Last year, all I wanted was a QR code for a birthday present. Scan the code, get the surprise. Thirty seconds of work, I thought.
Not quite.
Every single generator wanted me to create an account first — for what is, technically, a black-and-white square with some data encoded inside. The ones that skipped the sign-up put a watermark on the download or hid the decent export quality behind a paywall. And the moment I looked at dynamic QR codes — the kind where you can change the target URL even after the code is printed — every site wanted a subscription.
I got the birthday present done in the end. But the experience stuck with me, and I did the thing you should probably never do with a minor annoyance: I turned it into a side project.
The "free QR code" business model
