‍TL;DR: We built Quicktools from zero to 10 million monthly users in 18 months with a team of 2 engineers. The playbook: target high-intent utility searches, build genuinely useful free tools (not lead-capture forms), ship 2 complete flows per week, and let the tools sell the platform. No growth hacks—just relentless execution on a simple strategy.

How do you grow a product to 10M users with a tiny team?

By focusing on one thing: high-intent utility traffic.

When I joined Picsart to start Quicktools, I had nothing—no roadmap, no team, and a vague mandate to “acquire relevant organic traffic.” The main Picsart.com domain wasn’t ranking for utility searches like “background remover” or “resize image.” These weren’t branded searches. They were people with a job to do, right now.

That gap became our entire strategy. Instead of competing for crowded design keywords, we built tools that solved single, specific problems. Each tool was a standalone landing page optimized for one high-intent search. Background remover. PNG to JPG. Resize image. Color picker. Photo enhancer.

The insight wasn’t complicated: people searching for these terms don’t want to read a blog post or sign up for a demo. They want to complete a task in the next 60 seconds. We gave them exactly that.

What made the approach work?

Three things compounded:

1. Free tools, no friction. Every tool worked immediately without signup. Most competitors gated features behind accounts. We didn’t.
2. Tool-as-landing-page architecture. Each tool had its own optimized page, targeting specific keywords. This gave us 50+ entry points instead of one homepage.
3. Cross-sell through usage. Once someone used a tool, we suggested related tools or Picsart features. The upsell happened after we delivered value, not before.

The result: 50% conversion rate on tools (visitor to completed task) and 3% upsell rate to the main Picsart product. That 3% sounds small until you multiply it by 10 million users.

Why do free tools outperform gated content for user acquisition?

Free tools build trust faster than any lead magnet.

The conventional B2B playbook is: create content → gate it → capture leads → nurture → convert. It works, but it’s slow, expensive, and increasingly ignored by users who are tired of exchanging emails for PDFs they’ll never read.

Utility tools flip this model. You give value first, unconditionally. The user’s first experience with your brand is positive—they got something done. When you ask for something later (an account, an upgrade, attention), you’ve earned it.

The psychology behind this

When someone uses your free tool and it works, three things happen: - They remember your brand (you solved their problem) - They’re primed to explore more (positive first impression) - They’re more likely to recommend you (word of mouth scales)

With Quicktools, we tracked users who started with a free tool and later became paying Picsart subscribers. The path was consistent: use one tool → discover more tools → create account to save work → hit a feature limit → upgrade to Pro.

We never pushed. We just kept being useful.

How do you ship 50+ tools in one year with 2 engineers?

You build the system, not the features.

The first two months weren’t spent building tools. They were spent building the framework that would let us ship tools fast. Every tool shared the same architecture: upload interface, processing logic, download mechanism, and landing page template.

Once the framework existed, adding a new tool meant: - Defining the input/output (what file types, what transformation) - Wiring up the processing API - Creating the landing page with targeted copy

This took 2-3 days per tool, not weeks. At peak velocity, we shipped 2 complete flows per week.

What the framework included

The framework wasn’t fancy. It was consistent. Every engineer knew exactly how to add a new tool because the pattern never changed.

Why this matters for any product team

Most teams reinvent the wheel with every feature. They treat each project as unique, requiring new architecture decisions. This feels thorough. It’s actually slow.

The 2-engineers, 50-tools story isn’t about working harder. It’s about deciding once, then executing fifty times.

What’s the right sequence for building a tool suite?

Start with the highest-volume, lowest-complexity tools.

We prioritized based on two factors: 1. Search volume — How many people search for this monthly? 2. Technical complexity — How hard is it to build?

The sweet spot was high volume, low complexity. Background remover had massive search volume (millions monthly) and relatively simple implementation (Picsart already had the API). We launched it first.

Lower-volume tools came later, once we had momentum and could fill in the long tail.

Our launch sequence

By month 6, we had reached 5M users. The foundation tools did the heavy lifting, and the long-tail tools added incremental growth.

How long does it take to reach 10M users with this approach?

18 months, with exponential growth in the middle.

Our trajectory: - Months 1-6: 0 → 1M users - Months 7-12: 1M → 5M users - Months 13-18: 5M → 10M users

The first six months were slow. We were building the framework, launching initial tools, and waiting for SEO to compound. Growth felt linear.

