How Logology CEO Dagobert Renouf grew Logology to $4.6K revenue and 100 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is doug renew he spent 12 years uh programming so far and then finally landed his dream tech job it's a great team great salary good projects but after three months he started getting bored and realized that maybe it wasn't the perfect fit after all he wanted a bigger challenge he had another choice to start his own company he's now building a company called logology.com all right dr marty you're ready to take to the top yeah let's go all right yeah so what was the full-time job out of curiosity what were you working on uh i was an engineer and the last full-time job i mean that dream job i referred to that was uh i was responsible from engineering mobile apps for big companies i was working at a web you know development studio in the us i worked remotely so that was kind of like the perfect job for me i could work remotely from france for big projects that were in the us you know that was for a big tv channel mobile project i had lots of responsibilities lots of autonomy the team was great uh but i still got bored out of it after a while but uh you know kind of like i wanted more out of this yeah when did you quit uh that was uh uh three years ago now almost that was almost three years ago and i was after a bit more than a year working with them and and i always like to ask i mean when you you put your full-time gig and go into a side project obviously you ideally have some cash savings to give yourself some time to launch your new project how did you personally think about your financial situation when you quit so uh basically because i was working for a u.s company and i was living in france so the where i live like the cost of living is way less expensive uh so i was able to save a lot of cash during that year so i basically just thought of like uh saving as much as i could during that time and then i could use that as my runway for my startup yeah and and so what was that can i ask what was that job paying you full time before you quit uh i was already i was like 80 of the time because i already negotiated wanting to work a bit on a side project and i was making i think that was uh five or six thousand euros a month for like was it nervous giving that up uh you know what actually that was my last job but that's almost my first job because before that i did freelancing for like 10 years so i was used to like being in the you know and not having a salary that was actually a pretty real experience for me to have a salary for a year so that wasn't scary you know so when you quit and this was in 2018 right yeah when you quit did you already know what you wanted to launch or were you not sure yet so that was funny because i had an idea for something i wanted to create basically kind of like wordpress but for mobile apps because that's what i was working on at the time so i thought well we should make a way to give people a way to create a mobile app as easy as it is to run wordpress so that was my idea but then i got married and with my wife during a honeymoon she's a graphic designer and we had the idea for what we are working on now so that's actually my co-founder it's my wife oh and so so initially i started with an idea but during the honeymoon like that was like a couple months after uh we just had this idea of working together on it and i don't know why but like i think it's because we were like we were in the us doing a road trip for this travel and that was just like so exciting and we thought let's do this crazy thing and you know we decided in a few minutes so yeah so it changed everything and so the the sort of cms for like mobile apps or wordpress for mobile apps is that what eventually pivoted into rogology or did you shut that down oh yeah i didn't even pivot it that was just like i was just starting to work on it but i didn't even do anything so i did so when did you launch mobility so the off so the first launch we still say we're in beta but uh we're still live for like uh that was late april of last year so that's a bit more than a year okay and is it still pre-revenue or have you launched a paywall yet uh we have revenue it's not profitable in the terms that we cannot depend on it yet but we are making money like we we're actually we had a couple sales today and we're almost at like the 100 sale so that's pretty cool that's exciting is it all sort of recurring revenue you have three plans 49 99 and 400 per month uh no it's it's not per month it's actually one time because it's just like because it's just like a logo for now we might expand and add stuff on top of it to get more you know according revenue but it's hard to find like you know when you buy a logo what would you need to pay for monthly there's not really anything so it's more like site services that we could add so yeah it's a one-time 100 sales that's exciting that's something to celebrate so if you how much revenue from 100 sales well i guess we must be at around uh because i didn't i don't have it precisely but i think it's probably 6 000 something like that yeah with the because we changed price multiple times yeah and so how do you you know um i guess the question is between 2019 and 2020 and even right now as you're scaling what are you doing to make sure you guys have other cash coming in while you're building your side project so i got i mean it's a pretty intense thing i'm gonna tell you but uh basically right after we started logology uh my mother passed away she had cancer so that was like a very troubling time and actually that almost killed the