Corebook

Janis Verzemnieks spent over a decade in the creative industry—as a graphic designer, creative director, and entrepreneur—and saw the same problem everywhere: brands were still using static PDF documents to communicate their guidelines. It bothered him throughout his professional life. In 2017, after quitting an advertising job that felt soul-crushing, he met two co-founders who shared his frustration. "We started working on a small startup idea called Corebook to disrupt how the industry creates and uses brand guidelines because it bothered us throughout our previous professional lives."

Janis and his co-founders took two years to build Corebook from scratch, officially launching the public beta in 2020 and raising their first investment capital with a $1.2M valuation. Rather than guessing what to build, they created an internal methodology called "Core Truth"—a collaborative cloud document designed to validate product-market fit through customer interviews, industry insights, user personas, and feedback archives. They established five core principles to guide every decision: feel uncertain about what you make, but confident about how you gather feedback; avoid wishful thinking; create experiences, not just features; and treat learning about customers as never-finished work.

Janis leveraged his deep knowledge of the design community. Right after their beta launch, they created a beautifully crafted landing page that won a web design award—generating traffic and credibility. "The first paying client was impressed by our design craftsmanship and customer service," he recalls. Critically, "I was personally talking with every user in the early days, which formed trust and confidence in the product although it was in the MVP stage." This personal touch became their early differentiator.

The biggest breakthrough came through partnerships. In January 2022, Corebook partnered with The Futur, a leading education platform for creative entrepreneurs. The results were immediate: "In the first week alone, the campaign video hit 29K views on Youtube, and we set a new sales record with 30% revenue growth." Meanwhile, Janis learned hard lessons about product quality—losing a significant partnership deal due to random bugs during testing—and investor discipline: "Investor soft commitment is not done deal. We have experienced investors retreating from the deal at the very last minute."

By January 2022, Corebook was growing 20% month-over-month and serving "unicorn startup brands such as GoPuff and Miro; world-leading brand agency networks M&C Saatchi Group and McCann." They'd expanded to 30 countries and onboarded Instagram and Unsplash logo designer Mackey Saturday as an advisor. Janis's next goals were product expansion (collaborative features, mobile, UX), team growth with equity incentives, and securing a new funding round from investors aligned with their vision.