Johannes Gutenberg. Name ring a bell?

Vaguely remembered from school assemblies and pub quizzes as the man who invented the printing press, and therefore, apparently, saved civilisation. But the reality is far more amusing, more ironic, and more familiar to anyone who’s ever tried to crowdfund an app idea and ended up with a furious co-founder and zero equity.

Gutenberg wasn’t some serene scholarly visionary unlocking the gates of human knowledge with a beatific smile and a nice grant from UNESCO. He was a hustler. A proper, scrappy, 15th-century startup bro.

The Holy Selfie Stick

One of his early ventures was aimed at pilgrims, the medieval equivalent of Instagram influencers. Constantly travelling, obsessed with relics, and under the impression that proximity to a mummified toe might boost their personal brand with God. Pilgrimage sites were bursting with opportunity. You had thousands of sweaty penitents queueing to see some sacred fragment. And in the spirit of all good tech entrepreneurs, Gutenberg identified a bottleneck.

His solution? A device involving polished mirrors on sticks, designed to capture the reflected holy light from relics during those rare public unveilings. The idea was that the mirror didn’t just show you the relic — it imbibed it, absorbed its sanctity like a spiritual USB stick. You could then take it home and consult it, like a medieval glowing crystal ball, only with more papal legitimacy.

Did it catch on? No. Of course not. It was a commercial failure — one of those inventions that makes you go “Oh, bless,” before quietly leaving the stall. But the point is: he tried. He spotted a niche. He built a prototype. He pitched it to a well-defined demographic. A modern VC would’ve told him to pivot.

Print, Scale, Monetise (Repent Later)

Gutenberg then moved on to his moonshot: the printing press. And like so many great disruptors, he made his money — initially — from the oldest driver of innovation there is: no, not war. Not love. Religious capitalism.

Gutenberg’s printing press was used first and foremost not to print bibles or wisdom — but indulgences. Slips of paper that let you buy your way out of purgatory, which is a concept so wonderfully corrupt it’s almost impressive. The Church loved it: the margins were divine, and the demand was eternal.

So, yes — Gutenberg made the first major advance in information technology not for spreading truth, but for helping the Catholic Church sell pardons like theological scratch cards.

The Lawsuit That Launched Publishing

Of course, no startup tale would be complete without a ruinous falling out with your investor.

Gutenberg, being more inventor than businessman, borrowed heavily from Johann Fust, a financier with all the patience of a loan shark. When repayments inevitably faltered, Fust sued. Gutenberg lost everything: his press, his workshop, and even his star apprentice, Peter Schoeffer, who defected to Fust’s new venture like an Elizabethan Wozniak gone corporate.

Meanwhile, Gutenberg — the man who invented modern mass communication — ended up broke, overshadowed, and edged out of the company bearing his own legacy. He didn’t die in disgrace, exactly, but certainly not in profit. His story is the original cautionary tale on why you should always read the small print.

Yes, the man who printed the Gutenberg Bible — the tech demo that changed the world — died having made no profit from it.

In Conclusion: A Founding Father of Tech, Minus the Exit Strategy

So let’s call him what he really was: not a saint, not a prophet, but a startup founder. One with a slightly eccentric product-market fit, some perilous investors, and a foundational technology that changed the world without making him rich. The printing press gave Europe the tools to build the modern age. But Gutenberg? He got ousted before Series A.

Now that’s a tech story for the ages.

Yes, history is rarely fair. But sometimes there’s a meta reckoning to follow. Nearly 600 years later, Gutenberg finally gets the visual identity he never knew he needed.

Self Studio recently reimagined the brand identity for Gutenberg Technology — a global tech platform reimagining educational content creation, named after the man himself. A clever tribute to the original disruptor of content delivery, this time rendered in Figma instead of hot lead.

Gutenberg may not have lived to see his name on a clean sans-serif logo, but at least now, somewhere in the cloud, he’s finally looking the part.