Harrison Johnson

Mission Update 6: @driveway_app, digital adoption on auto-pilot. 🧠 @chrisrschilling @harrisonjohnson

My wife and I decided to give up on our startup @logologydesign It was a tough decision to make, especially after spending 5 years and almost all of our savings to bootstrap it. But the reality is that despite our best efforts, we never found a way to grow beyond survival profitability. Sure we had some wins, and I'm proud that we brought it to ~$3k revenue per month (+ $5k from my twitter course). But with the cost of living + running a business in France, it's barely enough to survive. And because our product doesn't have recurring revenue, we have to find 100+ new customers each month. This puts us under massive pressure. We thought of trying to switch to a recurring revenue model and invest in SEO, but with the uncertainty caused by A.I (both for acquiring customers and designing logos), we don't feel confident it would be enough. We could also try to raise money and hire a couple of people to offload some of the pressure... But after 5 years of fighting, we're exhausted, out of motivation, and out of money. So we decided it's better to call it quits 😞 I feel ashamed to not be one of the "successful founders" I see on twitter every day. I feel stupid that all the time and money spent wasn’t enough to make it. I also feel silly for celebrating that we reached profitability a few months ago... then a couple of months later it was already back below survival level 🤦‍♂️ I stopped tweeting this past few weeks because I feel like a loser and a failure. I’m afraid people will lose interest in me if I stop sharing motivating tweets. But at some point, I had to face the truth that I just can’t do it anymore. Last February I suffered a massive burnout. My heart rate started going crazy every time I stood up. I had to lay in bed for weeks and it was so bad that I thought it was long covid. Now I'm able to walk again but I need to take it slow and monitor my heart rate for random spikes throughout the day. The burnout also triggered a problem with my eyes. For the past month I get dazzled by bright lights like computer screens or traffic lights. Even just a sunny day is difficult to handle. I went to the eye doctor and they said spending so much time looking at screens without rest eventually damaged my eyes, and I'll need to wear glasses to see normally again. Destroying my health like this was not what I envisioned when we decided to bootstrap a startup 5 years ago. Our dream was to build a useful product, make a living on our own terms, and help other founders do the same. We were idealistic and thought having a good idea + working hard was enough to succeed. But competing in the crowded logo niche means that we struggled to make ends meet from the day we launched. We also made some bad strategic decisions which meant we had to overwork constantly just to stay above water. We didn't have time for hobbies, fun, or even romantic time with each other anymore. We spent every waking hour worrying about how to get our next customer. In the rare vacations we took, we couldn't relax because we kept thinking about it. Every. Single. Day. Somewhere on the way to chasing our dreams, we got lost. Instead of trying to live the life we wanted, we started sacrificing everything we cared about just to reach “success” at any cost. The burnout I had was a wake-up call that we can't keep going like this. The glasses I wear will forever remind me of the limits of my body. So that's why we're making this drastic change. My wife will keep the site running while she figures out what she does next. She might simply go back to designing custom logos like before, so if you need one just hit her up @LucieBaratte. (it starts at $3k but she's one of the best in the biz) On my end, I decided to go back to a job. I never thought I'd do this but I really need to put a stop to the crazy hours and constant financial pressure. I hope working on a product without having to worry about money will make work enjoyable again. I think someday I'll come back to building startups, but for now, I have no motivation for it. I need time to recover and live a simpler life for a while. Now even though it's a difficult time, there's one positive thing I'd like to mention. When I was at my lowest, dozens of friends I made on Twitter supported me. I exchanged DMs with many founders who gave me insights and perspective, and made it 10x easier to find a way out. Having followers is nice, but when I hit rock bottom and stopped tweeting, it wasn't worth much. However, the friends I made along the way had my back and it made all the difference. So I just want to say THANK YOU to all who supported me during this tough time. You truly are the best part of this journey 🥲 I'll be back with new tweets soon. Lots of lessons I want to share. Love you all 💙