Logology

Built by Dagobert Renouf and Lucie Baratte@dagorenouf on X ↗10,000 hours invested

“We spent five years perfecting our product. We shipped too slowly to finish the brand.”

Here liesLogology2018 · 2023“We spent five years perfecting our product. We shipped too slowly to finish the brand.”

0 roses left

The creator postmortem

What lived. What died. What stayed.

The original bet: We believed founders wanted a strong logo but did not want the cost or friction of hiring a designer. Lucie had 15 years of logo design experience, I could turn her process into software, and together we could give founders designer-quality logos in five minutes. If we made the product good enough, the market would reward the quality.
The first warning: At 2.5 years, after six months defining the product and 12 months building it, only about 50 people had bought. We were getting 3,000 to 4,000 visitors a month, but sales still disappointed us. Most founders were happy with a basic $5 logo. We kept believing the next feature would fix it.
Cause of death: In hindsight, Logology died because we shipped too slowly. We chased perfect quality instead of expanding into full brand guidelines. When my co-founder and I divorced, continuing together was no longer possible.
Lesson left behind: Don't build a startup with your spouse, family, or best friend. Startup stress bleeds into everything. If your co-founder is also who you lean on to recover, you can lose both the company and the relationship.
If we started again: If I started again, I would choose a co-founder I liked working with but who was not emotionally central to my life. I would ship much faster, accept good enough, and expand from logos into full brand guidelines early. I would test whether founders valued the broader outcome before spending years perfecting the first piece.

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