MagicSlides
MagicSlides is an AI presentation generator. It started as a Google Slides add-on. An add-on is a small program that a user installs from the Google Workspace Marketplace, Google's catalog of extensions for its office programs, and that then runs inside Google Slides. The user types a topic, or gives a PDF, a web address or a YouTube link, and a language model writes the slides. Today it is also a web application that exports editable PowerPoint files.
Sanskar Tiwari, a developer in India who taught himself to code, built the first version in about one week in January 2023 and announced it on Reddit. He took no investment. Payment data that TrustMRR reads from his Stripe account shows US$722,575 paid by customers between the launch and 13 October 2026. That is a total since launch, not a yearly rate. The present level is much lower: US$8,804 in the last 30 days, and US$10,621 of monthly recurring revenue (MRR), the subscription revenue of one month, from 785 subscriptions. Verified revenue was between US$19,000 and US$20,500 a month from November 2025 to February 2026, and it fell to about US$10,000 a month by July 2026. The founder writes that the peak was about US$29,000 of MRR.
This was not a one-person business for its whole life. The founder writes that the team reached 10 to 12 people, of which 4 or more wrote blog articles full time, because search engine optimization (SEO), the practice of writing pages so that a search engine shows them to people who search, brought about 80% of new users. He writes that changes in Google's ranking reduced that traffic in the third year. In September 2026 he wrote that he had dismissed the whole team, and he listed the product for sale at US$700,000. This page grades every number: the totals and monthly figures come from the payment processor (grade A), and the reasons for the fall are the founder's account (grade C). The page also shows four failed startups that generated presentations automatically or depended on a platform that another company controlled.
The numbers, graded
Each row shows the evidence grade and the source numbers from the list at the end of this page. The grades are explained in How Aiolum verifies.
| Fact | Value | Grade | How we know | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Verified revenue since launch, January 2023 to 13 October 2026 | US$722,575 | A | Read from the Stripe account by TrustMRR through an API key. This is the sum of all payments in about 45 months. It is not a yearly rate and it is not profit. | [1] |
| Verified revenue, last 30 days | US$8,804 | A | Revenue last synced on 13 October 2026. The profile reports a change of minus 16.9% against the 30 days before. | [1] |
| Verified revenue, last 3, 6 and 12 months | US$29,150, US$64,662 and US$181,570 | A | [1] | |
| Share of the total that came in the last 12 months | 25.1% | calc | Calculated: 181,570 divided by 722,575 equals 0.251. Three quarters of the money was earned before October 2025. | [1] |
| Revenue before the last 12 months | US$541,005, about US$16,400 a month | calc | Calculated: 722,575 minus 181,570 equals 541,005. From mid-January 2023 to mid-October 2025 is about 33 months, and 541,005 divided by 33 equals 16,394. The public profile does not show these months one by one. | [1] |
| Verified revenue per month, November 2025 to February 2026 | US$20,465, US$19,132, US$19,189, US$19,135 | A | A level period. The average is US$19,480. | [1] |
| Verified revenue per month, March to September 2026 | US$17,275, US$15,074, US$12,209, US$12,123, US$9,623, US$9,931, US$10,427 | A | The average of July, August and September is US$9,994. | [1] |
| Change from February 2026 to July 2026 | minus 49.7% | calc | Calculated: 9,623 divided by 19,135 equals 0.503. Spread evenly over the five months, that is a fall of about 12.8% each month. | [1] |
| Monthly recurring revenue, 13 October 2026 | US$10,621 from 785 active subscriptions | A | The profile reports a change of minus 7.5% in 30 days. | [1] |
| Revenue per subscription | about US$13.53 a month | calc | Calculated: 10,621 divided by 785. | [1] |
| Yearly run rate at the present level | US$105,648 to US$127,452 | calc | Calculated: 8,804 times 12, and 10,621 times 12. A run rate is the present monthly figure multiplied by twelve. It assumes that the fall stops. | [1] |
| Profit margin, last 30 days | 75% | C | A profile snapshot. The profile does not say that costs are read from a verified source, so this is treated as the founder's figure. | [1] |
| Peak monthly recurring revenue | about US$29,000, date not given | C | Founder's article of 27 July 2026. No month in the public verified data reaches this level, because the public monthly table starts in November 2025. It is compatible with the verified average of US$16,400 a month before that date, but it is not confirmed. | [4, 1] |
