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Left my full-time job to bootstrap a startup with my wife. AMA.

Hey everyone 👋

3 years ago, I left a high-paid software job to bootstrap a startup with my wife.

Our dream was to work on what we love every day, without having to deal with a boss ever again 🤩

So we took a huge risk and decided to use our life-savings to bootstrap it 😬

But it was much harder than we though. Watching our savings get lower by the month is a scary feeling.

And our family didn't always support us, thinking we were crazy. So after 2 years and not finding much success, we were pressured to give up 😫

Still, we decided to try a bit more, and focus on the few customers we had at the beginning. What do they love about us? How can we find more people like them? It helped us stay hopeful and keep pushing 💪

And eventually, this summer, we found a way out. Thanks to a new marketing approach using twitter, we started getting some traction 🤩

So if you have any questions about our journey or marketing approach, I'm happy to answer it 😃

BTW: our product is logology.co – a way to get a designer-quality logo for your startup in 5 minutes 👀

  1. 38

    Hi indie hackers! I'm the wife. 😃👋
    I'd love to help too. If you have any questions, go ahead!

    1. 5

      thanks for sharing! your and @dagorenouf's site is the nicest I've seen in a while, congrats on building it and on your revenue!

      1. 3

        I'm gonna second this. Such a unique and fun website.

      2. 3

        Thank you so much Mags 🙏

      3. 2

        Thank you very much Mags! ☺️

    2. 3

      Your logos are varied and widely applicable. Such an impressive portfolio in and of itself, no matter the outcome of Logology!

      What can you tell us about the journey of creating a logo system: a system of creating a variety of logos, a system of helping buyers discovering the right logo?

      I'm also interested in this transition from service to productized service that your logo system was born out of. I think a lot of us can benefit from that transition in mindset.

      1. 3

        Hi Pascal!
        I'm very happy you appreciate my logo design work. I love this job: creating logos is one of the things I love the most in my professional life (along with writing books and imagining new pieces of art). I have an emotional relationship with each logo that I design. I'm not a musician, but, from what I understand of this activity, I feel like if each logo is a song that I compose and record in order to tell a story and create pleasure in the eyes of others.

        Creating a logo system was very exciting! I've been a graphic designer for 15 years and from day one, I was fascinated by semiology. So, my process is always:
        – first, find the meaning. What do we want to express here? Who are we speaking to?
        – second, find the shape. The design choices are the result of tons of experience in order to get closer to the message, and still keep the form legible, visible, useful, etc.
        Through the years, I’ve invented workshops with clients, using design thinking methods to get to the meaning, to understand the keywords of each project.
        We used all this experience to create our questionnaire. The most difficult was to synthesize in a few relevant personas. Actually, Dagobert and I are fond of the Enneagram and we’ve been inspired by it.
        Once I had keywords, I organized them and imagined logos from there. For example, what kind of image can speak about energy, dynamism, movement? All these words brought me zigzag lines, waves, arrows, etc.
        It took me 3 years to design more than 750 logos. I design each week. To me, designing logos became a bit like calligraphy: the more I do it the more it feels like writing.

        It’s been difficult sometimes for me to go from service to product. The main difficulty was to keep universal, so that many logos can suits many projects, and not try to be as precise as I can be when I’m designing a tailored logo. Hopefully, Dagobert is better than me at prioritizing. He’s a very good product designer, he has the feeling for it. So he’s totally listening to me, referring to me for logo design, but he also can tell me where or how we can simplify the process when I lost myself in it.
        Once we built the main structure of the logo system, it was much easier to think of new ideas in this system. It’s like sculpture or drawing: once you have the proportions, every gesture you do goes along with the rest and adds a new deepness. I still have new ideas I want to had and it’s exciting!

        1. 4

          Amazing that you design logos each week. I love that cadence.

          Type 1 in Enneagram here. Completely integrating into the epicurean when I'm at my best, and dissolving into the misunderstood artist when at my worst. I love the dynamism of this system, the dimension of the best / worst behaviours, and recognize what a high-functioning Type 1 feels like for me.

