BenRobertson.wikiA personal encyclopedia

Ben Robertson

From BenRobertson.wiki, a personal encyclopedia

Ben Robertson is an independent software developer and entrepreneur based in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. He is the founder of ColorBliss, an AI-powered coloring page generator, and is building Holly, an autonomous support engineer for customer issues that require technical investigation.[1]

Before starting his own business, Robertson worked in front-end development, web accessibility, and customer success. He led customer success at Gatsby and subsequently served as Global Director of Technical Support and Customer Success at Netlify following its acquisition of Gatsby in 2023.[2]

Robertson launched the first version of ColorBliss in September 2023 after exploring whether AI could create coloring pages for his children. He writes about web development, accessibility, and building independent software businesses on his personal website, where he also shares progress on his projects. His work has been featured by Starter Story, Authority Magazine, and AI Empires.[1][7][8][10][13]

He uses the online nickname “The Coloring Page Kingpin,” which appears in his public Typefully profile.[16]

Career [link]

Early career

Before entering software development, Robertson worked selling print and digital advertising for newspapers. In a 2024 interview with Authority Magazine, he described graduating with a liberal arts degree into the difficult job market around the 2008 recession and later seeking more fulfilling work.[8]

In a retrospective on his career, Robertson described leaving his job in 2014 to learn to code, then joining Adam Landrum’s agency, Merge, as an apprentice. He later worked as a front-end developer at Up&Up Agency from February 2015 to November 2017, where he helped introduce pattern libraries and wrote about the approach for CSS-Tricks.[2][3]

From December 2017 to January 2020, he was a senior front-end developer at Mediacurrent. His work included projects using Gatsby, Drupal, Auth0, and Apollo Server, as well as accessibility remediation for enterprise websites.[2]

Gatsby and Netlify

Robertson joined Gatsby in January 2020. According to his professional biography, he started as its sole customer success engineer and built a team supporting more than 1,400 paying customers, eventually serving as Senior Director of Customer Success. His work included the Gatsby Concierge program and processes for customer support and account development.[2]

Following Netlify’s acquisition of Gatsby in February 2023, Robertson became Netlify’s Global Director of Technical Support and Customer Success. He worked on bringing the two support teams together and expanding the Concierge program. He left Netlify in September 2023 to pursue his own business.[2][3]

Independent work

After leaving Netlify, Robertson built and launched the first version of ColorBliss in September 2023. He documents his work through notes and build-in-public updates, sharing product development decisions and lessons from running a software business. In a Made to Matter podcast interview, he discussed validating ColorBliss before building it, his first $15 sale, and his decision to build a subscription business.[3][13]

Robertson runs Marginalia Ventures, a digital product studio based in Travelers Rest, South Carolina.[15] ColorBliss and Holly are software products owned by Marginalia Ventures.

Projects [link]

ColorBliss

ColorBliss is an AI-powered coloring page generator. The idea grew out of requests from Robertson’s children for specific coloring pages that he could not find online. After researching search demand and experimenting with AI image generation, he built an initial version under the name ColorBliss.art. His September 29, 2023 launch post described both a curated collection of printable pages and a tool for generating custom pages from a prompt, with paid image-generation credits.[13]

In his August 2024 Authority Magazine interview, Robertson described ColorBliss as a small experiment following burnout. He initially set it aside for six weeks to pursue a business-to-business marketing product, then returned to ColorBliss after its traffic and sales grew during his absence. The interview also covered customer-led product development and pricing experiments: Robertson said that lowering prices had not improved conversions, while a later price increase had.[8]

In May 2024, Robertson discussed reaching $2,000 in monthly recurring revenue in a video interview on Adam C0dez’s channel. An October 2024 Starter Story profile subsequently reported that ColorBliss had reached that milestone within seven months, describing keyword research, organic search, and early marketing experiments as parts of its growth strategy.[9][7]

In October 2025, AI Empires, a newsletter from There’s An AI For That, featured Robertson in its “Behind the Tool” series alongside a video interview. The feature reported that ColorBliss had grown to more than 40,000 monthly users and highlighted organic search, its listing on There’s An AI For That, and direct customer relationships. It also described plans for more detailed customization and workflows for creating full coloring books. These figures and plans reflect the coverage at the time, rather than current product metrics.[10]

Holly

Holly is an AI support agent designed to work within an existing help desk. It investigates customer issues across connected systems, including billing, product telemetry, error tracking, and code, then responds or hands the investigation to a human team. Its website describes integrations with Help Scout and Fernand, with permissions controlling which actions can run automatically.[1][4]