| Founder's statement of the level on 27 July 2026 | around US$19,000 a month | C | Does not agree with the verified data: July 2026 was US$9,623 and June 2026 was US$12,123. The figure matches the months from November 2025 to February 2026. An event page of 23 July 2026 gives about US$13,000 of MRR. | [4, 1, 8] |
| Founder's figure for all his products together | about US$330,000 a year, with MagicSlides as 88% of it | C | Book description and personal site, read 13 October 2026. Calculated: 88% of 330,000 equals 290,400. The verified MagicSlides revenue of the last 12 months is US$181,570, which is 63% of that. The claim describes an earlier and higher period. | [6, 7, 1] |
| Verified total across the founder's 9 listed products | US$858,144, of which MagicSlides is 84.2% | A | TrustMRR founder page. The other products are kept apart from the headline: SheetAI US$52,000, Blurweb US$33,000, BlurScreen US$17,000, SlackNotify US$15,000, MagicForm US$11,000, AskVideo US$4,200, MagicChat US$2,600 and a second MagicSlides listing with US$775, as rounded on that page. The share is calculated: 722,575 divided by 858,144. | [2] |
| Team at the peak | 10 to 12 people, of which 4 or more full-time blog writers | C | The company's about page. The founder's personal site still showed 10 team members in October 2026. Latka counted 2 people who named the company as employer on LinkedIn in July 2025. | [3, 6, 16] |
| Team in September 2026 | the founder alone, by his statement | C | X post of 1 September 2026: he fired his whole team to work with Claude Code. A video description of 13 September 2026 says he now manages his products with zero developers. Not confirmed by a third party. | [5, 9] |
| Outside funding | none | C | The profile says bootstrapped. The founder writes that he never raised money for any product. | [1, 4] |
| Share of new users that came from search, at the peak | about 80% | C | The company's about page. No analytics account is connected to the TrustMRR profile, so no traffic figure confirms it. | [3, 1] |
| Google Workspace Marketplace listing, 13 October 2026 | more than 1 million installs, rating 4.65 of 5 from 1,483 ratings | B | Counts published by Google on the listing, which was last updated on 12 October 2026. Google shows installs as a rounded band. | [12] |
| Asking price on TrustMRR | US$700,000 | C | Listed for sale on 3 September 2026. The listing records 8 offers and still has the status listed for sale on 13 October 2026. | [1] |
| Asking price compared with revenue | 6.63 times the present yearly run rate, 0.97 times all revenue since launch | calc | Calculated: 700,000 divided by 105,648 equals 6.63, and 700,000 divided by 722,575 equals 0.97. TrustMRR shows the same multiple of 6.6. | [1] |
| Time from launch to this total | 45 months | calc | Calculated: January 2023 to October 2026. | [1] |
How to read this table: a grade A value was read from the Stripe account by TrustMRR through an API key. A grade B value was published by Google or by independent press. A grade C value is a founder statement, a sale-listing detail or a third-party estimate. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows above it.
| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 0 | 0 | limit not shown on the pricing page; the home page offers a free start without a credit card |
| Essential | 6.67 | 8 | 10 presentations a month, up to 10 slides each |
| Pro | 12.42 | 16 | 50 presentations a month, up to 15 slides each |
| Premium | 23.25 | 29 | 50 presentations a month, support for 50 or more slides, a choice of models, and the spreadsheet, document, meeting and canvas tools |
| Done By Us | 99 one-time | a designer builds one presentation in 48 to 72 hours; shown as reduced from US$500 |
The page shows yearly billing first: US$80, US$149 and US$279 a year, with the label Save 17%. Next to each yearly price it shows a second, higher figure (US$8, US$16 and US$29), which this page reads as the price with monthly billing. Calculated check: 80 divided by 8 times 12 equals 0.83, which agrees with the label. A license belongs to one Google account. Team, enterprise and API prices are on separate tabs that were not read. The company's update note of 23 May 2026 describes a new set of plans named Free, Premium, Plus and Enterprise, but the pricing page still showed Essential, Pro and Premium on the day it was read. Prices of earlier years could not be read from archived copies.
The timeline
From an add-on built in one week to US$722,575 in total revenue in 45 months, with a fall by half during 2026. Each entry carries its grade.
