Photopea

Kutskir started with a narrow experiment: parse PSD files in the browser and let people toggle layers. No market validation deck, no microservices — just a laptop and curiosity while he was still in university.

He has said he was not counting on money; the project grew because users kept asking for one more feature. Architecture stayed client-side from the first commit.

Photopea evolved into a full editor while Kutskir finished his degree — feature by feature, bug by bug. His 2017 “Creating Photopea” post describes solving hundreds of user requests as a solo hobby.

Tiny PHP bits appeared later for optional accounts and PeaDrive cloud storage; core editing still runs entirely in the tab. Most users never touch the server beyond downloading JS.

In a 2021 Failory interview Kutskir reported Photopea opened about 10 million times a month, with users spending roughly 1.5 million hours in the app — mostly monetized through ads at a few cents per hour of use.

He cited about $50/year for web hosting (static JS delivery) and $16/year for the domain. Revenue later grew beyond that interview, but the stack did not suddenly need Kubernetes — it needed more JavaScript.