MakeLogo.ai sold for $65K, solo founder

01

How much did MakeLogo.ai make, and what was it sold for?

Each row shows the evidence grade and the source numbers from the list at the end of this page. The grades are explained in How Aiolum verifies.

A logo service built in 48 hours that, by the founder's account, made US$26,000 in sales and sold for US$65,000 in cash about three months after launch
Fact	Value	Grade	How we know	Sources
Sale price	US$65,000 in cash	C	Founder's diary, entry of 11 March 2023: "I just sold the app for $65,000". His post on X, quoted by No-Code Exits: "I just sold makelogo.ai for $65,000. Launched it 3 months ago, with 0 budget and less than 600 followers." The same figure in his Starter Story interview of March 2025 and on his app list. No buyer or marketplace has confirmed it.	[1, 3, 2, 5]
Offers before the sale	about US$50,000, then about US$55,000, then US$65,000 paid over a year, then US$65,000 in cash	C	Founder in the Starter Story interview, March 2025. The last buyer offered cash on the condition that everything closed within two weeks.	[2]
Interested buyers	about 30 signed non-disclosure agreements	C	No-Code Exits, 25 September 2026, retelling the founder's account: the winning offer was above his asking price. The asking price is not given.	[3]
Sales before the sale	US$26,000	D	One statement, by the founder in the Starter Story interview of March 2025: "makelogo ai which generated 26 000 USD of sales". He added "that's around 85,000 in total revenue", which does not match the sum in the next row.	[2]
Sales plus sale price	US$91,000	calc	Calculated: US$26,000 plus US$65,000. The founder said "around 85,000" in the same interview.	[2]
Sale price as a multiple of all sales	2.5 times	calc	Calculated: US$65,000 divided by US$26,000. The sources give no monthly or yearly revenue, so the usual multiple of yearly revenue cannot be computed.	[2]
Average sales per month while he owned it	about US$8,400	calc	Calculated: US$26,000 over the 94 days from 7 December 2022 to 11 March 2023, or 3.09 months. It assumes that all the founder's US$26,000 fell in that period; the sources do not say how sales were spread.	[2, 1]
Time to build the first version	48 hours	C	Founder's diary: idea at 20:48 on 5 December 2022, "48 hours later, to the minute, the MVP is published" at 20:48 on 7 December. First sales at 22:40 the same evening.	[1]
How the first orders were filled	by hand	C	Founder in the Starter Story interview: "I use Typeform to get the information ... and collect the payment So I didn't have any backend at all It was not automated". A Stripe back end followed on 9 December 2022.	[2, 1]
Product Hunt result	#1 Product of the Day, December 2022	C	Founder's diary, entry of 12 December 2022. He had expected no more than about US$100 in sales from the launch.	[1]
Customer survey, December 2022	0% very disappointed, 40% somewhat disappointed, 60% would not care	C	Founder's diary, 18 December 2022: the share of customers who would be disappointed if they could no longer use the app. He called the results "quite terrible" and rebuilt the back end.	[1]
Logos created, February 2023	"Already 10,000+ logos created"	C	Claim on the home page of 2 February 2023. Not verified. In January 2023 the founder's diary mentions "the hundred of orders I had".	[7, 1]
Audience and budget at launch	fewer than 600 followers on X, no ad budget	C	Founder's post on X quoted by No-Code Exits. In the Starter Story interview he said that he had little savings and spent nothing on ads.	[3, 2]
Outside funding	none	C	Founder statements: "0 budget" and no money spent on ads.	[3, 2]
Why he sold	he needed cash and could not improve the app alone	C	Founder interview with No CS Degree, July 2024: "I sold it because I needed some cashflow, and I couldn't improve the app further by myself." In January 2023 his diary names customer service as the "#1 issue".	[4, 1]
Time from launch to the sale	3 months	calc	Calculated: 94 days, from 7 December 2022 to 11 March 2023. The founder's post says "3 months".	[1, 3]
Status in October 2026	the site returns "Not Found"	C	Read on 25 October 2026. The Wayback Machine has working pages until January 2025 and error pages from April 2025.	[10]

How to read this table: a grade C value is a statement by the founder, in his blog diary, his X post, his app list or an interview, or a claim on the product's own web pages in the Wayback Machine. A grade D value has only one founder statement behind it. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows above it. No value is grade A or B.