          I hear the difficulty, the stretch required to go from service to product. You sort of have to switch your empathy away from the viewer of the logo to the buyer of the logo, don't you?

          Thanks for sharing about the emotional aspects of your work. It shows that your discernment of subtleties, the weighing of tiny variables into each decision, has been at the heart of the body of work that is the questionnaire and the logos of logology.

          1. 3

            Glad you asked Lucie that question Pascal. Plus, your response was also very insightful.

            I'm also a type 1, which means I also can appreciate the nuance and subtleties Lucie puts into her design process/system.

            I came across logology months ago, however will be using it for the first time in the next couple of weeks (beginning to work on branding for my business) And I have to admit I'm really looking forward to using it.

            Also recommended a few business owners/friends I know to use it as well as I loved the look of both the brand and website.

            1. 2

              Wow thank you so much for recommending us Janinah 😍

              Hit me up in the live chat when you come back to get your logo 💙

          2. 3

            Btw Lucie is a 7w6 and I'm a 3w4 Pascal. Nice to know you better 🤩

        2. 3

          that’s awesome 😂 I’m the same way with typography and type design. I can tell you really enjoy it

          I recognized several fonts—which ones are your favorites? 😄 What stood out to me wasn’t the font per se, but how well you combined it with other elements and described their intention. Well done.

          1. 2

            Hi @fromtheexchange ! I’m happy you noticed my passion for typography. I’m graduated in type design and typography has been at the heart of all my design work. Logo design is not very far away from typography.
            Thank you for your kind word. 💗 I’m super glad that you appreciate how I’ve used typography for Logology. 😊
            I have a few favorites, but, I would say the winner is the Poppins. I love its simplicity in design and efficiency, in legibility and style. It’s very easy to combine it with my icon designs, every time the result looks neat, fresh, modern, expressive, powerful, and yet, not too eccentric. Here it is, I confess, I have a crush on Poppins Bold & Extrabold. 😅 Beautiful type design by Indian Type Foundry and Jonny Pinhorn. (Jonny Pinhorn also designed Karla for Google fonts which is another favorite of mine) [https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Poppins]

    3. 1

      How it feels like to be aside of an entrepreneur?

      1. 7

        I believe they both work on it side by side 💪. So the better question is; is it hard to separate personal life from business? Do you even want to do that? Any tips on running a startup with your partner? :)

        1. 6

          Hi Dominik,
          You're right! Side by side is the mojo. :) I love your question.
          Actually, a lot of friends already asked me about it these last few years. There are always pros and cons and not everybody can choose this life, but, to me, it's the best! I do love working with my husband. I feel fortunate that we can be such a good team and create our dream together. It's very strong this energy to dream and keep on together.
          One of the good things about working with your partner is communication: you're not afraid to say thought things, you can share vulnerable emotions that, maybe, you won't dare speak about to others. This superpower is called trust. Once you have that and let it be, I think you can ride all over the world together. I don't know any relationship like that, except family or very old friends.
          The risk of working with your partner is that personal feelings or subjects come into the business and mess with it. It's also difficult sometimes to separate the two sides of life, especially when failures or doubts come into the equation… I'm not an expert but, through the years, I just learn to say: hey, I love working with you and I trust and I love what you put in the business, and I also need to spend time speaking of something else, doing something else, creating something else (it can be trying a new chili recipe).
          Another thing I love about working with my husband is that I've learned so much about him, and about us, through this experience. It's a beautiful feeling! But for that, you have to keep an open mind, even in tough times…
          In the end, when I chat with my friends who have kids, it feels to me that the energy of running a startup with your partner looks a lot like parenting a toddler and still being careful to preserve your relationship as a couple.

        2. 4

          Yes I would say Dagobert might very well be the "aside" of the real entrepreneur who Lucie is.

