Arcade

Arcade was a design token manager for enterprise systems. From 2020 into 2021 we demoed it with large brands. The technical story was solid: tokens as the source of truth, Next.js on the front, and Sanity underneath.

Ops and product-market fit were not: every demo added a wishlist item, the surface grew faster than the team, and without funding, follow-up stalled and momentum faded.

The work still shows up in later products, Hermae especially. The lesson is less about tokens and more about sales: demos without a tight offer train you to build the next feature instead of closing the last one. Building with co-founders does not fix that if nobody owns the buying conversation.