company right away because like honestly for months i couldn't work really well to be honest and so i was the cash was like you know running low and stuff like that uh and so we almost thought about quitting you know that was just like end of 2018 and early 2019 and and my mom was broke also so i had all this depth coming in i mean whole mess terrible situation emotionally and financially and so we were kind of like ready to give it up and we were giving it a few months but like there was no way we would have been successful in that time frame and like i got lucky in the sense that in that terrible situation though my mom was pretty young she was like 60 she was 62 or 64. i never know but like she was 62 or 64. and um because i never know like if it's the date when she had it or like when she died anyway but she was around 64 and she had like some sort of insurance that could trigger if she passed away before 65 and so i got that and to me that kind of like because my mom when i was very young she always supported me uh and it felt like some sort of sign you know it's weird to say you know but like when you when somebody dies you you catch these things like you try to you know hold yourself to these signs and i felt like wow uh that's a sign like that that was some sort of out of nowhere i was ready to close the company and we got this insurance that was you know pretty significant uh and that allowed us to keep going for a couple more years um and so i was like wow we really need to make this successful now because i don't know like uh i felt like i had to make it successful now kind of like to make her proud in a way you know we had a very troubled relationship at the end but like there was this thing about uh i don't know like so so we kept going and to but now my co-founder so my wife she's starting to take a few you know side gigs but uh that's mostly how we're on it now and yeah well well thanks for sharing that story dog over it uh that's you know that is that's the truth that's what happens and i appreciate you being transparent and sort of sharing that with everyone um so 2018 to 2019 tricky time for you um the insurance is a bit of a surprise how many years of runway did that give you when it came in i like how much you know of your cash like three three years three to four years something like that okay i mean my savings when i started i had like two years and it added like three to four years yeah and and how do you so well like one of the things that i see a lot with donors that raise vc capital is it's so easy to raise money you see a lot of really good founders stuck in bad ideas and they feel like they can't give up that bad idea because they've raised vc yeah so in your case if your mom is sort of the angel vc that's yeah that's kind of it yeah exactly but but my question to you would be like if you at some at some point realize logology cannot scale how you hoped it would scale shouldn't you wouldn't your mom want you to shut it down and and pivot into something new and how do you think about that yeah the way you think about it is the way we created logology was from like the years of experience working with people in the design industry you know doing design services my wife was doing that for years so we know there's a need so we don't we didn't even have to validate it i mean it was instantly validated and so it's more about how can we make it successful so it might not be able to scale right now we're struggling with like distribution for example how to scale that so we're having trouble there but i so much my plan is like keep giving it like you know if as long as i have ideas for like making it bigger i keep pushing uh and it tends to bring results and if at some point i can cannot get bigger what i will do is i will make it into more like a passive thing so that's still running that still makes some revenue you know from selling logos from time to time and then i will indeed pivot and i actually have an id for a pivot for a while so it's funny uh it's something that that was brought up by people naturally and so so i might do that but i still you know so i'm trying to not get stuck in like oh i wanted to succeed quickly and so as long as it because as soon as it becomes challenging you give up and you're like yo let's pivot let's pivot let's favorite i'm more like there's something there we have good testimonials we have good feedback we have sales so let's keep pushing uh you know let's keep taking some risk but at the same time we might need to pivot at some point because it might just be unrealistic so let's be aware of that well i mean you listen you caught my eye on twitter and i went to the site and i said this is a beautifully designed website i want to interview this guy and that's why oh yeah so so my hope is that anyone listening around they go check out logology.com check out this thing i mean if you guys have logos you want designed you've got to support this guy it's incredible design in fact uh doggober we on september 9th are having the lac 1000 sas award show in austin texas i want to design like a beautiful frame like award with sort of lac 1000 and like oh wow okay yeah and like that might be i mean i would love to work with you on that i'd love to pay you to design that and maybe uh to design an actual like like the statue like a world itself exactly wow statue or it could be a prince like a framed thing like a shadow box sort of deal but yeah wow i would love that i mean not me but like my wife was like who's the designer she would like yeah she would love that how do you guys what role so if she does all the