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141 Comments

I launched an app 3 months ago with 0 budget and less than 600 followers. Yesterday I sold it for $65,000

Heya! I just sold my app, MakeLogo.ai for $65,000. Thought the story could interest people on IH too!

Twitter version:

Text version

Launched it 3 months ago, with 0 budget and less than 600 followers. I learned to code only 9 months ago.

December 2022, 20:40. I had a sudden idea. What if I made an app to generate logos using AI?

I was making AI logos already for my other projects, so I knew how to do it. However, I needed to validate 2 hypotheses:

๐Ÿค” Can I make logos in an automated way?
๐Ÿค” Would people pay for it?

I decided to make an MVP in 48 hours, as deadlines are the way to go when launching anything: https://twitter.com/nico_jeannen/status/1599746522618679296

48 hours, 1 earthquake and 2 power outages later, I had my crappy MVP ready ๐Ÿฅณ

By crappy I mean a static HTML page linked to a Typeform to collect payment. The back end was literally me generating the logos and sending them by email.
No framework, no fancy stuff, just text and pictures.

I made a few posts on Twitter and generated a couple of sales from it: https://twitter.com/nico_jeannen/status/1600394651009445888

Sales = Validation. The next step was to make an automated version, so I made another challenge of making an automated version in 48h and launching it on
@ProductHunt
๐Ÿš€๐Ÿš€

And oh boy, things went crazy! I launched on December 11 and generated +$1000 of sales, ended up Product of the Day, and got tons of followers on Twitter, so I knew I was into something ๐Ÿคฉ

However, it was far from perfect. Lots of logos needed additional editing or ended up weird because the customer inputs/prompts weren't good.

So, I started from scratch again and made a brand new version in January.
The new version offered way more options, and better results overall โœจ

Then, I added the app to every startup directory I could put my hand on. And that's how most of my traffic came.

I also kept posting on Twitter, every time someone asked "what are you working on?" I replied with the name of the app, and the same when someone asked for AI-generated logos ๐Ÿค“

And... That's pretty much it. I tried to run some ads on Twitter & Reddit but it didn't work that much, as it's not targeted enough.

Now, I don't have much interest in logo/design, and I don't have the technical skills to improve the app further, so, I decided to sell it in February.

acquire.com made the process pretty easy, I received a few offers, and ended up choosing the best offer. Then I did the transfer and here we are ๐Ÿฅณ

In total, the app made +$23,000 in sales and $15,000 in profit. So, that's around $80,000 in total (profit + sale), which is equivalent to at least 5 years of safety net where I live ๐Ÿ˜ฑ

If you want a more detailed post, I wrote everything I was doing in real-time back then: https://jeannen.com/making-ai-logo/

Now, keep in mind that it's not my first shot at entrepreneurship.
In the last 5 years, I launched around 35 projects and most were total failures. Just between October and December 2022, I released 7 different apps.

I never gave up. I kept showing up. It's a number game.

The odds are against you, but at some point, you'll get something that sticks ๐Ÿ˜‰

Don't get discouraged, failure is part of the process

  1. 5

    That is simply awesome. Congratulations. I loved the part where you mentioned your failures as well. Usually founders only post their success which discourages people if their first app fails.

    1. 2

      Thanks!! And yes, there is no shame in failing, I am what I am today thanks to all those failures

  2. 3

    Really you have done a great job ๐Ÿ‘, such a motivating story for all.
    Started from ZERO finally becomes like a HERO.

    1. 1

      Thanks a lot!!
      I still have a lots of work to be where I want to be, but that's a good start hehe ๐Ÿ˜Ž

  3. 3

    This is mind-blowing. Great work, Nico ๐Ÿ™Œ

    1. 1

      Thanks a lot!!

  4. 3

    Pretty inspiring story, keep going!

    1. 1

      Thanks! ๐Ÿ˜€

  5. 3

    This app was awesome and inspired me to create gymbuddy.ai

    keep up the good work dude!

    1. 1

      great man gymbuddy looks great keep up your work installing this

      1. 1

        Cheers! if you're on IOS sign up to the mailing list, app store is taking it's sweet time! :D

  6. 3

    Wow that's inspiring Keep it up !

  7. 2

    First of all, congrats on the success!

    Equally as important is the speed of execution and having a "this is good enough for now" mentality. Waiting for perfection (that will never come) before entering the market has kept people as wantrepreneurs instead of entrepreneurs.

    1. 1

      Thanks a lot!! And yes, just focus on the core stuff, leave the rest for later

  8. 2

    So rad and inspiring! I love the fast, iterative approach. Takes notes... :)

    1. 1

      Speed is key! That's how I was able to fail a lot quickly until I made something that works!

