---
name: founder-site
description: Write a founder/operator personal site that reads like a thesis, not a resume. Use when someone asks for a personal site, portfolio, or bio page and they have real work to show. Produces structure, copy, and taste rules; pairs with any stack.
---

# Write a founder site, not a resume

This is the playbook behind https://gtm.bio. Point an agent at it and your own
work. The output should make a reader think "this person has been making one bet
for years and is mid-bet right now," not "this person is available for hire."

## The spine

One page, three or four sections, in this order:

1. **Hero.** Name, a one-line thesis, nothing else. The thesis names the through-line
   of all the work: "I turn X into Y." No founder roll-call sub-line, no titles, no
   adjectives. If the thesis is right, every card below it reads as evidence.
2. **Now.** Two or three small live tiles: the last thing shipped, one real-time
   signal (weather, location, a feed), and the current bet phrased as "thinking
   about" with a contrarian one-liner. Never name the unannounced company. The label
   carries the humility; the value carries the claim.
3. **Past work.** Four to six cards, each one chapter of the same thesis.
4. **Rituals.** Two or three personal practices labeled as verbs (ritual / connect,
   ritual / remember, ritual / explore). This section is who the person is; it earns
   the weekend-tinkerer read without saying it.

## Card grammar

Every work card is exactly: a kind label, a title, a two-line blurb, and a modal.

- **Kind label:** `role / category`, lowercase, e.g. `founder / event saas`,
  `partner / music discovery`. Role is honest: partner beats inflated VP titles.
- **Blurb:** two lines max. The title states what it is; the blurb states the payoff
  or the insight, never a restatement. End on the strongest word. One number allowed
  if it is load-bearing ("bootstrapped to seven-figure ARR").
- **Modal:** three fields, in order. **Problem** (the structural shift or mispricing
  that made the window), **System** (what was actually built, concrete nouns),
  **Proof** (named buyers, real numbers, third-party quotes, and when possible a
  closing *finding*: the generalizable lesson the bet returned).
- The best modal ends by handing the reader to the current chapter ("...pushed the
  thesis toward AI-driven markets").

## The test every line must pass

Chris Dixon's rubric: pattern, timing, incentives, why-now. Each card should name
its window ("before the algorithms"), each proof should be verifiable, and the page
should answer "what is the current bet?" without declaring an unlaunched company.
If a sentence could appear on any consultant's site, cut it.

## Voice

- Operator, not marketer. Plain verbs. No "passionate," no "leveraging," no journey.
- No em dashes. Commas, colons, periods. Middots as separators in labels.
- Numbers only when checkable. Round honestly (1.8M is not "2M").
- Never claim invention of a commons ("inspired 30,000 people to join in," not
  "created a movement").
- The blurb's job is what the title cannot say. Kill every redundancy between
  label, title, and blurb.

## Taste rules (the restraint doctrine)

- Exactly two label tiers on the whole page: section slugs and field labels. A third
  style is a bug.
- One hairline weight everywhere. A rule never touches content.
- Spacing on an 8px scale. If a value is not a multiple of 8 (or 4 below 16), it is
  a bug.
- Cards are naked by default: no borders, no fills. The covers and the type carry
  the grid. Text never moves on hover; images may.
- Show, don't tell: every claim in a modal should have an artifact in its gallery.
  Real screenshots, real photographs, period pieces. Crop contact sheets into
  single images. No stock, no mockups of mockups.
- Grayscale covers that reveal color on hover make mixed-era photography sit
  together.

## Proof discipline

Galleries are evidence, not decoration. For each company: the origin artifact (the
first ugly version), the product at its best, the team being human, and one piece
of third-party validation (press, a named customer, a quote). Cut anything dim,
redundant, or explicable only with a paragraph. Ten strong beats eighteen mixed.

## What not to build

- No skills-matrix, no testimonials wall, no "services" page, no contact form
  (bare social glyphs suffice).
- No year ranges on the page. Eras can be implied ("before Spotify playlists");
  dates rot.
- No dark-mode toggle for its own sake. One confident default beats two timid ones.

## The flourish

Give the page one move no one else has. gtm.bio lets visitors restyle the page and
the owner's portrait with one prompt; the content never changes, which is the point:
identity fixed, presentation fluid. Whatever the flourish, it should *demonstrate*
the thesis, not decorate it. Then make the site legible to agents too: an llms.txt
mirror and a skill file like this one. If the site is the resume, the skill file is
the referral.