          1. 2

            Thank you Pascal! :) Sometimes I'm the "aside", sometimes it's him! :D

      2. 2

        Hi Bogdan, it feels great! My entrepreneur is very cute. :)

  2. 6

    Big fan of Logology.co Love what you and Lucie Baratte have created. You are a dream team. I gave Logology a test run for my project and I was blown away by the cool process you have crafted to get awesome logo proposals. Questions:

    1. Have you invested in any kind of Ads FB, Google did they work?
    2. Do you use email marketing, newsletters. And if so are they any good?
    3. Do you do anything for SEO, blog posts, articles, received any traffic from them?
    4. What was your biggest marketing investment (time/money) that flopped and you regret doing?
    5. Your paying customers, can you share top 3 countries that they come from?

    Thinking of more until you finish these :)))))

    1. 5

      Hey Lucian, thank you so much for the kind words 🙏

      1. We invested $500 in google ads. It completely failed (0 sales). I think it's because we tried to attach ourselves to a general keyword "logo generator" but our tool is actually tailored to startups. The people that came in were lots of students and 12-yo twitch streamers, so it wasn't a good fit. I haven't found a keyword that would be significant for us though, so I stopped.
      2. We sponsored 4 newsletters ($200 total), and it failed: 0 sales. I feel the main problem is as soon as you're displayed as "sponsor" people are on the defensive and don't convert as well. They're less willing to give you the benefit of the doubt than organic traffic and word of mouth referrals...
      3. With our google ads keyword failure (1), we didn't feel too confident about SEO anymore 😅. Since all the "logo" related keywords are mad competitive, we put it on hold. But since then, I talked about it with other makers and I thing we could target long tail keywords that are highly specific with low competition. This is the next thing we will try.
      4. Google ads but I don't regret it, cause I learned something about the market. but it was a hard pill to swallow, seing that I wouldn't be able to use google ads for easy scale 😫
      5. USA- 36%; UK- 15%; CA - 12%
      1. 3
        1. Thought so, I invested $250 in FB ads with 0 return
        2. I understand thanks for sharing
        3. It's a good idea to try but it's for the long term. You need couple of months for results and that's hard when you burn reserve money. I can relate to that
        4. I understand you were disappointed about the channel not necessary about the $500
        5. This is the gem here, thank you for sharing this. It's really important to have this in mind when doing any marketing move. For me it's almost the same with US, UK, Italy, DE, Canada in this order. Corelating with your information it's much clearer where we need to push :)

        Thank you very much for your time Dagobert you are very kind. I can't believe how much we can learn through these sessions. Go Logology.co

        1. 4

          Thank you Dagobert for these wonderful session and your transparency.

          Really help a lot.

          I just want to add, on running ads— this is what I think.

          1. It's very hard to start with ads particularly if you are a startup and no one knows shit about you.

          That's why ads from brands beat startup 18:1 in performance.

          Why?

          In marketing, the greatest barrier is not Price, nor product but Trust...

          For a startup that no one knows, no trust coupled with seeing ads about them...

          You get it.

          Unless you see people recommending your product enough, don't jump to ads yet.

          Try other methods.

          1. 4

            Thanks Daniel, this is what I noticed as well. Doing organic (via twitter) helped me bridge the trust gap.

            I convert more using organic channels where people are just curious about my product (no intention to buy) than with paid channels where people have a clear intention to buy (type "logo generator" in google).

            The number 1 thing is trust, even more than intent 🤯

        2. 3

          Thank you Lucian! And about the countries, I know a few indiehackers who go after their home country only, thinking it will be easier...

          But it's a trap, and it's actually way harder! I'm from France, but most of my sales don't come from here. Even day 1 when our product was still clumsy, targeting North America is what helped us stay afloat.

          Don't limit yourself to only a few countries, there's 0 reason to.

  3. 5

    Did you think at any moment to go back to work(job) ?

    1. 5

      Hey Bogdan, I did yes, especially late last year.

      I was even excited at some job offers I saw 👀 There's more money in tech than ever and lots of crypto startups I would love to work for 🤯

      But then I remembered that it would be back to square one. Yes I would make money and relax a bit... but I wouldn't be "building my own legacy". Just helping someone else with their vision. This would remove a lot of meaning and purpose from my life. 😫

      So I decided to keep trying for as long as I'm able, even if it means I have to spend most of my savings. It's a big risk but the sense of purpose I feel is more important to me right now.