MakeLogo.ai prices from the product's own pages in the Wayback Machine, December 2022 to December 2023; the site no longer loads in October 2026, so there are no current prices (grade C)
Plan	Per month, billed yearly (US$)	Limit
6 concepts, December 2022	9.97 one-time	HD versions with transparent background
12 concepts, December 2022	14.97 one-time	HD versions with transparent background
24 concepts, December 2022	19.97 one-time	HD versions with transparent background
10, 30 or 60 concepts, February 2023	9.97 to 19.97 one-time	2, 4 or 6 converted to HD; logo editor
Startup, December 2023, new owner	9.99, period not shown	30 ideas, 120 previews, 2 final HD logos, vector files

All prices were one-time payments for a pack of logos; there was never a subscription. In the 48-hour diary the founder first planned US$5 for 5 logos, then US$10 for 5 concepts and US$15 for 10. The page of 19 December 2022 lists three packs at US$9.97, US$14.97 and US$19.97 and three sizes, 6, 12 and 24 concepts, in the same order, and offers a 30% discount during the beta. In February 2023 the same three prices bought 10, 30 or 60 concepts, of which 2, 4 or 6 were converted to high resolution. Under the new owner, the page of December 2023 offers one pack, Startup, at US$9.99, shown against a crossed-out US$29.99, with no billing period on the page. The company paid the image model for every order, and each pack paid for its own generation.

02

When did MakeLogo.ai launch, and how did it grow?

From an idea at 20:48 on a Monday evening to a cash sale in about three months, and from there to an error page two years later. Each entry carries its grade.

2022CJeannen, a marketer who had managed more than US$1 million of ad spend, learns to code from a Udemy web development course. By his own blog list he then builds small apps, among them an AI painting site that he calls a failure in October 2022. [4, 3, 11]
5 December 2022, 20:48CHe writes in his diary: "what if I made a micro-app to generate logos in 48 hours max". The first attempt, training a custom image model on a set of logos, gives inconsistent results, and he finds another way the same night. [1]
6 December 2022CHe calls an image service from Node.js and generates a full logo as an SVG file. He settles on US$10 for 5 concepts and US$15 for 10. [1]
7 December 2022CAt 20:48 the landing page goes live with a Typeform order form, on Heroku, with Crisp chat and Simple Analytics. He fills the orders by hand. First sales at 22:40. [1, 2]
9 December 2022CA real back end with Stripe payments and file storage on AWS S3. [1]
12 December 2022C#1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt, after a post on Indie Hackers and a call for support on X. [1]
17 to 18 December 2022CA logo editor for text and fonts goes live, and he buys the domain makelogo.ai. A customer survey finds that no customer would be very disappointed to lose the app. [1]
19 December 2022CThe home page sells packs of 6, 12 or 24 concepts for US$9.97 to US$19.97, delivered in one to two hours, with commercial rights included. [6]
24 to 31 December 2022CHe rebuilds the back end from scratch and calls the app done on 31 December. [1]
January 2023CEvent tracking, email with Bento, Google Analytics and landing page tests with Google Optimize. An affiliate program on 22 January. He writes that customer service is the main problem. [1]
2 February 2023CThe home page says "Already 10,000+ logos created" and sells 10, 30 or 60 concepts at the same prices. [7]
February or March 2023CHe lists the business on Acquire.com. About 30 buyers sign non-disclosure agreements; he takes US$65,000 in cash over an offer of US$65,000 paid over a year. His app list says February; his diary and his 2025 interview say March. [3, 2, 5, 1]
11 March 2023CDiary entry: "I just sold the app for $65,000". [1]
4 April 2023CThe site is unchanged and still says "Made by @nico_jeannen". [8]
August 2023CHe builds Talknotes, his next business, an AI voice-note app, which he sells for US$200,000 in July 2024. [3, 5]
8 December 2023CUnder the new owner the site has a new design, no founder credit, "Trusted by Over 10,000 Satisfied Customers", and one pack at US$9.99 against a crossed-out US$29.99. [9]
23 January 2025CThe last working home page in the Wayback Machine, dated 2024. [10]
April 2025 to October 2026CThe Wayback Machine records an error page from April 2025. On 25 October 2026 the site returns "Not Found". [10]