- 2021 to 2022CTiwari sells small tools: a browser extension that blurs private data on screen, and SheetAI, an add-on that puts a language model inside Google Sheets. He writes that SheetAI made about US$2,000 of MRR. [3, 4, 18]
- January 2023CA stranger asks him on Twitter for a pitch deck for SheetAI. He builds a Google Slides add-on that generates the slides, in about one week, and announces it on Reddit. The TrustMRR profile gives 16 January 2023 as the founding date. [3, 4, 1]
- February to July 2023CHe describes the add-on as free in a post of 20 February 2023. An archived copy of the site from mid-2023 shows a free plan with 3 presentations a month and paid Pro and Premium plans. [5, 17]
- June and July 2024CHe writes that the add-on has 1 million installs and that he spends US$1,000 on OpenAI, without naming the period. He hires interns and writes several times that he is hiring. [5]
- 2023 to 2025COver these three years the product becomes a web application with PDF, web address, Word and Excel inputs and an API. The team reaches 10 to 12 people. Four or more writers publish blog articles full time, and search brings about 80% of new users. The dates of the peak are not given. [3]
- Third year, 2025CBy the founder's account, Google's content updates reduce the blog's traffic, new registrations slow down, and for the first time the product loses more MRR than it gains. [3]
- 28 October 2025BGoogle announces that the Gemini app can generate a slide presentation from a prompt or an uploaded file and export it to Google Slides. [14]
- November 2025 to February 2026AVerified revenue stays between US$19,132 and US$20,465 a month. [1]
- March to July 2026AVerified revenue falls every month, from US$17,275 in March to US$9,623 in July. [1]
- 29 June 2026BGoogle starts the rollout of full, editable, multi-slide presentations generated by Gemini inside Google Slides. [13]
- July 2026CThe company renames the product family Magic Suite and adds AI tools for spreadsheets, documents, meeting notes and a design canvas. The founder writes that he started paid advertising about this time, after years without it. [11, 5]
- 1 September 2026CThe founder writes on X that he fired his whole team to work with Claude Code. [5]
- 3 September 2026CMagicSlides is listed for sale on TrustMRR at US$700,000. The seller's message says that nothing is broken and that he is open to offers. [1]
- 13 October 2026AVerified revenue since launch is US$722,575. MRR is US$10,621 from 785 subscriptions. The listing shows 8 offers and no sale. [1]
Why it worked
Four causes, in the order they mattered. Each one is a reusable lesson.
A tool inside the program where people already work
The first version was an add-on in the Google Workspace Marketplace. A person who is preparing slides opens the add-on menu, finds the tool and uses it in the same window. Google's listing shows more than 1 million installs. The founder's rule is that people pay inside work tools and do not pay inside games.
Timing
In January 2023 a language model could not reliably return structured output, so the founder chained three or four calls to get a title and bullet points that fit a slide. A presentation that filled itself in was new. He writes that users made videos about it without being paid, and that some of these videos have millions of views.
A blog as the growth engine
The company published lists of presentation topics and guides, written by 4 or more full-time writers. By the founder's account this brought about 80% of new users. It also brought the largest cost and the largest dependency: the team grew to 10 to 12 people, and the traffic belonged to Google's ranking.
Many inputs and a file that the user can edit
The product accepts a topic, a PDF, a web address, a YouTube link, Word and Excel files, and returns an editable PowerPoint or Google Slides file. The founder names the editable file, the add-on and the number of input formats as the reasons to choose it over more polished competitors.
How it was built
These details come from the founder's articles and posts and from the profile fields that he filled in on TrustMRR. They are grade C. [1, 4, 5, 10, 18]
- The first version took about one week: a Google Slides add-on that turned a topic into an outline of slides. Three or four chained model calls produced a title and bullet points, because models in early 2023 did not return clean structured output.
- The web application is built with Next.js and hosted on Vercel, and Stripe handles the subscriptions, according to the profile.
- The models are rented. In June 2024 the founder wrote that he spent US$1,000 on OpenAI, without naming the period. In October 2026 the pricing page lists models from several providers under the Premium plan, in two groups named premium models and standard models.
- Marketing was search and YouTube, with no paid advertising until mid-2026. The founder then started Meta ads and writes that an AI assistant reads the advertising dashboard for him.
- The product is owned by IndianAppGuy Tech Private Limited in Bengaluru, which also sells SheetAI, MagicForm, BlurWeb, BlurScreen and other small tools.
- From September 2026, by the founder's statement, the code is written with Claude Code and without employed developers.
Tools named in the sources
Each one opens its page in the Tools tab, with every story that uses it.
The dead that came before
Four companies in the Loot Drop database either generated presentations automatically or grew through a platform that another company controlled. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.
LiveLoop
The promiseTurn PowerPoint files into live documents that several people edit at the same time.
Why it diedThe product was an extension of PowerPoint, so only Microsoft users could want it. Microsoft bought the company in 2015 and built the same functions into Office.
Qwiki
The promiseAutomatically generated, narrated presentations of images and video as the answer to a search query.
Why it diedEach presentation was expensive to generate, and users did not change from text results. Yahoo bought the company in 2013 and later closed the product.
Meerkat
The promiseLive video from a phone to the user's Twitter followers.
