We have a great software development company called North Coast Code, and we've built amazing things for our clients. However, we’d never started something from scratch—our own idea, built from zero. BlurBay was a chance to invest our profits into something useful and learn practical lessons along the way.
Was it a good idea?
Well… maybe...
When we came up with the idea, we did almost zero research into product-market fit.
We just started building it the same day. What we are today is nothing like what we were when we started.Back then, BlurBay was a photo blur tool. Other people could unblur your image if they paid you money.Our primary intention?To be used for things like family photos, business contracts, and documents.
And... it was used for something else?
Mostly adult content. We didn’t pay much attention to analytics at the time, but we’d already built a bunch of social tools around the app anyway. Eventually, we started paying attention to what people were actually doing with the platform. Once we did, it became clear that the adult industry wasn’t the direction we wanted to take. We’ve got nothing against people working in adult entertainment, but—as two close-to-middle-aged family men—it wasn’t exactly where we wanted to steer our careers.So a decision was made:“Let’s completely change the product and the target audience. This time, with some actual research.”We removed all adult content, scrapped the blurring tool, cleaned up the design, and started looking at what others were doing in the content-selling market. It's a crowded space, for sure.
What can we do better than the rest?
Surprisingly, there’s a lot of stagnation in the creator economy / business tool space.US media giants like Meta and Google (YouTube) dominate the landscape. “Middle-sized” companies like Patreon, Netflix, and OnlyFans have carved out strong niches of their own.Most tools for creators are built by “smaller” billion-dollar companies—powerful, yes, but often overly complicated and way more expensive than they need to be.But we’re scrappy. We’re stubborn.That’s got to count for something, right?
Step One: Study the giants—then out-execute them.The trick is to not waste resources on stuff that doesn’t matter. Trim every ounce of fat. This leaves you with a simpler, sharper user experience.
Step Two: Ask your audience what they actually want—and only build that.This part is hard. We humbly believe we’re visionary geniuses. But focusing on getting the basics right still leaves room for creativity. It also helps keep costs down and usability high. Win-win.
Step Three: Get real users, ask for brutal feedback—just not in public.The creator world is full of bold, intelligent, and opinionated people. That makes it fun to interact with—and great for gathering feedback.But honestly, a lot of the story plays out in the data. So we track every click, scroll, and purchase inside the app. The goal: keep improving and keep making BlurBay more fun to use.
Step Four: Build the X-factor that lets you scale.This is where we’re at now.Turns out, our users are our best marketers. We get a lot of positive feedback and very few detractors. People use BlurBay to sell courses, lessons, podcasts, and entertainment-style content.We’re pretty happy with how things are going in Estonia, but yeah… Estonia’s small. There’s a bit of a glass ceiling here—just not enough people.We’re now exploring how to scale into new markets.
Are you profitable?
No.Not yet.But we haven’t tried to be profitable yet, either.To turn a profit right now, we’d need to stop advancing the tech and slow down our growth efforts.And frankly, we’re a bit too ambitious (or foolish) to do that.
Keep in mind, this was written on 09.04.2025 - who knows what the future holds.
