Li Zeng
Li Zeng launched a startup featuring visual group cards that capture impressions and memories of special moments. However, it didn’t gain much attention from users. Li learned her lessons, asked the audience about their needs, and is now successfully running a design agency for early-stage founders.
Hey, I am Li Zeng, founder of StudioSalt.co, where I help early-stage founders launch their brands and build delightful product UX.
I have over a decade of experience in design. Before Silicon Valley, I taught graphic design to college students. I then worked as a product designer for startups in the Bay Area, ranging from Seed to Series G, in B2B, B2C, B2B2C, Web 3, and AI spaces. Now, I am passionate about leveraging my skills to help founders grow their startups through design.
What happened?
A few years ago, I launched a project called FunKudo — a visual group card to celebrate important events. The idea came from my passion and interest in drawing handmade cards for co-workers, my husband, and friends. So I decided to make a project out of it.
It was around 2020 when COVID hit, and a lot of people were moving from job to job. I thought many people would like to create cards for their colleagues to say goodbye. It could be used for other occasions as well, of course.
All similar projects are pretty text-heavy — you just type in what you want, add emojis or maybe some GIF images, and that's it. But people barely have the time to actually describe the person, what they love, who they are, that kind of thing.
So that's why I built this product to send birthday cards, group leaving cards, and digital guestbooks for people. And make it beautiful.
I didn’t set any specific goals or financial targets by launching the product. At first, I made a lot of cards myself, and then I had an opportunity to collaborate with a developer friend who also wanted to work on something together.
I've seen a story about an indie hacker who built similar products and reached above 20k MRR in a couple of months. And I thought I could make it too.
We launched it pretty fast. But the main problem was about the distribution part. I didn't put too much thought into that and just went with whatever we could do to promote it.
For this type of product, it's very viral because if you send a card, people want to read it, and you invite more people to contribute. One card could potentially bring 10 or 20 new participants. So I thought viral referrals would work.
I even registered a company with this idea. After the three-month accelerator, I mainly focused on going to market and distribution. I thought about letting friends try it and maybe making some ads and stuff like that.
After the launch, I joined an accelerator program to get feedback from investors, mentors, and everyone else.
How did you notice that things started to fall apart?
I found it very difficult to convince people to use my product, even people I knew in real life. I said, "Can you use this product?" They thought it was a hassle and couldn't get on board.
Then I tried to think about different use cases — maybe this is better for weddings. So I even went to wedding events and tried to talk to people who were getting married.
I actually convinced a coworker who was getting married at the time. I printed a lot of cards for her and asked her to distribute them on her wedding day. But the result was pretty embarrassing. For a wedding with 100 to 150 people attending, I thought we would get at least 20 or 30 contributions. But we only had one or two responses. It was quite frustrating.
It was not a total surprise for me. But it was a little shocking that a product I loved so much and spent so much time designing wasn't being used by many people.
I worked on this project for over a year, and then finally, I took it down because maintenance and everything cost money.
What lessons did you learn from this situation?
I think the big lesson I learned is that when you have an idea, sometimes the great thing is not to implement it right away. Because nobody knows if it's a good idea in your head or a good idea for others as well.
Another lesson I learned is — first-time founders build, second-time founders distribute.
It's more difficult to distribute a product than to build one. This definitely changed my attitude toward my next project, which I am currently building.
Once I experienced that failure, I knew I needed an audience. I needed to figure out a problem that everybody cared about and was eager for a solution to, rather than providing a solution and looking for an audience that might have the problem. Because if you start in that way, these people will eventually become users no matter what you build because you're solving problems for them rather than just having an idea out of nowhere. So it's very, very important to actually start with the user rather than the product or the solution.
I see this failure as a critical step for me to be open to sharing my journey and start building an audience on X right now.
What happened next?
What I'm working on right now is called Studio Salt. It's a fractional design partner for early-stage startups.
Did I achieve any success? I think so. My revenue and everything is growing a lot. I have been passing 20k MRR for two months straight, and I look forward to breaking into that 50k MRR. So yeah, I think it's working.