In October 2020 Joe Masilotti, a Ruby on Rails developer, got tired of hand-making link preview images every time he shared a blog post. He gave himself one month to build a tool that did it automatically and promised to ship whatever existed at the deadline. That tool became Mugshot Bot.

The launch went better than expected. Mugshot Bot hit number five product of the day on Product Hunt and picked up two paying customers within the first twenty minutes. A launch deal that locked in half-price annual plans for the first fifty signups pulled in roughly twenty more paying customers, and about two months after launch the product crossed 100 dollars in monthly recurring revenue.

Rather than grind for growth, Masilotti put the business close to autopilot. He added a small "image via MugshotBot.com" badge that only paying accounts could remove, kept posting in public on Twitter once or twice a week, and let organic interest do the rest. Over the next six months revenue roughly doubled while he spent only an hour or two a month on it.

When his son was born in June 2021 his priorities shifted toward family time, so he decided to sell. He listed Mugshot Bot on MicroAcquire, connected Stripe so buyers could see verified numbers, and tweeted a few MRR screenshots. Within two weeks more than thirty buyers had reached out, four made offers on the spot, and on 29 November 2021 he sold the product to Renuo, a Swiss development shop. The full arc from idea to sale took fourteen months.

The exit freed him to start his next project, a reverse job board for freelance Rails developers called RailsDevs. He has been candid that he never disclosed the final sale price, and the revenue numbers he shared publicly were rough rather than exact.