Open source

Robertson’s public GitHub projects include gatsby-starter-accessibility, a Gatsby starter with built-in accessibility tools; a11y-modal, an accessible modal; and Lorem of Zelda, a placeholder-text generator inspired by The Legend of Zelda.[5]

Approach to product development [link]

Robertson describes his independent work as a series of experiments. In his September 2025 retrospective on ColorBliss, he wrote that his aim was to build a software business that could support his family without a full-time work schedule. He set himself a guideline of no more than 20 hours of work a week and credited his experience at Gatsby with teaching him to experiment, learn, and iterate.[11]

His ColorBliss launch post described researching search demand and delaying additional features until he could validate that people would pay for image-generation credits. Later coverage in AI Empires highlighted his direct customer relationships, personal replies to users, and use of feedback to guide product updates.[13][10]

Writing and speaking [link]

Robertson writes about web development, web accessibility, and building products. His speaking history includes presentations and training on component-driven development, accessibility, and decoupled web architectures.[2]

Selected writing

Selected speaking

  • DrupalCon Nashville (2018) — full-day training on component-driven development and UI Patterns.
  • DrupalCamp Asheville (2018) — “Common Accessibility Mistakes.”
  • Gatsby Days (2018) — “Move Fast, Don’t Break Things: Trends in Modern Web Dev with Mediacurrent.” A talk on component-driven development, decoupling the CMS, and a Drupal and Gatsby case study. The recording was published on Gatsby’s YouTube channel on December 17, 2018.[14]
  • DrupalCon Global (2020) — “MagMutual.com: On the JAMStack,” covering Gatsby, Drupal 8, and serverless architecture.[2]

In 2019, Robertson also participated in Gatsby’s “Gatsby for Agencies and Teams: Better, Faster, Smarter” webinar. Gatsby’s accompanying article discussed his work introducing Gatsby into Mediacurrent’s component-driven Drupal development process.[12]

Interviews and media appearances [link]

Personal life [link]

Robertson lives in Travelers Rest, in South Carolina’s Greenville area. He has written about enjoying hiking, reading, and riding bikes with his wife and children. His biography also describes volunteering with his wife as a presenting couple for South Carolina Catholic Engaged Encounter, a marriage preparation program.[1][2]

References

Sources include Robertson’s own writing, publisher profiles, and interviews. Business figures are attributed to their dated sources and are not presented as current or independently audited metrics.

  1. Robertson, Ben. “The personal website of Ben Robertson.” ben.robertson.is.
  2. Robertson, Ben. “About Me.” ben.robertson.is.
  3. Robertson, Ben. “I appeared on the Made to Matter podcast.” ben.robertson.is. January 2026.
  4. “Holly — An AI support agent for your existing help desk.” holly.support.
  5. “Ben Robertson (@benrobertsonio).” GitHub. Public profile and repositories.
  6. “He Quit His Job With No Plan and Built a Profitable Business in 20 Hours/Week.” Made to Matter. December 26, 2025.
  7. “How Ben Robertson Grew ColorBliss to $2K MRR in Just 7 Months.” Starter Story. October 25, 2024.
  8. Aletras, Dina. “Startup Revolution: Ben Robertson of ColorBliss On How Their Emerging Startup is Changing the Game.” Authority Magazine. August 26, 2024.
  9. Adam C0dez. “How Ben Reached $2000 of MRR Selling Coloring Pages Online.” YouTube. May 17, 2024. Video interview.
  10. “Turning FOMO Into 1M Users,” section “How ColorBliss Prints Ideas on Demand.” AI Empires, There’s An AI For That. October 24, 2025. Includes a video interview.
  11. Robertson, Ben. “ColorBliss is two years old!” ben.robertson.is. September 18, 2025.
  12. Cashin, Caitlin. “Mediacurrent — Maximizing the Potential of Component-Driven Drupal Development with Gatsby.” Gatsby. June 28, 2019.
  13. Robertson, Ben. “Launching Colorbliss.art.” ben.robertson.is. September 29, 2023.
  14. Gatsby. “Move Fast, Don’t Break Things: Trends in Modern Web Dev with Mediacurrent.” YouTube. December 17, 2018. Conference talk recording.
  15. “Marginalia Ventures — a digital product studio.” marginalia.ventures. Studio website and project portfolio.
  16. Robertson, Ben. “ColorBliss.art MVP.” Typefully. Public profile displayed as “Ben Robertson | The Coloring Page Kingpin.”
  17. Robertson, Ben. “Build a Style Guide Straight from Sass.” CSS-Tricks. June 1, 2017. Also available on Robertson’s website.
CategoriesSoftware developersEntrepreneursWeb accessibilitySouth Carolina