design what do you do so i do well the business side and i do the coding and also the ux so i'm basically like a product guy with engineering and she's really focused on the logos and also like the vision behind how do we make the product work because it's like you know it's a specific way to get a logo like you answer questions about the values of your company and then we tell you this is the kind of logo that's right for you so that all comes from like her work as a designer when she was consulting so she brings that vision of like that vision for design uh how to design a good logo and how and and my job is to translate that into an actual product so it's really complimentary team and when you say convert into a product are you actually doing product ui and ux like design yeah yeah yeah because i used to you know because i freelanced for so long i used to have many different roles over the years and so yeah i can do ux too and that's what i do on apology i see so that's like that's how you're generating extra income it's not just the logo you're also doing full-fledged product like ui ux design uh no no no for now uh for now it's just a logo uh that's actually the pivot idea is to do landing pages but we're not doing that now yeah but what i'm saying that when i was freelancing before i started logology um i used to do that as a service yeah i see and it just just team size rounds just the two of you right yeah we had a third co-founder for a while uh and then we had to split because they we didn't work with that well together so it was good for a time it actually helped us quite a lot because he helped us see things differently he was more into marketing and uh and also because we're like a couple me and my wife sometimes you just get stuck in ideas and you don't see you know it's it's hard to i mean it's good to have an external perspective so he helped us with that for a while but then like a we didn't work it wasn't working really well so we had to stop yeah how much effort did it be on uh we had gave them 25 okay and then we but then when he left like we bought it back how did you negotiate the price like how much did you pay to buy it back well i'm not sure i can say the price because we signed tons of contracts so i'm not trying to consider price what i can say is uh the way we thought about the price is honestly the company wasn't worth anything when we when we did that so it was more in terms of like okay he spent more a bit more than a year with us and now he's gonna be left with nothing uh so we need to make it you know good for him that like he spent time so that we kind of like estimated kind of like a salary that we he would have gotten because we had so little revenue at the time that he left that there was no way of estimating it and we wanted to get that he kept his shares but he really didn't want that he wanted to leave and have zero percent so we just fought back you know estimated kind of like you're all in uh you guys are all in we're certainly rooting for you let's uh let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book that's zero to one numbered by peter is there a ceo you're following or studying dogglebirth uh i know i i try to avoid that i would say steve jobs it's very basic but that's uh number three my favorite online tool for building logology for building actually for you when you're doing product us ui design like what's your favorite tool right now on that space oh for that that would be sketch that's like the best tool for me yeah number four how many hours you sleep need every night um seven to eight yeah it's pretty healthy and then it sounds like an hour you're married right wife not beyonce yeah wife any kids no no we don't have kids no kids yeah and how old are you uh i'm 32 she's 40 almost so we kind of we kind of like had to make the choice about kids so right now we're not having kids yeah yeah okay so you're 32. so last question here what's something you wish you knew when you were 20 [Music] i wish i knew that [Music] ah it's so funny such a funny question i would say i didn't expect that um i mean you even when you get older you still you still feel like when you're young so that that would be the thing i would tell myself is like it never stops like you always doubt you always like not really know like it's normal so get used to it that's what i would tell myself guys be comfortable with doubt you heard it here from dagerberg building logology.com he gave up a 6 000 euro per month job back in 2018 to pursue his side projects pivoted many times and almost said you know we have to shut this down before his mom tragically passed away but left him with a bit of capital to keep going and stick with it he's about to pass his hundredth customer which we love and six grand in revenue at logology.com check it out dog abort thanks for taking us to the top yeah thank you one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm central it's called shark tank for sas we call it deal or bust one founder comes on three hungry buyers they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards their expenses their revenue arpu cac ltv you name it they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live it is fun to watch every thursday 1 p.m central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on youtube every day at 2 p.m central to make sure you don't miss any of that make sure you click the subscribe button below here on youtube the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live i wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the sas 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