  9. 2

    Your success story is very inspiring.. Thank you for sharing.

    1. 1

      Thanks a lot! :)

  10. 2

    inspiring is thrown around a lot but fk me you sent ai logos out via email to customers with no back end, I am doing everything wrong

    1. 1

      Hahaha, and I did that with other products as well, I had an app to restore old picture before, same process

      Just don't be afraid to be crappy, if people buy when it's crappy, surely they will buy when it's good

  11. 2

    Amazing story! Thanks for sharing, Nico!

    1. 1

      THanks to you for reading it! ๐Ÿ˜

  12. 2

    Congratulations and thanks for the detailed story!
    I noticed that your website doesn't have SSL. Is it a new issue?

  13. 2

    Very inspiring ๐Ÿ˜Š Thanks for sharing.

  14. 2

    Congratulations.

  15. 2

    Crazy! I clicked on this post to see a success story but ended up buying a logo. Great job with the product!

    1. 2

      Oh, thanks! ๐Ÿ˜ How did it went?

      1. 3

        Very well! I built a couple of products in the last year (iterating on the same idea) and whenever I need to create a logo, I used this (https://logo.com/) but makelogo.ai is sooo much better. It doesn't give a super generic logo from logo.com.

  16. 2

    Super inspiring - thanks for sharing nico ๐Ÿ™Œ

    I needed to hear this.

  17. 2

    Congratulation and thanks for sharing your success story

  18. 2

    I've seen you grow your Twitter / projects since the beginning and the least I can say is.. what an inspiring journey!

    1. 1

      Oh, thanks a lot for the support!! ๐Ÿ˜€

  19. 2

    This is an amazing and inspiring story! I hope to be like you someday! This is a clear use case for MVPS and how they can grow you to a thriving business!

    1. 1

      Thanks a lot!!

  20. 2

    I run a training program (think MMA gym but instead of fighting it's about solopreneurship) and I love seeing what you did.

    You pretty much did everything by the book. Especially doing Deep Work instead of Surface Work and procrastinating.

    *The only thing that would really be different is that in YRC is that we focus heavily on qualitative market research before we do anything else.

    Congrats man. Stellar job.

    1. 1

      Thanks a lot!!

      Shipping the app is my market research haha

      1. 2

        hahah yeah that's very common.

        But it's also a great way to waste a bunch of time and money.

        But in your case, it seems like you know what you're doing so a case of "know the rules, then break them."

        1. 2

          Yes, that's why I don't spend more than 1 week to make MVPs (unless I'm learning something that can be used later), risk of failure is too high

  21. 2

    Super inspiring man! Love the process and focus!

  22. 2

    An inspiring story of how a founder with no budget and less than 600 followers sold their AI logo generating app for $65,000 within 3 months of launch, with perseverance and validation through sales being key factors.

  23. 2

    What about mobile app? you used react native ? or anything else ?

    For people who ask about AI part , you can do it with stable diffusion.(It is open) and also can do with close models , just send prompt (Modified) as an API calls.

    1. 2

      I didn't use any framework, plain HTML/CSS/JS, I don't like external dependencies haha

      1. 1

        So it is a responsive website . No mobile app ?

    2. 1

      lol thanks, I was actually curious about the AI part! When you say close models - do you mean stable diffusion trained on certain data presets?

      1. 3

        Open models , everything is open , code , dataset , weights , what you do usually fine tune it with your narrower data set so you get better results.
        For gpt-3 (close model) , you could pass your prompt (via prompt or other form of UI), to an gpt-3 API and get result back from their API.
        Maybe there are other ways that I do not know. Always Happy someone else explain more or even correct me.

        1. 1

          Do you reckon you could train the model to parse HTML content? For instance, extracting price from a html scraped via Puppeteer.

        2. 1

          ah gotcha, yeah I was suspecting that's how it works, I'm pretty new in all this AI stuff but I've seen a lot of AI services let you train your own models, my brain was thinking "surely 95% of AI startups don't invent their own stuff" and looks like I'm right, thanks for explaining this basic info to me!

  24. 2

    Wow amazing.....๐Ÿ‘Œ๐Ÿ‘Œ๐Ÿ‘Œ๐Ÿ‘Œ

  25. 2

    Congratulations! Thanks for sharing.

  26. 2

    Congratulations and thanks for sharing. It looks like AI is reinventing the wheel for the better. I'm wondering if it's a free tool or if you ask for an upgrade to the user at a later stage.

