Markup Hero is a screenshot and annotation tool for images, PDFs, and websites that works on Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chrome. I co-founded it in 2020 with Jeff Solomon and Glib Tsyrklyevych. We grew it to 50,000+ active users, fully bootstrapped and profitable, and sold the business in November 2025. The three of us built it together.
We kept the product simple and the pricing cheap, as most of our users were individuals who just needed to mark up a screenshot and send a link. I did most of the support (Jeff and Glib helped too), which was the best way to talk to customers, gather feedback, and iterate. It also gave me a real sense of what wasn't working.
Most of the roadmap came out of that inbox and our public roadmap, where users suggested and voted on features and improvements. That led to integrations with Chrome, Slack, Google Drive, and Notion, so that people could annotate without leaving what they were working in.
I also wrote much of the changelog over 5 years, which is probably the most complete record of what we shipped and why.