How OpenArt is Using AI to Reinvent Content Creation

Oct 30, 2025

Coco Mao, the cofounder and CEO of OpenArt, shares her journey from Google to launching an AI-driven platform for creative content. She discusses the power of community in sharing prompts for image creation and how programmatic SEO fueled OpenArt's growth. Coco explains the strategic shift from generating images to storytelling through videos, detailing the challenges of restructuring their product and subscription model. She highlights the importance of empowering creators and reflects on a heartwarming story of a 70-year-old YouTuber who found her voice using OpenArt.

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ANECDOTE

Hacker News Breakout From A Scrappy MVP

Coco built an MVP by crawling AI images and their prompts from Reddit and Discord and posted it as "Pinterest for AI images" on Hacker News.
The prototype launched in under a week and quickly drove initial traffic and attention.

INSIGHT

Programmatic SEO As A Steady Flywheel

Programmatic SEO of templatized long-tail pages compounded into large traffic volume over time.
Hundreds or thousands of niche pages like "D&D image generator" added measurable, cumulative visits.

ADVICE

Build Programmatic Pages That Aren't Duplicate

Ensure each programmatic page contains differentiated, high-quality content to avoid Google penalties.
Optimize page performance and study competitors' keyword rankings as shortcuts to find target keywords.

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Coco Mao is the cofounder and CEO of OpenArt, an AI-powered creative platform that enables anyone to generate images and videos from simple text prompts. Since launching OpenArt in 2022, Coco has led the company through rapid growth, expanding from generative art tools to its new “One-Click Story” video feature and scaling revenue to over $30M in ARR. Prior to OpenArt, Coco spent several years at Google, where she worked on search as well as experimental products like Tangi, which focused on short-form creative content. She holds a degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Key Takeaways:

After spending seven years at Google, including stints working on search and short-form video content, Coco left in 2022 with her cofounder, John Qiao, to cofound OpenArt as an AI platform for visual content creation.
One of the keys to OpenArt’s initial success was building a community where content creators could not only see what images other people were generating, but the specific prompts they were using to create these images.
In addition to word of mouth, OpenArt leaned into programmatic SEO as an early growth strategy by creating templatized pages that ranked for longtail keywords like “3D Art Generator” or “D&D Image Generator” that drove thousands of visits.
OpenArt eventually pivoted from image generation to video generation, which required changes to the company’s core product offering, go to market strategy, and subscription pricing and packaging model.
The center of OpenArt continues to be its highly-engaged creator community. While AI may soon surpass human intelligence, Coco believes that humans will always have a desire to create, and OpenArt’s mission is to use technology to help people all over the world express themselves through visual stories.

Coco Mao:

Website: https://openart.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kechunmao/
X: https://x.com/openart_ai

Phil Carter:

Website: https://www.philgcarter.com
Substack: https://philgcarter.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philgcarter
X: https://x.com/philgcarter

Podcast Production by Podders: https://podders.io