Meet Jon Yongfook, who launched Bannerbear with just $500 in 2019; by 2024, the automated image-generation tool reached $48,000 in monthly revenue

Jon Yongfook is an entrepreneur who built Bannerbear into a software business generating around $50,000 in monthly revenue. It reportedly did not rely on outside funding. Bannerbear is a tool that automatically generates graphics for social media, marketing banners and e-commerce visuals. With the help of the platform, businesses can connect it to other applications and create images instead of designing everything manually.

How did it all start?

Jon Yongfook Cockle is the founder of Bannerbear. He launched the project in 2019 with an estimated cost of $500. Bannerbear's task is simple. It basically is an API and integration tool that automatically generates social media visuals, e-commerce banners and other types of marketing graphics.

It helps businesses automate repetitive design tasks rather than create every visual manually.


Yongfook had previously experienced the problem both as a designer and a programmer. His work involved creating products and banners for marketing teams. He identified the problem while reputedly producing marketing visuals and realised this took a lot of time and effort.

Hence, Bannerbear was built to make the process faster and easier.

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Did he face any hardships?

Yes. He first created Previewmojo, which was a tool that can generate Open Graph images used in website and social media previews. It did attract some interest on Product Hunt, but the demand was limited for the project.

Then, he went on to develop an app for Spotify, which also struggled because users had to add code to their websites.

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How did he change everything?

In March 2020, things changed positively when he relaunched the product as Bannerbear, and focused on API capabilities. It allowed other applications and automated workflows to request images without requiring users to design each one manually. The business grew its subscriber base.

The integration with Zapier also helped. Tutorials and other services also brought additional exposure.

Yongfook also took help of blogging, newsletters, social media and other online communities to promote the product.

According to a Starter Story report, he dedicated around 50% of his resources to marketing. Starter Story estimates its monthly revenue at $48,000.