      1. 3

        I understand your point and that's why I'm asking you this. It looks very risky from a well-paid job to uncertain things.

        1. 1

          yeah it's a huge risk. That's why you need a very good reason to do it. For me it's because I need more meaning in my life.

          But for a long time I was happy just making more money safely! I only started the startup at 29 😅

  4. 4

    How would you compare your happiness levels between being employed and bootstrapping?

    1. 7

      Hey Kiza 👋

      Employed: happy and relaxed, can make plans for the future, but always afraid I'm wasting my life away 😞

      Bootstrapping: stressed out, no vacation, anxious about the future, but learning and growing more than ever before, feel like I'm aligned with my purpose.

      1. 5

        Sounds familiar 😅

        In retrospect I think it's unfair to compare an established career to the first years of the bootstrappers journey. The first few years of any new career is gonna be uneasy.

        1. 3

          This is spot on. I remember when I started freelancing, first 3-5 years were a mess. Then I found my footing and it became no big deal. Hope it's the same with my startup 🤞

        2. 2

          @Kiza , @dagorenouf : Just wondering , while working in the job , how did you deal with bosses and co-workers getting to know about your entrepreneurial pursuits. Not everyone likes having moonlighting employee, so do you have advice on what to tell and what not to tell your boss ? :)

          1. 1

            Hey mate, I left my job before I even started so I'm not sure how to handle it.

            But I remember working on a side project during my job before and it didn't bother anyone. Maybe don't present it as a business, just as a fun project that you're trying.

      2. 2

        This is exactly how I feel 🙂

        1. 1

          Happy to be on this journey together mate 💙💪

  5. 3

    @dagorenouf is the real deal. I wish I recorded my conversation with him, but I did write up in an essay lessons learned from this inspiring and useful story: https://link.satchel.id/logology-essay

    1. 1

      Thank you so much Tim! I enjoyed our conversation a lot. Best of luck with the "startup coin" (I don't know how to call it 😅) project :)

  6. 3

    When you mention growing using Twitter, do you mean posting on Twitter to your existing followers?

    1. 2

      Hey Molly, I had to figure out the right approach for that. I shared my findings here https://twitter.com/dagorenouf/status/1426543254905016324

  7. 3

    Congrats again Dago! With your attitude and willingness to serve, I've no doubt your business will continue to grow 🚀

    1. 2

      Thanks welly, this means a lot to me that you say that! Serving others is the shortcut to growth, especially when you can scale it via social media 🔥

  8. 3

    Just went through the process, i like it , very interactive and can see why people are using your service! keep it up!

    1. 1

      Thank you so much Liam 🙏 Best of luck on your journey as well 😃

  9. 3

    Beautiful and distinctive website! I also left a high paying job, built a product but couldn't find success yet. Your journey truly motivates!

    1. 2

      Thank you Praveen! We're still not successful enough to get a salary, but getting our first WINS feels good 😌. Congrats on having the courage to follow your dream. You got this 💪

  10. 3

    Hi, really cool to see. Congrats!

    So your main turning point was using Twitter as a marketing channel, right?
    What were the biggest successes in growing your Twitter user base, so what worked for you and what didn't?

    Really cool to see your success, thanks for sharing 👍🏽

    1. 1

      Thank you Sunny 🙏

      Yes that's the main turning point. Growing and connecting with people (at scale) via twitter opened up more sales, partnership opportunities, being featured and promoted by other people...

      I outlined my core learnings here https://twitter.com/dagorenouf/status/1426543254905016324

  11. 3

    Hey Dagobert! Just want to say congrats, I saw you everywhere on Twitter, you’re killing it, keep this momentum going 🔥💪

    1. 2

      Thank you so much Minh-Phuc, I really enjoy following your journey too. We're rising together 🔥💙

  12. 3

    Hi Dagobert & Lucie

    Great to hear from other Indie Hacker couples making it work. My wife and I have worked at home together for 25 years now 🤯.