Around month 6-7, something shifted. Our tools started ranking. Users started sharing. Organic traffic compounded. The same effort that produced 100K users in month 3 produced 500K users in month 9.

What drove the acceleration?

1. SEO compounding — Older tools gained authority and ranked higher
2. Cross-linking effects — Users who found one tool discovered others
3. Backlink accumulation — Blogs and forums started recommending Quicktools
4. Word of mouth — “Free background remover” spread in design communities

We didn’t change our strategy at month 6. The strategy just started working.

What should you cut to move faster?

Anything that doesn’t directly serve the user’s task.

When building Quicktools, we cut: - Account walls — No signup required to use tools - Feature bloat — Each tool did one thing, well - Long onboarding — Upload → process → download, nothing else - Premature optimization — We fixed performance issues after they became problems - Perfect design — Functional UI shipped; polish came later

The counterintuitive part: cutting features increased engagement. Users didn’t want more options. They wanted the fastest path from “I have a PNG” to “I have a JPG.”

The “5-second test”

Before launching any tool, we asked: can a new user complete their task in 5 seconds?

If the answer was no, we simplified. The upload-process-download loop needed to feel instant. Every additional step was friction that lost users.

How did Quicktools generate revenue without paywalls?

Two streams: upsell to Picsart Pro and advertising.

We reached ~500K ARR within 3 months of monetization, split evenly: - 250K from Picsart Pro upsells — Users who needed advanced features (batch processing, higher resolution, more AI credits) upgraded - 250K from advertising — Tasteful ads on free tools, targeting the same demographic

The key was keeping the core experience genuinely free. Free users weren’t second-class citizens getting a crippled product. They got fully functional tools. Power users who needed more hit natural limits and upgraded.

Why this beats freemium

Traditional freemium cripples the free tier to force upgrades. This creates resentment. Users feel tricked.

Our model: free is complete, paid is more. Free background remover works perfectly. Pro gives you batch processing. Free resize works instantly. Pro gives you preset sizes and integrations.

The difference is subtle but important. Users who upgrade feel like they’re gaining something, not un-losing something.

What metrics matter most in a tools-based acquisition strategy?

Focus on completion rate, not just traffic.

Traffic is vanity. Completion is value. We obsessed over drop-off points in each tool. If users uploaded but didn’t download, something was broken.

A tool with 100K visitors and 80% completion beats a tool with 500K visitors and 20% completion. The first tool built trust with 80K people. The second frustrated 400K.

What would I do differently if starting today in 2025?

Three things:

1. Build AI-native from day one. We added AI tools (AI writer, AI background remover, AI enhancer) later. Today, I’d start with AI capabilities as the core value proposition. The utility-search market has shifted toward AI-assisted tools.

2. Include video earlier. Video tools had higher complexity but also higher engagement and differentiation. We underweighted them initially because they were harder. That was the wrong calculus.

3. Build for AI search, not just Google. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews now send significant traffic. I’d structure content for AI citation from the start—direct answers, clear headers, structured data.

What I’d keep the same

The core insight—build genuinely useful free tools and let them sell the platform—remains solid. The tactics evolve; the strategy holds.

Key Takeaways

• Target high-intent utility searches where users want to complete a task immediately
• Build the framework first, then add tools rapidly using the same pattern
• Free tools without friction build trust faster than gated content
• Each tool should be a standalone landing page optimized for specific keywords
• Cut everything that doesn’t serve the user’s immediate task
• Measure completion rate, not just traffic
• Upsell after delivering value, never before
• Expect slow initial growth, then compounding acceleration

FAQ

What was the most successful individual tool?

Background remover drove the most traffic and had the best conversion to Picsart Pro. It was also the most competitive keyword, but our tool was faster and higher quality than most alternatives.

Did you do any paid marketing?

Minimal. We tested paid ads occasionally to validate new tool categories, but 95%+ of growth was organic. The tools ranked on their own merits.

How do you prevent competitors from copying this approach?

You don’t. The approach is obvious in retrospect. The barrier is execution: shipping 50+ tools, optimizing each one, and maintaining quality across all of them.

Would this work for B2B products?

Yes, with modifications. B2B utility tools (calculators, analyzers, generators) work similarly. The key is finding high-intent searches where your target customer needs something done immediately.

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Written from experience building Quicktools at Picsart, 2021-2023.

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