03

Why did MakeLogo.ai work?

Four causes, in the order they mattered. Each one is a reusable lesson.

01

Take orders before writing the software

On launch day the product was a landing page and a Typeform form that collected the project details and the payment. The founder made the logos himself with AI tools and sent them by email. Sales in the first hours told him that people would pay, and only then did he spend two more days on a Stripe back end.

02

Be first while the technology is new

The founder said in 2025 that he was among the first to offer AI-generated logos and that people were "just naturally curious". With fewer than 600 followers and no ad budget, that curiosity carried the launch: first place of the day on Product Hunt, then links from AI tool directories that the Wayback Machine records through 2023 and 2024.

03

One-time packs for a per-use cost

Each order made the company pay the image model once. A one-time pack covers that cost in the same payment, so no subscription was needed. His next product, Talknotes, worked differently: users kept using it, and he said in 2025 that he started it with one-year passes and then switched to a subscription.

04

Sell when one person reaches the limit

By January 2023 customer service took most of his time, and he said later that he could not improve the app further by himself. He listed the business within weeks of finishing it and, by his account in 2025, took US$65,000 in cash to close within two weeks rather than the same amount paid over a year.

How it was built

These details come from the founder's diary, written during the build, and from his interviews. They are grade C. [1, 2, 7]

First attempt: train a custom image model on a set of logos found online. The results were inconsistent, so he switched to an outside image-generation service called through its API. The sources do not name the model or the service.
Back end in Node.js with Axios for the API calls; output as SVG vector files. ChatGPT helped convert code examples and set up file storage on AWS S3.
Launch version: a landing page on Heroku and a Typeform form for the order and the payment, with orders filled by hand. Two days later, Stripe payments and an account without registration, using the magic-link login from his earlier app OpenForAds.
A logo editor that adds text in any Google Font, then a complete rebuild of the back end in the last week of December 2022.
Support chat with Crisp, analytics with Simple Analytics and Google Analytics, landing page tests with Google Optimize, email with Bento, and purchase events sent to Facebook.
Marketing: posts on X, a story on Indie Hackers, a Product Hunt launch and an affiliate program that gave free logos for referrals.

Tools named in the sources

Each one opens its page in the Tools tab, with every story that uses it.

TypeformC Node.jsC ChatGPTC jQueryB Google FontsC HerokuC Amazon S3C StripeC Product HuntC Indie HackersC XC CrispC BentoC Simple AnalyticsC Google AnalyticsC Google OptimizeC Google Tag ManagerB Acquire.comC

04

Who tried this before MakeLogo.ai, and why did they fail?

Four companies in the Loot Drop database promised design work without the price of a designer. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

Died 2009 to 2012Burned US$20K

Jobspice

The promise

Good-looking resume designs for job seekers who cannot design.

Why it died

One narrow product. Free resume templates and tools spread online and LinkedIn grew, so few people paid.

CompetitionLoot Drop entry ↗

Died 2012 to 2015Burned US$1.5M

Tastemaker

The promise

Affordable interior design without the designer's price.