    What has been the biggest issue working together? 😀

    Thanks for the AMA

    1. 2

      Hi James, great question!

      Actually the work part is easy, we both respect and admire each other's work a lot. We're also complimentary so there's no competition" I code and she designs!

      What's been hard is putting all of our financial eggs in the same basket. It is such a risk to build a startup, not having one of us on a regular job makes us extra anxious. We really have to make this work 😬

      And then the big problem is disconnecting. We tend to only talk about work and lose the "loving relationship" part a bit... We miss the simpler times of just seeing each other every night and talking about nothing. It wears us down.

      So now learning to arrange time where we both disconnect and talk about everything but work. It helps 💙

      Best of luck to your power couple 😃

  13. 3

    Just popping in to say this is the most thoroughly-replied to AMA I think I've ever seen. All of your answers are super helpful and descriptive. Well done. Hats off to you!

    1. 2

      Thank you so much Kyle, I appreciate it a lot! I'm just so happy people have questions for me 😂

  14. 3

    How did you market your product and what is your tech stack?

    1. 1

      Hey Ankit, welcome to IH!
      Our tech stack is ruby on rails and aws amplify on the backend. On the frontend it's react and GatsbyJs with styled-components.

      Marketing really took off when I started building a twitter audience. I outlined the steps here https://twitter.com/dagorenouf/status/1426543254905016324

  15. 3

    Keep it up! Looking good!

    1. 1

      Thank you Gene, we got this 🤩🔥

  16. 3

    Congratulations again to both of you! Logology looks absolutely fantastic. I'm envious because you have the very skills I'm so sadly lacking: UI & UX!

    You're actually really close to where I live! Je suis en Belgique, tout près de Tournai et de la frontière Française ;-)

    1. 2

      I had no idea we were this close Sebastien, nice to meet you! Thanks for the kind words. Let's keep in touch and grab a drink in Tournai or Lille 🙏💙

  17. 3

    Congrats on the milestone. Could totally empathize with the parts where you had to bootstrap to profitability. Inspiring journey!

    Was curious to know how many iterations it took for logology to find product-market fit & how did you realize the problem to be working on ?

    1. 2

      Hi Goutham,

      I’m not sure we have product market fit, just a way to get users and that’s enough for us right now. It’s still the same core as the first iteration, but we did some big improvements like remove the need to signup.

      Other than that it’s mostly small iterations on the landing page, and add more logos to the catalog over time.

      It’s my wife & cofounder who came across the problem in her work as a freelance designer. Lots of people asked her to design logos, but she was too expensive for them ($3k). So we thought by automating it, it could be affordable to more people ($100).

  18. 3

    This looks awesome and I can't wait to use it on my next project!

    Idea I had as I was reading this: Have you tried just researching all the small businesses out there that have crappy logos, generating a sample or teaser for them, and sending them an email? Small businesses are EXTREMELY results oriented and they would love help with their branding at the same time.

    Some friction I was feeling while trying your process: I was having some hesitation while trying your signup process because I really wanted to know what the results would look like and how the process looks, but I wasn't ready to take the leap on a side project I have because it's not ready to be shown... I ended up leaving the process a couple steps in because it felt wayyy too intimate for me right now because I'm in the "window shopping" phase and not ready for a real human to look at my creation. 😊

    1. 2

      Hello Ryan, thank you so much for trying it out!

      Actually, the human work was all done ahead of time. We automated everything, so when you're done with the questions, it shows your matches and you can buy one right away. Give it a go and let me know what you think 👀

      I'm still wary of cold outreach for now. Because our product LTV is $70, going after businesses one by one seems like it would take a lot of time. So we're focused on more "broader" marketing like building an audience on social media.

      1. 2

        2 ways to fix that... Increase your LTV or since you've already automated everything and you're playing the volume game; automate your cold reach out process. At $70 LTV you have to find ways to pump volume through your pipes.

        1. 2

          Thanks man, yeah i'm trying to grow my social audience for that. So far so good. Time consuming but growth follows 🙏

          The thing with automating cold emailing at scale is that it's costly. So I'm waiting until we improve our LTV for that (have additional products in the pipeline to hopefully get it over $100).

