Brand Foundation
WHERE IDEAS COME HOME TO ROOSTA product incubator — an AI-powered system that takes messy, contradictory, half-formed founder ideas and hatches them into coherent product visions. No forms, no process overhead. Just throw your thoughts in. The AI surfaces contradictions, clusters themes, identifies your real audience, and gradually shapes chaos into clarity.
The bridge between "I have this idea\u2026" and "here's a spec an agent can build."
Kurnik means "chicken coop" in Polish — where feedback comes home to roost. Clean tech namespace. Memorable, unique, easy mascot. Inside joke for Polish team behind netbulls agency.
Domain: kurnik.ai — registered via Porkbun"I've watched 20 years of startups fail. Not because the tech wasn't there, but because the people controlling the money didn't know what they were building, for whom. Ego-driven decisions. Contradictory ideas. Direction changes on vibes, not strategy. There are gobs and gobs of people who have money or can get money to get things going, but they don't approach it methodically."
— Founder insight, from 20 years running a software agency across US, UK, EUKurnik (Polish: kurnik) — a chicken coop. Where chickens come home to roost. Where eggs are laid and hatched. The perfect metaphor for a product incubator: bring your messy ideas home, keep them warm, and something real hatches.
| Attribute | Detail |
|---|---|
| Length | 6 characters — short, punchy, CLI-friendly |
| Pronunciation | "KOOR-nik" — easy in English, native in Polish |
| Domain | kurnik.ai — registered, premium TLD for AI product |
| Tech namespace | Clean — only kurnik.pl (Polish games site from 2001, now playok.com) |
| Mascot potential | Chicken/rooster — strong, recognizable, fun without being juvenile |
| CLI feel | kurnik "timer broken on mac" — natural |
| Metaphor depth | Eggs \u2192 incubation \u2192 hatching \u2192 roosting. Maps perfectly to product lifecycle. |
People with capital (or access to it) and ambition, but no methodology. They have ideas — lots of them, often contradictory. They've been told to "just build it" but don't know what "it" actually is. They need structure without bureaucracy, methodology without MBA jargon.
Once a product is hatched, the ongoing feedback loop — bug reports, feature requests, user feedback — flows through Kurnik too. Engineering directors and PMs use it to manage the living product. But this is Phase 2+ audience.
Day one brand voice speaks to founders. Approachable, warm, confident. Not technical jargon. Not enterprise sales language. Think: "Your ideas are valuable. Let's make sense of them together."
Notion meets Stripe. Approachable but credible. Kurnik doesn't talk down to you for having messy ideas — messy ideas are the raw material. But it also doesn't pretend chaos is fine. It's the warm, honest advisor who says "I see what you're going for — let me show you the contradictions."
| Trait | We Are | We're Not |
|---|---|---|
| Warm | Welcoming, patient, encouraging | Cold, clinical, transactional |
| Confident | Opinionated, clear, decisive | Timid, wishy-washy, over-hedging |
| Honest | Surfaces contradictions, tells you what you need to hear | Yes-man, rubber-stamping bad ideas |
| Playful | Chicken metaphors, personality, wit | Silly, juvenile, unserious |
| Methodical | Structured thinking, clear process | Bureaucratic, rigid, process-for-process-sake |
The chicken coop metaphor should feel like an inside joke you're in on, not a gimmick. It earns its place by being genuinely useful as mental model: eggs = ideas, incubation = AI processing, hatching = viable product, rooster = the thing that wakes everyone up.
Dark backgrounds with warm accents. Feels like a premium incubator — where serious work happens, but with warmth. Think: a well-lit workspace at night, amber glow, rich surfaces.
These are exploration starting points, not final palette. The warm stone tones (Tailwind Stone scale) create a natural, earthy dark mode that avoids the cold blue-black of typical tech dark themes.
Strong presence — the rooster/chicken is the main logo element, but stylized and abstract. Not a literal chicken illustration. Think geometric, minimal, recognizable at 16px. The silhouette should read as "rooster" without being a clip art chicken.
| Constraint | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Scalability | Works from 16px (favicon) to 256px+ (hero) |
| Color modes | Single color + full color variants |
| Backgrounds | Must work on dark AND light backgrounds |
| Format | SVG with currentColor for theme adaptability |
| Detail density | ~15% optimal (research-backed Goldilocks zone) |
| Recognition speed | Brain identifies images in 13ms — bold, unambiguous shapes |
Understanding what's already in the visual space helps us differentiate:
| Brand | Visual Style | What We Can Learn |
|---|---|---|
| Linear | Ultra-minimal, monochrome, sharp angles | Proves dark themes work for tools. But too cold for us. |
| Notion | Clean, warm, lots of whitespace, friendly illustrations | Warmth works for tools. But we need more edge. |
| Stripe | Gradient-rich, confident, premium feel | Confidence + polish. Our premium incubator vibe. |
| GitHub (Octocat) | Strong mascot that IS the brand | Proof a stylized animal can anchor a serious dev brand. |
| Supabase | Bold green, confident, developer-friendly | Strong color ownership. One accent color, committed. |
| Slack | Colorful, playful, warm | Playfulness in a work tool. But their rebrand lost character. |
Typography needs to bridge warmth and credibility. Too geometric = cold tech tool. Too rounded = not serious enough. The sweet spot: humanist or transitional faces with character.
| Category | Traits | Fit for Kurnik |
|---|---|---|
| Geometric sans | Clean, modern, precise | Could work for wordmark if paired with warm symbol |
| Humanist sans | Warm, readable, friendly | Strong candidate — warmth without being soft |
| Slab serif | Grounded, confident, editorial | Interesting for wordmark — conveys authority |
| Display / custom | Unique, ownable, memorable | Best outcome if we find the right one |
These are directional samples, not final choices. The real typography exploration happens alongside symbol design — they need to be evaluated as a pair.
Adapted from the proovx 100-point scientific framework, recalibrated for Kurnik's positioning as a founder-facing product incubator.
Score Interpretation: 85-100 Excellent — ship it. 70-84 Good — minor refinements. 55-69 Fair — significant work needed. Below 55 — back to exploration.