more users. For now, all I'm seeing is tools to turn Twitter threads into images. There's a lot to be done in this area in my opinion.

Did a personal experience guide you towards making PaceKit?‍

Of course. I had the idea of PaceKit while working on my own carousels for Instagram. They are a pain to make, really, even with templates in place. I needed a simple tool to output more carousels, without using any design canvas. When I make carousels, I start with a simple table in Notion. I thought it would be nice to have some kind of form to write my carousels and generate images directly. PaceKit was born!

What was or is the most challenging aspect about building it?‍

The most challenging aspect was the API side. I had just started to wrap my head around APIs, how they work and how to use them. Fortunately, the Bubble API connector is easy to use and I was able to make it work. I learned a lot during this project, and I'm still learning.

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