          1. 3

            Just start Facebook/Instagram messaging businesses... Cheap and quick. That's how I quickly ramped up one of my businesses to $13k/mth in 3 months.

            1. 1

              You're doing great man congrats 🔥 Which business is it?

  19. 3

    Awesome post Dagobert,
    It's given me a lot to think about!
    Love this IH community 🥰

    1. 2

      Thank you John, I love it too 💙

  20. 3

    Hey, amazing results and a cool product :)

    1. 2

      Thank you Ben! Just looked at AdSigner and I love the concept. Goes to show that focusing on a tiny thing most people don't think of (email signature) can yield big results if done correctly.

      Congrats, and I appreciate the enterprise focus, great strategy 🔥

      1. 3

        yeap, you are correct about that :) thank you for kind words. Also, there was no other way to go about it in my case.

  21. 3

    Yo Dagobert,

    You don't have to reply.

    Just know, if you are seeing this...

    You are winning.

    😂

    1. 2

      Haha thank you Daniel 😂🔥

  22. 3

    I am curious to know who your customers are? Are they photographers, realestate agents, etc ? The reason I am asking is, I have a couple of photo watermarking web apps.
    Watermark.ink and
    Watermarkhere.com

    I wondering if we could possibly collaborate in any way.

    Coincidentally my wife and I made these apps together.

    1. 3

      Wow this is so cool Prakis, I think a collaboration could make a lot of sense.

      We have customers in almost every industry, but it's often tech related (SaaS products, tech consultants, mobile apps). Also quite a bit of freelancers, for their own solo business or their clients.

      We did sell a logo to a photographer once. But so far don't have lots of traction within the design / art space. It might just be because most our marketing is in the tech sphere.

      Please shoot me an email (or twitter DM) about a collaboration. (listed on my profile page)

      1. 2

        Thank you, I sent you a DM on twitter.

  23. 3

    Congratulations guys, you showed a lot of resilience and fortitude for keeping working on what you love and ignoring all the noise. Thanks for sharing.

    1. 2

      Thank you Samuel, hopefully we will be able to make it. Best of luck on your journey 🔥🚀

  24. 3

    Do you have kids? If yes, did you fear for your/their future when you quit your fulltime job?
    Thanks,

    1. 5

      Hi Orlie,
      actually this was a big question for both of us when we started the journey.

      We tried to conceive at the very beginning (we had just gotten married), but it didn't work out as quickly as we thought. Then we started to see the startup was way harder than we thought... so we realized having a kid at the same time would make it almost impossible to do.

      We felt like we had to choose between the two.

      Now my wife just turned 40, so it was a big decision. Delaying having kids would probably be the end of it.

      But after a lot of thinking, we realized it wasn't as important to us as chasing our startup dream. Also, my wife is a novelist and she wanted to publish her first book. And she was scared she would have to sacrifice this if we had children + the startup.

      So we gave up on having kids basically. But I'm happy to report my wife published her novel last year (she sold more than 1,500 copies in France, not bad for a first!) and our startup is tentatively starting to take off.

      It took us about 2 years to find peace with the decision though. And the answer 100% depends on the individual and how they feel about having a family or not.

      1. 4

        Thank you Dagobert for your total transparency, I definitely did not ask a simple question!

  25. 3

    Hey ! What was your approach to Twitter that drove your success? How did you start building your audience on Twitter? Thanks!

    1. 3

      Hey Hugh, my twitter account was desert for years. I had 150 followers (mostly people from real life) and whenever I tweeted it would have 0 likes or engagement.

      Then I decided to tweet more, and eventually found a way to make it work. I summarized most of my learnings in a twitter thread (makes sense lol)

      1. 3

        I love the sharing your experience -> curiosity -> views -> sales part. Congrats on your success!

