Part 1: Finding Your Thing's Essence
If you've ever tried to explain an idea that doesn’t quite fit in a box, this one’s for you
Two weeks ago, we launched Sublime to the public. No more beta, no more wantlist, no more “coming soon.” The centerpiece of the launch was our landing page.
Besides the product itself, it’s the clearest expression to date of who we are, what we believe, and for whom we’re building.
This is the story of how our website came to be.
Not just the design and copy, but the messy, months-long process behind it: the debates, the false starts, the existential spirals, and the eight-hour marathons in Figma.
If you’re a builder, a founder, or just someone who’s ever tried to explain an idea that doesn’t quite fit in a box, this one’s for you.
Too many things to too many people
Up until three weeks ago, the only way to try Sublime was to pay for it or join our wantlist. And even with that friction, over 1,000 people paid for it. Not just that—they loved it.
But while people loved using Sublime, they struggled to explain it.
And then there was Sari’s dad.
Sari’s dad is a businessman. The dude knows his stuff. And from day one, he told her the same thing: “Based on everything online, I still don’t understand what Sublime actually does.”
It wasn’t just a dad thing. It was a marketing thing. We had a clarity problem. We had built something people loved, but we hadn’t figured out how to talk about it.
Or, to put it in the terms of this meme we referenced weekly…
We needed to get specific on exactly who our Mario was, and what rad shit Sublime would help them do.
Honing our essence
In August 2024, Sari shared Project Essence with us.
She led with this quote from Al Ries:
“The most difficult part of positioning is selecting that one specific concept to hang your hat on. Yet you must, if you want to cut through the prospect’s wall of indifference.”
So we each went off and worked solo for two weeks, and came back to share what we thought Sublime’s essence was.
We brought back ideas, provocations, and decks. We shared weird slides like these:
I also shared how pervasive the term ‘knowledge worker’ was and how much I hated it.
Finding our lane
This line, “wtf is a knowledge worker? you are a creative human being.” became our north star. Our tuning fork that we used to bring everything else into resonance.
It helped us make decisions. It helped us say no.
We weren’t building a tool to help you be more productive. We were building a tool to help you be more creative.
We were building a tool for people who make things. Who follow their curiosity. Who were tired of being sold speed, efficiency, and optimization.
From there, things started to fall into place.
First, our market category—personal knowledge management tools—finally made sense.
We’d tried to avoid being pigeon-holed, but that didn’t change the fact that people needed to put us into a bucket.
In fact, that insight helped us nail the H1:
Not another boring knowledge tool.
It wasn’t perfect—it led with the negative (what Sublime is not vs. what Sublime is) and assumed people would know what a knowledge tool was. But we were making progress.
What makes us different (?)
As with any creative work, the deepest truths, obvious as they are, often elude the creators themselves. The blindspots.
The 'related ideas engine' is one of Sublime’s biggest differentiators, and it was the hardest thing for us to explain.
Here’s how we described it on our last landing page:
We’d been struggling to succinctly capture the soul of why this feature was awesome, which was especially frustrating because everyone really did love it.
We tried “communal.” That sounded like a cult.
We tried “multiplayer.” That sounded like a game.
We tried “the only knowledge tool where you’re not alone.” That sounded…creepy.
The truth was, nobody goes looking for a social network. Nobody Googles “I want to be more inspired by strangers on the internet.”
What people actually want—what creatives need—is a trusted bank of ideas to kickstart their work. Not AI-generated slop, not SEO optimized drivel.
Here came the unlock.
Sublime isn’t a network of people. It is a network of ideas, curated by people.
That’s when, deep into a Figma session of endless iterations of copy ”Save one thing, discover a hundred more” was born.
At first it was said mostly as a joke but there was something there. It made the idea the hero, not the user. And it carried just enough mystery to feel like magic, not mechanics.
Finally, we had our H2.
The landing page copy was done.
Sort of…
!! Soul retrieval
In December 2024, Sari shared the latest version of the copy and positioning with Gabriel and I:
It did the job, but something was missing.
In going full SaaS, we’d stripped away the soul of Sublime. The philosophy, the ideals, the dream for a different way to be on the internet.
We came back in January and Sari had an idea:
What if there were two versions of the landing page and you could toggle between them? One side would be the SaaS version—features, pricing, the practical stuff. The other side would be the soul of Sublime—the why, the feel, the philosophy.
Gabriel and I loved it.
In a McLuhan medium-is-the-message sort of way, we weren’t choosing one over the other but allowing both to live side by side. That’s what Sublime really was, and this was the perfect way to communicate it:
Feet on the ground.
Head in the clouds.
A garden is never finished
Finally, the messaging materialized.
Gabriel shared a work in progress design that was in line with everything we had done up until then.
But when we looked at it, it was clear that while we’d taken a leap forward with the copy, the design still felt off.
We shared early drafts with our friend Josh from Fuzzco, who shared our sentiment.
This is when Gabriel reached out to a designer he’d long admired.
The end, it turned out, was just the beginning.
Coming soon…
In part two, we’ll dive into the behind-the-scenes design work that brought us home, the designer who led the way, and the incredible ways we used AI.
P.S. A Sublime Premium Membership gives you access to our archives vault; our vision deck, raw figma files, and other behind-the-scenes docs. Enjoy <3
"It made the idea the hero, not the user."🤍
and I loooove the new landing page, so many gems there:
"whether your ideas come
from academic papers or acid trips" ;)
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and on a personal note, Kindle integration is an amazing and powerful Sublime feature.
I absolutely love it.
book --> sublime --> idea/collection --> canvas --> related ideas --> integration/creation (external or internal)
sounds like a small hero’s journey, doesn’t it? 😉
Very real, been grappling with this.
Almost need skeuomorphism but for abstractions.
As you get at, the idea itself is not unfamiliar (the sharing of ideas, building knowledge together), but it has never been done at this magnitude, with the goal being creation by all (not money or created solely by people in power).
A lot of interesting design directions to go with this. Design mimicking a cookbook passed down through generations (worn pages, rewrites, edits), sound of chatter as you go where more voice are concentrated or less, etc. Loving this duality of on the ground, in the clouds!