Why it died

It depended on a distributed group of human designers, so quality varied. Better-funded competitors took the market.

CompetitionLoot Drop entry ↗

Died 2014 to 2019Burned US$25M

Laurel & Wolf

The promise

Interior design for a flat fee from professional designers.

Why it died

The flat fee did not cover the cost of finding customers, and quality fell as the designer network grew.

Unit EconomicsLoot Drop entry ↗

Died 2015 to 2022Burned US$72.7M

Modsy

The promise

AI-powered 3D room designs that show furniture in your own room.

Why it died

It was marketed as AI, but each room took hours of human designer time. High customer cost and few repeat buyers.

Unit EconomicsLoot Drop entry ↗

The failed startups come from Loot Drop, a free database of dead startups, retold here in our own words. Loot Drop describes its entries as AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so these cards carry no evidence grade.

What changed

Tastemaker, Laurel & Wolf and Modsy all sold cheap design, and all paid human designers to make it. Each order carried hours of labor, so a low price could not cover the cost of the work and of finding the customer. Modsy is the clearest case: it called itself AI, but the database says that each room took two to four hours of a designer's time. MakeLogo.ai began the same way, with the founder making each logo by hand, but only for its first days. By 10 December 2022 the orders went through an automated pipeline, and the work per logo was done by the model.

Jobspice shows the risk that MakeLogo.ai did not escape: a narrow design product loses its value when free tools do the same job. The founder's own survey in December 2022 found no customer who would be very disappointed to lose the app, and he sold three months after launch, while buyers still paid for the novelty. The new owner kept the site for about two years. By April 2025 it no longer loaded.

05

Can one person copy MakeLogo.ai now?

The novelty, no. The order of the steps, yes.

An AI logo generator was new in December 2022 and common soon after, so the first-mover sales cannot be repeated. The method can: take paid orders with a form before you write the software, fill them by hand, automate only after people pay, and sell while buyers still value the novelty, if the product has no reason for users to come back.

Where it is still open: Any task where a new image, video or voice model produces a usable result for a few dollars a time: product photos, icons, short videos, voice-overs. The window for each is short, so speed matters more than polish.

1Describe the output on a landing page and take payment through a form on the first day.
2Fill the first orders by hand with existing AI tools, and build the automated pipeline only after the first sales.
3Launch on Product Hunt and submit to AI tool directories in the same week.
4Ask customers early how disappointed they would be without the product; a weak answer is a reason to sell soon.
5When you list the business, compare cash now with payments over a year, not only the headline price.

What could go wrong for MakeLogo.ai?

The risks are the mirror image of the causes above.

What is not verified

The US$65,000 price is the founder's own statement, repeated in his diary of 11 March 2023, his post on X, his app list and his March 2025 interview. No buyer, marketplace or payment processor has confirmed it. The US$26,000 in sales rests on one statement, in the March 2025 Starter Story interview, and in the same sentence he gave a total of "around 85,000", while US$26,000 plus US$65,000 is US$91,000. A reader could look for an Acquire.com page on the sale or a second interview with the sales figure.

Sale month: February or March 2023

His app list says "Sold for $65,000 in February", and the Talknotes page on this site uses February 2023. His diary entry with the sale is dated 11 March 2023, he said in 2025 that "the transaction was closed in March", and No-Code Exits counts three months from the December launch. This page uses March 2023. The offer may have been accepted in February and the money paid in March, but no source says so.

Start date

No-Code Exits says the idea came "one evening in December 2022", which matches the diary, 5 December 2022. In the 2025 interview the founder said "I started working on it I think in November". This page uses the diary.

The buyer is unknown, and the product is gone

No source names the buyer. The new owner redesigned the site by December 2023 and sold one pack at US$9.99. The Wayback Machine records error pages from April 2025, and on 25 October 2026 the site returns "Not Found". What the buyer earned from it is not known.

