Helicone's Rebranding Story
Introduction
I joined Helicone as a founding designer right after YC in March 2024. Among the surge of AI devtools, we had a clear challenge: stand out and scale up.
Our features spoke to enterprise needs, but our brand didn't. I led a cross-platform rebrand - landing page, docs, decks and social media - to bridge that gap.
Status: Live on helicone.ai
Challenge
Large Language Models (LLMs) were maturing beyond prototypes, and enterprise teams were facing the same problems we solved for startups: debugging and monitoring non-deterministic AI agents.
Our brand, however, didn't communicate that value. We needed to elevate our identity to reflect enterprise readiness, without losing credibility with our existing developer customers.
The Elephant in the Room
We debated: do we fully pivot to enterprise, or maintain our grassroots developer community?
Our answer: both. Developer advocates got us in the door of enterprise customers. Enterprise customers opened other doors, their willingness to pay is higher. The rebrand had to speak fluently to both audiences.
Approach
Inspired by developer-first tools like Vercel, Linear, Supabase, we sought something more iterative and visceral:
- An interactive experience right on the landing page
- Letting users feel the product, not just read about it
- Breaking free from safe, cookie-cutter templates
Discovery
I immersed in our users' world, Hacker News, Reddit, developer forums. Enterprises wanted LLM observability, but they didn't trust most observability tools to handle their complex needs. We needed to project confidence, reliability, and ease of integration.
Design Pillars
Clear value prop
Scalable, easy to use, and transparent
Visual tone
Confident, authentic, intentional
Enterprise polish without alienating developers.
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Evolution of the Logo
We explored metaphors, are we a light-weight toolbox? building blocks for LLM? A crystal ball, or a window to get clarity on how users are interacting with your LLM app?
The final logo is a dynamic 3D cube, capturing clarity, transparency and playfulness. As we grow to solve problems across data collection, monitoring, and instrumentation, the cube reflects our multi-dimensional approach: light-weight, transparent, and a little bit of fun.
Many say it looks like an ice cube. We leaned into it - our bouncing cube now shows up in our newsletter, marketing and campaigns with some personality!
Helicone's Brand Voice
- Customer obsessed
- Genuine
- Intentional
- Transparent
Value Proposition
- Scalability
- Intuitive UI + in-product experience
- Easy for developers + anyone else
Landing Page: Before & After
New Landing Page
Previous Landing Page
Creating Visual Differentiation
Our visuals evolved from the foundation with a deliberate shift toward deeper, more confident tones. We rejected the homogeneous design patterns common among AI startups in favor of measured asymmetry.
In the AI tooling space, we created distinction through purposeful, professional, yet still playful design. We highly emphasized the product's capabilities through an interactive landing page.
With an understanding that developers judge the usefulness of a product by ease of integration, we decided to meet them where they're at.
[insert image of the integration]
The design system was built on confident white space, purposeful typography hierarchy, and strategic use of color to signal reliability.
Elevating Enterprise Perception
We crafted a sophisticated visual system that would signal enterprise readiness without alienating the technical audience that formed Helicone's foundation, striking that delicate balance between approachability and authority.
Improving Information Clarity
Restructured the landing page's information hierarchy to speak more directly to AI engineers implementing with LLMs. Success would be measured through increased signups and integration, and a clearer market positioning that prospective customers could immediately grasp without needing to decode technical jargon.
Impact & Metrics
Within two months of relaunch, we started to receive inbound interest from enterprise clients including Sony, Robinhood, Roblox, and Singapore Airlines, companies much larger than our previous customer base.
- 15,000+ users and hundreds of companies onboarded
- #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt (with 1,000+ upvotes)
- Ranked #3 in open-source projects, trailing only Meta's LLaMA
- 125% Twitter follower increase (2K → 4.5K) and 400% LinkedIn growth
- 1,000% blog traffic increase with 2.5% conversion rates
Related Explorations
Content Strategy
I developed a content architecture that mirrored our users' journey from discovery to mastery. By analyzing where developers naturally sought solutions, we created targeted content that addressed specific pain points, positioned for SEO performance while maintaining technical depth.
Our content became an extension of the product itself, surfacing contextually when users encountered challenges.
Launch
We launched the rebrand through Product Hunt, activating our community while introducing the new Helicone to a broader audience. The campaign helped us secure #1 Product of the Day and #3 product of the year in the open-source category, just trailing Meta's LLaMA.
Some interesting footage during launch:
- Product Hunt news
- Product Hunt pushups
The cleaner interface drew immediate positive feedback:
Key Learnings
Balance technical and business messaging.
Enterprise clients need to see both technical excellence and business value. Finding the precise language that resonates with technical decision-makers while addressing organizational concerns was utmostly important.
Community as brand advocates.
Our existing developer community became our strongest brand ambassadors when we included them in the rebrand process. Their support drove significant organic growth and traffic during our rebrand launch.
Measure everything, but prioritize clarity.
While we tracked extensive metrics, focusing our communication on a few key impact measures created much clearer narratives for both internal and external stakeholders.