The MVP of Coolors that Fabrizio Bianchi created over a weekend in October 2014 is still online. The product's core, which made it go viral, was present from the very beginning.

The Problem with Color Tools

At that time, color tools were merely a series of controls and buttons, and the process of creating a palette relied exclusively on the user's skills in color matching.

The idea behind Coolors was to streamline this process, making it feel like a brainstorming session where you focus solely on the result, not the process itself.

Weekend MVP That Went Viral

Fabrizio is an indie web developer and designer from Rome, Italy who loves creating useful tools. He built Coolors as a personal project to scratch his own itch - generating beautiful color palettes quickly.

The simplicity was the key: just press spacebar to generate a new palette. Lock colors you like, keep generating. Export in any format. No complex controls, no learning curve.

Growing to 3M+ Users

The tool spread virally through the design community. Designers shared it on Twitter, featured it on Product Hunt, and recommended it to colleagues. The freemium model (free basic use, paid for advanced features) allowed it to spread rapidly while still generating revenue.

Today, Coolors has over 3 million users and is one of the most popular color tools in the design industry, all while remaining a solo project that Fabrizio continues to develop and improve.