Customer counts are claims on the site

The February 2023 page says "Already 10,000+ logos created" and the new owner's page says "Trusted by Over 10,000 Satisfied Customers". Neither is verified. In January 2023 the founder's diary mentions "the hundred of orders I had".

Customers did not need it

In his December 2022 survey no customer said they would be very disappointed to lose the app, and most bought one pack once. Revenue depended on new buyers who were curious about AI, which is the kind of demand that falls when the technology becomes common.

Sources

The grade next to each source is the best grade that the source can support. "Read in full" means that the text of the page was downloaded and the numbers were checked in it.

C Nico Jeannen's blog diary, 5 December 2022 to 11 March 2023: MakeLogo.ai, From idea to $65,000 exit in 3 months
Read in full. Dated, timed entries written during the build. Source for the 48 hours, the first sales, the tools, the prices he planned, the Product Hunt result, the survey, the January 2023 work and the sale entry of 11 March 2023.
C Starter Story video transcript, 31 March 2025: I Locked Myself In A Room, Made 17 Apps, and Sold 2 for $265,000
Read the transcript sections on MakeLogo.ai, its launch, its marketing and its sale. Source for the US$26,000 in sales, the one-time packs, the Typeform launch, the customer types, the offers and "closed in March".
C No-Code Exits newsletter, 25 September 2026: Three Exits for $290,000. Then a Year of Nothing.
Read in full. A secondary account that quotes the founder's sale post on X, with the price, the three months, the 600 followers and the zero budget, and reports about 30 buyers under non-disclosure agreements. robots.txt allows /p/ pages.
C No CS Degree, 10 July 2024: $200k exit after learning to code
Read the free part; the rest is behind a subscription. Founder interview. Source for the Udemy course and his reasons for building and selling MakeLogo.ai.
C Nico Jeannen's Indie Page, read 25 October 2026
Read in full. The founder's own list of his apps. Source for "Sold for $65,000 in February" and the Talknotes sale.
C Wayback Machine copy of makelogo.ai, 19 December 2022
Read in full, with the page source. Source for the first public prices, the pack sizes, the delivery time, the founder credit and the Typeform and Crisp scripts.
C Wayback Machine copy of makelogo.ai, 2 February 2023
Read in full, with the page source. Source for the 10,000 logos claim, the four-step process, the new pack sizes and the Bento script.
C Wayback Machine copy of makelogo.ai, 4 April 2023
Read in full. Shows the site unchanged three weeks after the sale.
C Wayback Machine copy of makelogo.ai, 8 December 2023
Read in full, with the page source. The new owner's design and the single Startup pack at US$9.99.
C makelogo.ai, read 25 October 2026, with the Wayback Machine copy of 23 January 2025 and its list of captures
The live site returned "Not Found". Read the January 2025 copy in full and the Wayback capture list, which shows error pages from April 2025. robots.txt has no rules for any agent.
C Nico Jeannen's blog index, read 25 October 2026, and his post of 8 January 2023 about his background
Read the index in full, and the post of 8 January 2023 that it lists. Source for the dated list of his projects before and after MakeLogo.ai and for his nationality, French.
C Loot Drop database export, 1,749 failed startups
Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.

More in Photos and portraits

Other businesses in the same group, best evidence first. All 15 stories in the group.

AI professional headshots from selfies · United States

AI SuitUp

Evidence A

$649K all-time revenue

Solo founder · 44 months after launch, revenue falling

A studio portrait needs a photographer, a booking and days of waiting. AI SuitUp sold the same result, a photo for LinkedIn or a résumé, for a one-time price from early 2023, with a money-back guarantee on the larger packs. It narrowed the offer to one use, professional headshots, and then built a landing page for almost every profession and a version for company teams. Stripe records US$648,649 of payments in total, but only US$35,743 of it in the last 12 months, so most of the money came in 2023, 2024 and 2025.