Why it diedAll of its growth came through Twitter's network of followers. Twitter bought a competitor, Periscope, and removed Meerkat's access to that network in March 2015.
Upworthy Insider
The promiseSelected stories with a social purpose that spread widely on Facebook.
Why it diedReaders arrived through Facebook's News Feed. Facebook changed its ranking to show less content from publishers, the traffic fell, and the company had no second channel.
What changed
Before language models, an automatic presentation needed a custom pipeline. Qwiki raised US$10 million to assemble narrated presentations from images and text, and each one was expensive to produce. In January 2023 one developer chained three or four calls to a rented model and had a working add-on within a week. The cost of building the product fell from millions of dollars to almost nothing.
The platform risk did not change. LiveLoop extended PowerPoint, and Microsoft built the same functions into Office. Meerkat and Upworthy grew through one platform's distribution and lost it when the platform changed its rules. MagicSlides has both dependencies: users found it through Google search and the Google Workspace Marketplace, and Google now generates presentations inside Slides itself. The difference from the predecessors is cost. They had investors and salaries to pay. A business without investors can continue at US$10,000 a month, and that is what the verified data shows in October 2026.
Can one person copy it now?
The 2023 start, no. The method, partly.
The opening of January 2023 is closed: Google generates presentations inside Slides, and funded companies such as Gamma sell the same function with far larger teams. What a reader can still copy is the method of placing a small paid tool inside a marketplace where people already do paid work. The founder's own record also shows the limit of that method: one channel that the platform owner controls is enough to start a business and not enough to keep it growing.
Where it is still open: The founder names the remaining gap himself: tools that people search for by task, such as PDF to PPT, web address to PPT, or a converter from another presentation product, instead of general blog articles. Whether these tools can replace the lost search traffic is not shown by the data yet.
- 1Build the tool as an add-on in a marketplace where people already work, such as Google Workspace, Chrome, Slack or Shopify, and put a price on it in the first week.
- 2When a model newly does one thing, ship the simplest product that uses it. The first MagicSlides only produced an outline of slides.
- 3Build a second channel before the first one weakens. MagicSlides took about 80% of new users from search and started paid advertising only in 2026.
- 4Keep costs low enough that the business survives when revenue falls by half. Hire writers only while their articles return more than they cost.
What to watch
The risks are the mirror image of the causes above.
The platform owner shipped the same function
Google announced presentation generation in the Gemini app on 28 October 2025. On 29 June 2026 it started the rollout of full, editable, multi-slide presentations generated by Gemini inside Google Slides, for the Business Standard and Plus plans, the Enterprise Standard and Plus plans, and Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. An add-on that writes slides inside Google Slides now competes with a function that Google places in the same window. The verified fall began in March 2026, before that rollout, so the data does not show this function as the first cause. Its effect on MagicSlides is not established.
One marketplace listing
More than 1 million installs came through a single listing in the Google Workspace Marketplace. Google decides the ranking, the review rules and the existence of the listing. The founder now names this marketplace as a main channel. No source shows whether the listing's rank changed, so a loss of rank is not established.
Search traffic that Google controls
By the founder's account about 80% of new users came from blog articles, and Google's content updates reduced that traffic in the third year. This is the only cause that he gives for the fall. No analytics account is connected to the verified profile, so no traffic number confirms it. Price changes as a cause are not established either: the plans were reworked in May 2026, after the fall had started.
Funded competitors
Gamma, which also generates presentations, announced a US$68 million funding round at a valuation of US$2.1 billion in November 2025. Its founder stated US$100 million of annual recurring revenue, 70 million users and about 50 employees. The MagicSlides about page says that it is not the most polished AI presentation tool in 2026. No source measures how many customers moved to Gamma.
A falling business offered for sale
The asking price of US$700,000 is 6.63 times the present yearly run rate and almost equal to all revenue collected since launch. MRR fell by 7.5% in the last 30 days. The listing records 8 offers in about six weeks and no sale. A buyer would pay for a stream of payments that was about twice as large in February 2026.
A total earned mostly with a team
The headline is the sum of 45 months. At its peak the team had 10 to 12 people, by the founder's account, and the dates of that peak are not given. One person built and launched the product, and one person runs it now by his own statement, but the money in between was not earned alone. The public data cannot separate the periods, because the monthly table starts in November 2025.
Numbers that do not agree
The founder's article of 27 July 2026 says that the product sits around US$19,000 a month, while verified revenue for July 2026 was US$9,623. His personal site showed US$330,000 of annual recurring revenue and 10 team members in October 2026, while the verified MRR of all his listed products together is US$12,079, about US$145,000 a year. User counts are 1 million on the about page and 2.3 million on the home page. Presentations created are 1.3 million on the about page and 10 million on the home page.
