For this essay, I interviewed Dagobert Renouf, the founder of Logology, a solo-founder SaaS which provides amazing logos at affordable prices.
Note: I am always open to suggestions and improvements. Also, to make it easier for readers to connect with each other. Find each other on Twitter.
In this essay, you’ll learn:
- What common marketing “myths” have been sold to founders
- Why one founder went after the hardest market -- other founders
- The formula for growing and providing value in a market
- Why picking and sharing your logo gives you leverage
What hooked me into his story was the lessons he learned about how to grow his own bootstrapped SaaS and how it can help other Founders.
Discovering marketing “myths” that lure many founders
Our conversation started with him sharing his journey over the past two years growing his business, which is run by himself and his wife.
Much of that journey was around finding a way to grow. He admitted that he initially fell for a common belief many founders have, that the best product will grow.
He tried, over a nearly two-year period, many of the common marketing approaches shilled by authors and thought leaders: paid advertising, SEO, posting on Hacker News/Reddit.
None of these really paid off in a long-term, sustainable way.
Effectively, the myth he uncovered was that many of these commonly shared ideas work for larger or VC-backed companies. But, as a corollary, many, (perhaps all), of these tactics don’t work for the bootstrapped founder.
In fact, it’s quite possible that, according to the “Law of Sh*tty Clickthroughs,” that half-life of most channels (especially those that are paid, where costs can up with popularity) diminishes those returns.
However, he did discover a marketing approach which has resulted in tremendous growth recently:
But as with nearly all things, knowing who your ideal customers are not only impacts how your build and design your product, but determine your marketing.
So who is Logology targeting and why?
Pursuing the Hardest Market - Founders
If you were to target an awesome marketing, other founders will not typically reach the top. He agreed it can be a tough market, but in the end, he answered a question which I think is also important to answer when building a business and defining your targets.
“Do you like working with those customers?”
Another entrepreneur told me, “You will become your customers.”
Which, in the context of that conversation, was ominous. He used as an example billing people at insurance companies and said that if you start a business with those customers, you will need to love them to the point you become them.
Does that still hold true? I don’t know, but given how hard starting something, I think part of loving the problem means loving the customers till you mind meld with them.
A formula for entering a traditionally tough market
However, this approach also created an opportunity.
Disruption theory still holds for the little buys like us: if you can provide a solution to an underserved market, especially on that is growing, you likely have a business.
The wedge he discovered was that most logos can cost upwards of $3,000. He knew this because his wife provided logos to businesses before starting Logology.
By finding a way to provide a great logo at 1/100th the price (about $400) he could discovered Product Market Fit. And he did.
The service takes you through some questions to help understand your brand’s personality and voice. (Note: while many advice-givers will suggest to spend very little time thinking about your logo, I believe there’s huge potential leverage in the right logo that hasn’t been done before. The costs justified putting it on a backburner, but if you can get started with a great, minimum-viable logo, the benefits are worth it as I’ll describe in a moment).
Before you think this time spending time on “fluffy” things like your “voice” and “personality” is not worth it, read on.
Picking Your Logo Gives You Leverage
There are a few things that will make logos, even for early-stage, even pre-MVP, leverage.
The first reason is “forcing clear differentiation.”
Conventional wisdom says that features are what makes a given product different. There are a couple of problems with that.
Most features, bar those with extreme deep-tech, can be copied.
The real challenge is determining what’s the right priority for features. The “nightmare Product Manager” (NPM) who had worked for me could not prioritize. So our MVP had a dashboard that could make an airline pilot go blind. No amount of discussion or review could bring that down. That’s because this NPM had not clarity of persona, value, market differentiation -- no real POV.
That process of picking a personality is a step, albeit it feels fuzzy, a POV. But the reality is it does provide a True North in terms of understanding your customer’s psychology and emotion; it helps you to determine all parts of the product, not just the features, but the look and feel; and it does determine how you “converse” with the market: what is your personality?
This became one of the ideas Dragobert and I drilled into, which explains what his actual successful distribution channel became.
On Twitter You Cannot Hide
Twitter became his channel, which still amazes me. When other channels seem like walled gardens owned by mods, Twitter’s open network still rewards those who have a voice and story that resonates with the right audience.
And Twitter has become a compounding-growth engine for him. And while that’s important, it goes a little bit deeper than that.
At least for other founders, the features/value proposition isn’t the only buying criteria. In fact, it might not even be the primary criteria.
It’s the person behind the product. That’s sort of amazing and interesting.
Personality is leverage. I call it (in my upcoming essay, “The Goodwill Economy: Why Every SaaS Needs an Online Currency”. If you want a copy when it comes out, enter your email below 👇).
But I’ll talk a little about how logos do provide a form of Leverage: external leverage and internal leverage.
Note: internal leverage is one I am now exploring more deeply and realizing, that for founders, it might be the most important form of leverage to grow your business.
So make sure you check that out if you’re ever struggling with doubt, overwork, or anxiety!
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Yes, the tone of voice you project on Twitter is a vehicle for your personality.
But so is your Logo.
Understanding one both informs and amplifies the other.
And it doesn’t need to be picture perfect.
A Minimum Viable Logo gets you out there, and it begins to accrue value as more of the market sees it in conjunction with other things (your product, your tweets, your customer service).
Increasingly, the ability to share your logo, combined with the Value Narrative you share with customers, will become part of your personality.
But I believe, eventually, the logo, with more use, with more social sharing, with more associated ecosystems, collects Goodwill and becomes its own valued currency.
I’ve been working on a concept that helps SaaS Founders more easily build community, create profitable partnerships, and increase retention. It’s not crypto, but it borrows a ton of ideas from that market.
The point is to start thinking of you logo in that way without needing to hire some expensive branding agency when you’re just getting started.
Another form of leverage is “internal” — and it is underused!
Although a successful SaaS, especially a bootstrapped SaaS, might be the new American dream, it’s a hard slog for all of us.
So what does the logo have to do with anything?
I’m adding this into my series called the Hero’s Online Journey, it’s a part of the transformation and super-power you need, as the founder.
Think about Batman, Spider-Man, and Superman: they each have a “logo” and isn’t there tremendous power and identity in that?
When Gordon sends the Batman floodlight into the sky, it impacts himself, the city, but (while we don’t know this) probably also Batman, himself. There’s some underlying psychology that the writers of great superhero stories understand about human beings in the power of projecting identity into their logos.
But what if I want to change my logo later, when I’m bigger?
Not a problem. It’s to be expected. Remember the big Airbnb rebrand?
The point is more to create your identity and meaning that keeps you going, that gives you, the founder, power while also creating “currency” for you in the market.
Look at how Superman’s logo evolved:
I’m going to look into this further, but I don’t think we have to look that far into reality to see that the “logos” aren’t just marketing. They play a role in internal psychology to win.
Sports teams probably draw some power or inspiration from their team logos.
It isn’t a difficult thought experiment if you were to one day, before a playoff game, change their sports logos to something crappy — or to nothing at all — on their jerseys or helmets. Would their performance go up, down, or stay the same?
Conclusion
- Finding the right distribution channel takes time and the ones commonly shilled are for those with money to spend
- Twitter is a great channel for smaller founders because it reveals personality and goodwill
- Logos still matter even if you’re small and bootstrapped -- think about them as the face of your company’s online currency
- Check it out by going here (and you’ll support another bootstrapping SaaS founder if you use that affiliate link)
- As an extra bonus, if you have a live SaaS, buy the logo above, and have a referral program that’s recurring, I’ll write an article like this for you after a short 45-minute interview to get a your Bigger Narrative.