“Follow your passion” has been an oft-repeated piece of advice for would-be business founders for decades — but this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the right guidance. With roughly 50% of businesses failing within their first five years, passion alone may not be enough to create a sustainable business.

Instead, founders should also pay attention to audience pain points. 

Yali Saar, founder and CEO of Tailor Brands, an AI “business builder” which reports that it currently handles about two percent of all LLC formations in the United States, presents an excellent case study of this principle. 

Originally founded as a logo design platform, Tailor Brands underwent a dramatic pivot into a business formation and compliance platform. Now operating as one of the top business formation services in the country, Tailor Brands’ pivot shows how following pain points can drive business success.

The original vision

When Saar and his team first founded Tailor Brands, they had a relatively simple idea in mind: help founders with fast and affordable logo design, powered by AI. “We were quick to see just how powerful AI could be in logo design, which is a common pain point for many new and small businesses,” Saar explains.

“This is especially true for online businesses, where a professional logo is key to helping them stand out. We developed a system that allowed entrepreneurs to put in some key prompts, like their target market, products and the vibe of their brand and deliver a high-quality logo within minutes. The idea was that founders could get this essential marketing tool quickly and at a lower cost without sacrificing quality.”

This original vision, fueled by the founders’ passion for design, led Tailor Brands to expand its design services to other key marketing assets, including websites, business cards and social media ads. According to Saar, the initial passion-powered business plan proved highly successful, netting roughly one-third of search engine clicks for logo-related searches. It seemed like a recipe that would endure for a long time — but like any business, change is inevitable.

Making the pivot

After establishing itself as a leader in the logo design space, Tailor Brands found itself at risk of being disrupted with the onset of generative AI. At the same time, the potential for automation led many businesses to lay off thousands of workers in the hopes of taking advantage of AI-related savings — a trend that continues in 2026.

With the influx of new would-be entrepreneurs came a recognition of additional pain points far beyond the scope of what Tailor Brands offered at the time. “As we worked with these entrepreneurs on their logo and design needs, we quickly learned that their biggest pain point wasn’t branding. Instead, it was navigating the bureaucracy and paperwork that went with business setup and ongoing compliance,” Saar explains.

“For some industries and locations in particular, this bureaucracy can get extremely complex and overwhelming for a new founder. Existing companies in the space weren’t necessarily making this easier—they weren’t changing to a digital-first mindset. We realized that with the right approach, AI could drastically simplify these processes for founders.”

Evolving for success

Recognizing a pain point and evolving from an existing set of services isn’t something that can be done overnight. The company went through a quiet period as it worked to expand into business formation and compliance services under Saar’s leadership.

“Keeping the core pain points in mind as we went through this shift was critical,” Saar recalls. “We had to understand what problems founders were really facing, as well as the trends that were driving more people to entrepreneurship in the first place. Because if we simply continued to follow our passions at that point, we were going to be displaced ourselves.”

Following a period of reorganization, Tailor Brands did not set out to completely reimagine the platform overnight. Instead, it was built step by step, gradually launching services like LLC formation, while expanding into a broader platform designed to simplify the process of starting and running a business through automation tools and integrations with government systems.

The company has continued to expand its suite of services with additional financial support, an AI guidance tool and more, now offering over 20 different services, alongside its original suite of branding and marketing design services.

“Pivoting to pursue pain points didn’t mean abandoning why we originally started our company in the first place,” Saar explains. “But by taking the time to evaluate where the market was going and what our customers needed the most, we were able to adapt alongside them. It’s allowed us to become an integral part of their founding journey, which gives us so many more opportunities to address their needs than if we had stuck with design.”

The pivot has been successful — per one report, the company has enjoyed 40% annual sales growth, even as the original logo design portion of the business has declined to represent a mere 10% of the company’s overall revenue. Without the pivot, Tailor Brands would hardly exist at the level it does today.

Final takeaways

As the example of Tailor Brands illustrates, passion may lead founders to start their business, but it isn’t necessarily the recipe for sustained success. Instead, by identifying and pursuing the real pain points their target audience is experiencing, founders can pivot in a way that better serves their customers and vastly expands their audience and earning potential.

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