Sources
The grade next to each source is the best grade that the source can support. "Read in full" means that the text of the page was downloaded and the numbers were checked in it.
- A TrustMRR profile of MagicSlides.app, revenue read from Stripe by API keyRead the markdown profile on 13 October 2026 (revenue last synced 13 October 2026 at 18:06 UTC) and compared it with a copy cached one day earlier, which showed US$722,503. The revenue, MRR and subscription figures come from the Stripe account. The profile text, the funding line, the user count, the profit margin and the sale listing are written by the founder and are grade C.
- A TrustMRR founder page of Sanskar Tiwari: 9 startups with verified revenueRead in full on 13 October 2026. Source for the total of US$858,144 across his listed products and for the rounded total of each other product.
- C MagicSlides about page: The MagicSlides StoryRead in full on 13 October 2026. Written by the founder. Source for the origin, the peak team of 10 to 12 people, the 80% share of search, and his explanation of the fall. An archived copy of 14 April 2026 shows a shorter, general text in this section, so the present story was written after that date.
- C Founder's article, 27 July 2026: Put More Buy Buttons on the InternetRead in full. Source for the SheetAI revenue, the one-week build, the chained model calls, the peak of about US$29,000 of MRR, the statement of around US$19,000 a month, and the statement that he never raised money.
- C Sanskar Tiwari on X, posts from 2023 to 2026Read as JSON through api.fxtwitter.com: 151 posts from 27 August to 2 October 2026 from the timeline, and 578 older posts whose addresses are stored in the Wayback Machine. Posts used: 1 September 2026 (the linked post, fired the whole team), 28 August 2026 (2093224563308183815, small team), 28 September 2026 (2104537886268002790, no ads until three months earlier), 29 June 2024 (1806913730447323212, 1 million installs and OpenAI cost), 2 July 2024 (1808033363623563765, interns), 20 February 2023 (1627580641855537153, free add-on), 17 September 2026 (2100472371643834574, advertising read by an AI assistant), 29 September 2026 (2104821007102149099, videos made by users). The timeline between February 2025 and August 2026 could not be read.
- C Founder's personal site, read 13 October 2026Read the home page and the about page. Source for the claims of US$330,000 of annual recurring revenue, 25 products and 10 team members.
- C Amazon listing of the founder's book: Stop Learning to Code, How a Call-Center Kid Built 25 Products and $330K a YearRead the book description only, not the book. Source for the statement that MagicSlides is 88% of his revenue and that he works with a small team.
- C Luma event page, 23 July 2026: The honest playbook behind launching 25 products and making $330kRead in full. Written by the event host. Source for the figure of about US$13,000 of MRR in July 2026.
- C YouTube, Ishan Sharma channel, 13 September 2026: How I'd Start a Business With Claude Code in 2026, with Sanskar TiwariRead the video description, not the video. Source for the statement that he moved from a team of developers to zero developers.
- C MagicSlides pricing page, read 13 October 2026Read the Individual tab in full. The Team and Enterprise tab and the API tab were not read.
- C MagicSlides updates pageRead the entries from April to September 2026. Source for the Magic Suite release of July 2026 and the plan change of 23 May 2026.
- B Google Workspace Marketplace listing: MagicSlides, AI PPT Maker for Google SlidesRead on 13 October 2026. The install band and the rating are published by Google, not by the founder.
- B Google Workspace Updates, 30 June 2026: Create fully native and editable presentations with Gemini in Google SlidesRead in full. Google's own announcement. Source for the rollout date and the plans that receive the function.
- B Google Workspace Updates, 28 October 2025: Generate presentations in the Gemini appRead in full. Google's own announcement.
- B TechCrunch, 10 November 2025: AI PowerPoint-killer Gamma hits $2.1B valuation, $100M ARR, founder saysRead the opening paragraphs. The funding round is a company announcement reported by the press. The revenue, user and employee figures are statements of Gamma's founder.
- C Latka company page for MagicSlides AppRead in full. A third-party estimate of about US$220,000 a year for July 2025 and a LinkedIn count of 2 people. Used only for the team comparison.
- C Wayback Machine copy of the MagicSlides pricing page, 5 June 2023, and of the home page, 2023Read the archived text. The plan names and limits are readable. The prices are filled in by script and are missing from the archived copies.
- C IndianAppGuy Tech Private Limited, company siteRead the home page and the about page. Source for the company name, the Bengaluru address and the list of other products.
- C Loot Drop database export, 1,749 failed startupsLocal export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.