    1. 1

      Hard to make free with AI, the costs are high

  27. 2

    @Jeannen Nice! You have generated a great result. You're right, most people who leave product initially do not receive good results. Thanks for sharing your story, now I'm motivated again for my idea.

  28. 2

    Insane product -- thanks for writing your thought process along the way

  29. 2

    Bro, I'm so proud and happy for you! Such an inspiring story

    1. 1

      Aye, thanks a lot man!! ๐Ÿ˜Ž

  30. 2

    Inspiring and congrats!๐Ÿš€

    Just wondering if there's a list of startup directories you added your app to and any chance you can share it?๐Ÿ˜‰

    BTW, your 48-hour MVP journey is awesome!

    1. 1

      Thanks a lot! Published some on my twitter a while ago, can be found by searching a bit, otherwise I joined every new directory that launched on PRoductHunt

      1. 1

        Thanks! Every new directory, awesome! That's definitely what I didn't notice.

  31. 2

    The most important part of this post was held till the end

    I never gave up. I kept showing up. It's a number game.
    The odds are against you, but at some point, you'll get something that sticks ๐Ÿ˜‰
    Don't get discouraged, failure is part of the process

    1. 1

      Yes 100% ! Resilience and speed > all

  32. 2

    Awesome! I'm also in the process of developing a chrome extension to ease the process of writing emails and I learned some points from your article.
    Thanks and good luck!

  33. 2

    I wish more people would be as honest as yourself when it comes to how many times you failed before succeeding. 35 is a big number. Most people might get discouraged at 2 or 3, you fought on, you are a true motivational story.

    I have 3 questions for you:

    1. I'm curious, what did you learn from each project you worked on?
    2. What is your ideation process? Do you start from problems you encounter yourself, or do you just browse and think of random things to come up with these ideas?
    3. How many weeks/months do you allocate for each project to build an MVP before deciding it's time to move on to the next one?
    1. 2
      1. Can't remember exactly, but I learned to code faster, making pre-made templates and other functionalities in general

      2. I don't have one, sometimes I see something that annoys me, and sometimes I just get an idea

      3. One or two weeks usually, depending on the project. If I don't get traction quickly, I move on

    2. 2

      @SilviuIordache No doubt, failure teaches us a great lesson, but it's true that one should calculate the potential outcome if they are not the first mover of the idea. Literally, this is a great story and he generated good revenue in a short period of time.

  34. 2

    What an amazin read! Keep working on new ideas.

  35. 2

    Thanks for sharing!

  36. 2

    Is the revenue model recurring?

    1. 1

      One-time purchases :)

  37. 2

    For people aksing about the tech stack: Node/express on the back-end, vanilla HTML/CSS/JS for the front.

    1. 1

      Can't reveal the AI part because of NDA

    2. 1

      yes please. What is actually the stack that is "doing the AI part". What is being used to generate the logos and how does that work? Very much interested

    3. 1

      Hey did you use any 3rd party API's to generate these images ? If yes, what are the options available ?

  38. 1

    You have a lot of twitter followers. What do u suggest to someone who have 0 followers? How can we get initial sales for validation?

    1. 1

      I didn't when I started this one. And I would definitely suggest spending some time working on growing an audience on Twitter for the initial validation. Otherwise, post on Reddit etc

      1. 1

        Thanks for reply. I always think of posting something but then I don't know what should I post or how should I start. But yeah reddit seems nice option.

        BTW did u train the AI yourself from scratch? or used stable diffusion?

  39. 1

    So sick! Great execution on this one.

  40. 1

    congratulations man. This is inspiring. How long before you start your next thing

  41. 1

    That is truly inspiring.
    Thanks for sharing the idea, the process & the wisdom

  42. 1

    What system did you use to train your model?

  43. 1

    I saw your tweet and to re-read it here. Your initial MVP was so simple that anyone could have done it. Love this.

  44. 1

    This is inspirational to many, launching quick, iterating through version. Great read!

  45. 1

    Hi Nico, absolutely love your story. Your Twitter efforts worked - I remember coming across your product on my Twitter feed, and I've been following you ever since! Curious to know if you have plans for new products to launch in the future :D Other than that, congratulations on your success!

  46. 1

    Congrats and inspirational

  47. 1

    This story is so inspiring, especially the fact that you learned to code very recently and converted that to something very meaningful :) Congrats!!

  48. 1

    nice work! i recently starting using AI for my product, its helping a ton

    1. 1

      Thanks! And yes, AI is amazing!

  49. 1

    Very Inspiring Nico! thanks for sharing.