        1. 1

          Thank you Abhishek! 🙏

  26. 3

    Hi! I'm Victor, i'm building a tool by myself, i have a full contract but in the nights i work on my project. Your history is very inspiring. I have a few questions:
    -What's the stack behind Logology?
    -So, it was a matter of marketing? What another big changes you do from the initial product to succeed?

    Thanks!

    1. 2

      Thank you Victor!

      I built logology with ruby on rails and aws amplify on the backend. On the frontend it's react and GatsbyJs with styled-components.

      Our problem was mostly a matter of marketing, we just needed way more startup founders to visit the site to make some sales. But before that, we still made a couple changes that were very impactful:

      • delay signup until after people got value from the app, this increased sales big time
      • offer different tiered package, and reassure people that they could upgrade anytime if they need to
      • a/b test different version of the landing page / cta buttons for better click through rates

      Best of luck on building up your project 🔥

      1. 3

        Thanks!
        I have more questions :P
        That Bootstrapping mood you mention, it's how you feel now? or is it when you where building your startup?
        on what are you currently working on for your startup? new releases? more marketing?
        You do all by yourself? How many hours do you work a day?

        1. 3

          Happy to answer Victor :)

          still building and bootstrapping, trying to make it profitable (and finally get ourselves a salary from it).

          Right now I work full time on my marketing (growing my twitter audience mostly). My wife is hard at work adding more logos to our catalog (this is the main value of our product).

          We're all by ourselves. I work about 7 hours a day, 6 days a week. My wife is part time: 3 days a week. And she takes some design gigs on the side to keep us afloat financially.

  27. 3

    You've been having a lot of success on Twitter lately. How much of that would be due to responding to tweets by other Indie Hackers?

    I've also noticed that a lot of your tweets frame your success as something that has happened because you persisted through the tough stages and never gave up. How are Indie Hackers responding to those types of tweets?

    The above comment isn't a criticism; it reminds me of entrepreneurs I knew who experienced survivorship bias and lost a lot. I think you have so much to share. It would suck to only see one part of the story.

    Sorry if this comes across as harsh. I'm really curious. Have been doing this for 11+ years (broken up by years of illness) so have seen a lot.

    1. 2

      Hey Jade, happy to answer any questions, no worries at all 🙏

      I've come to understand that when you engage with other people's content first, twitter will show your tweets way more. And you get more chance at getting viral. So I make it a point to do that for a couple of hours every day. This is a big reason for my growth there.

      The reason I talk so much of not giving up is because I'm always under the looking eye of friends / family members who don't see the potential and think we're stupid for spending all our money on this. So I'm trying to give myself courage to keep going and not quit 😅

      But it's also because I firmly believe in "sticking with it". As long as you keep trying different things and pivot when necessary, I think it will lead you to bigger WINS than to start another project every 6 months like so many people do.

  28. 3

    Regarding in-laws pressuring you to quit:

    What would you recommend people do to prepare for those kinds of interactions with family members who intervene on your situation?

    1. 3

      Hey Pascal, I don't know if there's a right answer to this, it can be very disappointing and hard to go through.

      But I've learned that a lot of people feel uncomfortable with the fact that I'm building a company (my best friend + some family members). I think it's because it challenges their expectations of what life is (get a job you don't like and work at it for 45 years) and it makes them feel un-easy.

      I don't know how you can prepare for it, other than realize building a company WILL trigger some people. I didn't know it would be such a big deal, but it is. Some people will go out of their way to tell you they admire you, and some will be triggered and try to (unconsciously) sabotage you 🤷‍♂️

      1. 3

        Thanks for that.

        How much better do you think you are at reacting to their nosy remarks compared to the beginning? What do you think has changed in you?

        Have you developed some techniques to, for example, name their underlying insecurity to defuse their attack?

        "I'm trying to understand what makes you comment on our choice to build a business. It looks to me like it's making you nervous."

        "Have you been ever interested in starting a business yourself? When was this?"

        1. 2

          We tried listening and actually bringing them in for advice, but saw they didn't even care to look into what we were building...

          Non violent communication is great but it doesn't work when people are stuck in their ways and so stressed out by the situation that they become irrational.