Read the story

AI photo restyling app · Turkey

Boothie

Evidence A

$141K in 16 weeks

Solo founder · 4 months after launch, revenue flat

The demand existed before the app: photos that look as if a compact digital camera from the 2000s took them have been a trend on TikTok since at least 2022. Boothie sells that look without the camera, for a small weekly price, to the people who already post such photos. The founder says every user came from TikTok picture posts made by about a dozen accounts in three countries, with no paid advertising. One person could build it because the image model is rented from Google and paid for by the picture.

Read the story

AI tattoo design generator and virtual try-on app for iPhone and Android · United Kingdom

InkFusion

Evidence A

$51K/yr run rate

Team of 2 to 10 · 20 months after launch, revenue flat

A tattoo is permanent, so people want to see it before they sit in the chair, and the app sells exactly that preview. The design is made by image models from fal.ai and OpenAI, so the company did not have to train a model. The seller says all traffic is unpaid and comes from two TikTok accounts that come with the sale.

Read the story

Built with the same tools

Businesses whose sources name tools that MakeLogo.ai also uses: Stripe, Node.js, ChatGPT, Heroku. Every tool has its own page in Tools.

AI voice-note to text app · France

Talknotes

Evidence B

Sold for $200K

Solo founder · sold 11 months after launch

A marketer who had learned to code one year earlier built it in a week, found that paid ads could buy customers for about US$50 each with a yearly plan that paid the ad bill up front, and sold the business for cash eleven months after launch, when the bugs and the support load became more than one person wanted to carry.

Read the story

AI copywriting tool · Netherlands

Headlime

Evidence C

Sold for seven figures

Solo founder · sold 9 months after launch

The founder already sold a small template tool for headlines when OpenAI gave GPT-3 to a first group of developers. He asked OpenAI's chief technology officer for access by email in June 2020, received it, and spent five months rebuilding the tool around the model. When that version came out in December 2020 there were few such tools and he had an audience on X from showing his work in public. He says revenue went from US$1,000 to US$20,000 a month by February 2021. He sold in March 2021, when new competitors appeared every week.

Read the story

AI photo studio · Netherlands, run from anywhere

Photo AI

Evidence C

$1.3M/yr, 1 person

Solo founder · 37 months after launch, revenue falling

The founder had posted his revenue in public for ten years and had hundreds of thousands of followers before he shipped it. He launched a cheesy avatar version first, made US$100,000 in ten days, then pivoted to the useful version. Rented GPUs, one PHP file and no employees keep the profit margin above 75%.

Read the story

Same pattern: Sold

Businesses that were sold. Each story gives the buyer and the price when the sources name them. All 26 stories with this pattern.

AI app builder · Israel

Base44

Evidence A

$80M exit

Solo founder · sold 5 months after launch

It launched in the month that AI models became good enough to write a whole app. It sold to people who cannot program, it charged from day one, and it was sold to a company that already had millions of customers.

Read the story

AI makeup try-on app · Canada

GlowUp

Evidence A

Sold after $1.2M ARR

Solo founder · sold 5 months after launch

Its result is a before-and-after picture of the user's own face, which a short video shows in seconds. The founder chose TikTok as the channel before he built the app, then tripled revenue from almost the same installs by moving and testing the paywall with Adapty.

Read the story

AI virtual staging of listing photos · USA, team mostly in Germany

Virtual Staging AI (VSAI)

Evidence A

$1M ARR, sold to Zillow

Team of 2 to 10 · sold 20 months after launch

In 2023, general image generators that were asked to furnish a room also changed the room: the founder said DALL-E might turn a window into a wall painting or add a door, which misrepresents a property. VSAI's own model finds the floor, the ceiling, the mirrors and the doors first and only then adds furniture. It cost US$12 to US$69 a month in early 2024, while VSAI's comparison page lists other staging services at US$16 to US$29 per photo with 12 to 48 hours of waiting. Zillow, the listing portal where such photos end up, bought it.

Read the story