    1. 1

      Thanks ๐Ÿ˜„

  50. 1

    Great story man! Super inspiring. Could you elaborate a bit more on the acquisition?

    How did you get to the price of $ 65K?

    1. 1

      Thanks!!

      I did total revenues x2.5 :)

  51. 1

    Amazing story! Thanks for sharing, good luck with others projects!

    1. 1

      Thanks a lot!!

  52. 1

    Really inspiring! And I love the product, thanks!

    1. 1

      Thanks ๐Ÿ˜„

  53. 1

    Nice story. Like your success-story!

  54. 1

    Congratulations Nico !
    I can only imagine the price you paid for all those domain names - I hope you didn't have to mortgage your house! Kudos to you for never giving up and finally hitting the jackpot.
    Wishing you continued success!

    1. 1

      Hahaha, I have 20+ domains running, but I try to re-use them now

      Galeby.com, my new app, was a e-commerce product that failed lol

  55. 1

    Thanks for sharing. it is an amazing story,, especially your hard work to validate the idea and to get traction. Congratulations!

    1. 1

      Thanks a lot!!

  56. 1

    woop woop.. inspirational story !

    1. 1

      Thanks! :)

  57. 1

    That's remarkable, 9 months of experience and already crushing this hard! congrats!

    1. 1

      Thanks hehe! It's more like 5, Marketing is the most important part of any project imo!

  58. 1

    Very interesting. Would you mind sharing a few technical details behind MakeLogo.ai? I am also currently working on generative AI startup which is working out quite well so far so you can use the technical jargon:)

    1. 1

      Can't, I'm under NDA

  59. 1

    Amazing story, congrats and thanks for sharing!

  60. 1

    Crazy story. You can't build a perfect product from day 1. Need to reiterate.

    1. 1

      Exactly! Build a basis, then iterate based on feedback

  61. 1

    Congrats, man! What's next? :)

    1. 2

      Galeby.com, customer service AI ๐Ÿ˜Ž

      1. 1

        Cheers on the launch!

  62. 1

    Wow great story Nico! I follow you on Twitter so I have the whole story unravel over time. Big congrats to you!

    1. 1

      Thanks a lot for your support! ๐Ÿ˜„

  63. 1

    Congratulation! How did you get visibility using only twitter? Did you start with 0 followers as well?

    1. 1

      I started with 26 followers in October (most of which were bots). I just engaged with people, and tried to post interesting stuffs

  64. 1

    thanks for good information as well to and i run a training a books programme here is
    https://suffa.com.au/

  65. 1

    Congratulations Nico! It's definitely all about keeping at it and staying consistent. Do you have any tips on staying motivated through the failures?

    1. 1

      I got used to it now, but I wrote this to help ppl who aren't: https://jeannen.com/so-you-suck-now-what/

  66. 1

    I also own https://codermails.in I am also looking for buyer

  67. 1

    Makes no sense to sell it for 65k if you already made 15k profit within 3 months.

    1. 1

      It did for me :)

  68. 1

    I remember that I read your first MVP post about the project. Such an inspiring process!
    Keep going!

  69. 1

    Great work!

    the app made +$23,000 in sales and $15,000 in profit

    How come only 15k in profit from 23k sales? Did the project have much expenses (marketing, ads)?

    1. 2

      AI is expensive, and database was poorly optimized, I spent $600 last month in DB costs lol

    2. 1

      The expenses are probably mostly AI computational costs.

  70. 1

    Do you have to pay non-capital gains taxes on this sale, as you owned it for less than a year apparently?

    1. 1

      No idea, will check with my tax dude

  71. 1

    Awesome and congrats!
    If you don't mind me asking, what model did you use and how long did it take to train it? :)

    1. 2

      Can't reveal more details on that, I have a NDA

  72. 1

    That's huge! So great for you! What tech stack do you use to get started building these quick turn around apps?

    1. 1

      Node.js and vanilla HTML/JS/CSS, no framework

  73. 1

    Big congrats! Can I ask you where did u learn to code? Any advice?

  74. 1

    very good job you did really impressive. are you using any third-party tool for logo making or you developed your own ai model to generate logo?

    1. 1

      Can't say more about that, I'm under NDA

  75. 1

    I have seen your tweets very often on twitter and even replied to a few of them. I am very very happy at your success and wish you all the best for your upcoming projects.

    1. 1

      Thansk a lot!!

  76. 0

    Entrepreneur sells AI logo app for $65k after launching MVP in 48 hours and generating $23k in sales; emphasizes importance of persistence and not giving up after previous failures.

  77. 1

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

  78. 2

    This comment was deleted 7 months ago.

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