          My best friend is actually not my best friend anymore now. But that's life 🤷‍♂️

          1. 4

            So bizarre how people can be insecure by watching someone else making their decisions.

  29. 3

    hey Dagobert!

    congrats on your wonderful journey so far! Watching your savings go down each month is super scary for sure.

    How did you manage to keep yourself afloat during this time? And to stay motivated? How di d you find your initial product market fit/sales before your Twitter marketing strategy paid off?

    Thanks again for doing this AMA Dagobert.

    Appreciate it :)

    1. 3

      Thank you Shounak 🙏

      • we relied on our savings for the whole time. Also came across an unexepected inheritance at some point which helped extend our runway
      • motivation was hard, but talking with customers and getting their impression helped us the most. Knowing that what we did was helpful and important to them made us see meaning and a reason to keep believing. So now I go out of my way to ask every customer what they think, to get regular motivation boosts ☺️
      • About the PMF, I just focused on adding features related to what my first customers loved. I still don't think we found the perfect PMF, but we got closer.
      1. 3

        That's very inspiring man!

        I resonate with Point 2 the most - struggling to keep the motivation intact. Your answer definitely helped me with that.

        Got to keep moving forward.

        Thanks again Dago!

        1. 2

          You're welcome mate, happy it did help 🔥

  30. 2

    Thanks for sharing your story with so much honesty. Very glad about your recent success!

    1. 1

      thank you so much polunga 💙. Best of luck on your journey 🔥🚀

  31. 2

    Any idea when you'll start supporting logos longer than 22 characters?

    I have a non-traditional brand for one of my projects. It's a phrase, really -- a slogan used as the name itself. 28 characters long.

    1. 2

      Hey Nick, thanks for trying it out.

      It's a limitation because it's hard to guarantee it will be visually pleasing after that. Haven't found a way to automate yet.

      What you can do is use a shorter name to decide on fonts / color / symbol. Then when you purchase, I'll rebuild the files with the correct name 👀

  32. 2

    Very inspiring, thanks.
    Bravo à tous les deux ;)

    1. 1

      Merci Ousmane 🙏💙

  33. 2

    Congrats on your success! This is such sweet story. 😊 It reminds me on my boyfriend and me. I was working in a company as well, as a
    frontend developer. I wasn't super happy, and I quit, so we decided to start our own web agency. There were hard times, but we managed to push through. Here we are now, still together after 9 years, living together, working together and having baby on the way. Life is good if you have courage to pursue your dreams and instinct. All the best to you two!

    1. 1

      Thank you Jelena 🙏 9 years as work partners is huge 🤯

      Congrats on making it work and on the baby 💙

  34. 2

    It's refreshing to read your story, guys. My wife and I launched a digital studio back then and made about $35k before we closed shop. Was hard but quite an exciting adventure tho 😃.

    Wish you all the best, @Dagobert and @Lucie !

    1. 2

      Being on this journey with your significant other is quite thrilling indeed. We learned a lot about each other and feel closer than ever before.

      Thank you for the kind words Dan 😃

  35. 3

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

    1. 3

      Always with the tough questions ;)

      1. 3

        This comment was deleted a year ago.

    2. 2

      Hey Mick, yes we did.

      This is a survival salary for French standards. But it will allows us to stop relying on savings. The exact figure is 4300€ 👀

  36. 3

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

    1. 2

      Hi Christoffer, so good to hear from you 🤩 How is NoteBucket doing?

      1. we posted about logology in indiehackers, reddit, and lots of startup communities
      2. we would start building an audience from day one. Would have saved us at least 1 year of having almost no sales 😢
      1. 2

        How would you have attempted at building the audience from day one if you had to start over, @dagorenouf?

        1. 2

          Hey Goutham, basically I would do the same I did here: talk about my journey and feelings as a founder. And engage with others a lot.

          I shared more about my approach here https://twitter.com/dagorenouf/status/1426543254905016324

      2. 3

        This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

        1. 2

          Hope you can make it! If you want we could also add your testimonial on our site with a link to it. Don't expect a thousand hits but it can help a tad.

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