TL;DR:
I rebuilt my personal website to reflect the messy, creative process of product innovation replacing my polished consulting sales site. Inspired by the concept of an inventor’s notebook, I used AI tools like ChatGPT and Google AI Studio to create a site that evolves through conversation and iteration. The design embraces imperfection by utilizing handwritten fonts, pencil sketches, and watercolor washes, along with playful micro-interactions to showcase how product development occurs.
Key Lessons:
- Vibe coding with AI reduces development overhead and enables delightful details.
- Interactive design teaches itself subtly, enhancing UX without clutter.
- Shipping imperfect MVPs is better than waiting for perfection.
- Innovation thrives at intersections, not in isolated expertise.
The Problem
My website was dying a slow death as a consultant's storefront. Five years of "I help founders raise venture capital!", true, but painfully one-dimensional. Any startup founder knows this trap: you optimize for one metric and lose sight of everything else that drives innovation.
Two decades at the edge of emerging technologies had taught me more than fundraising tactics. I had product lessons, technology insights, and creative perspectives that were gathering dust while my site showcased a single service offering.
The solution wasn't another polished "about page." I needed something that felt alive. An inventor's notebook that captured how a product leader actually thinks, experiments, and builds.
Why an Inventor's Notebook?
Every product leader knows the power of dated notes. They're your proof of ideation when it comes to patent litigation. When did that breakthrough idea first surface? What drove your pivot decision? IP lawyers love them, but more importantly, they capture the messy reality of how innovation actually happens.
This became my design philosophy. Instead of another sterile portfolio, I wanted visitors peeking into my actual process: handwritten sketches, uneven lines, the raw experimentation that leads to product breakthroughs.
Enter vibe coding with AI. V0.dev and Cursor became my development partners, ChatGPT architected the components, and Google AI Studio crafted the hand-sketched aesthetic with watercolor flourishes. The result? A site that evolved through conversation and iteration, exactly how the best products are built.
Vibe Coding: When Development Costs Are Measured in Tokens
Here's what changes when your development overhead is tokens instead of sprints: you can afford to obsess over details that would never survive a product roadmap review.
Take the photo album labels, they're programmatically generated but randomly rotated by tiny increments. Or a biography section that highlites a random interest every time the page is loaded. Completely unnecessary, totally delightful.
The real game-changer? Migration complexity vanishes. When GPT-5 can one-shot a Python script that scrapes your old S3 bucket, converts HTML to Markdown, and reorganizes your entire content architecture in seconds, the traditional cost-benefit analysis breaks down. Manual tasks become programmatic and you are saved from the monotony.
These micro-interactions won't move your north star metrics. But they'll make the right users stop, smile, and remember why they connected with your product in the first place. Even if you're the only user.
Interactive Design That Teaches Itself
The visual language of a notebook: handwritten fonts, sketches that bloom with watercolor on hover, adding back in the authentic imperfection that digital products usually polish away.
I was channeling my high school art teacher Mr. Coogan, who used to say "Producers now spend thousands of dollars trying to recreate the crappy sound of a 4-track cassette recording from the band's old basement."
But the standout feature is deceptively simple: a randomized bio paragraph that adapts based on which facet of my identity you're curious about. Click the highlighted title, and the entire introduction rewrites itself. Product leader becomes photographer becomes startup advisor becomes jiu-jitsu practitioner.
Early user testing revealed the problem every product manager dreads: invisible affordances. Solution? A tiny animated arrow that appears once, teaches the interaction, then vanishes forever. Sometimes the best UX is the kind that disappears after it's done its job.
The MVP Mistake Every Product Leader Makes
Despite preaching "ship early, iterate fast," I fell into my own trap. Scope creep infected my personal project just like it kills startup roadmaps. Too many features, too much polish, too much "just one more thing" before launch.
The wake-up call came when momentum started dying. Classic product death spiral: perfectionism paralyzing progress. Solution? I axed 80% of the planned content and shipped with one example of each content type. As Reid Hoffman says "If you're proud of what you ship, you waited too long."
Here's what every founder learns the hard way: once something is live, everything changes. Feedback flows, users explore, friends share insights you never considered. The longer you wait for "perfect," the higher the odds your project joins the graveyard of brilliant ideas that never escaped your laptop.
Why This Matters Beyond Personal Branding
Most professionals live and die by their brand: the venture guy, the product leader, the photographer, the jiu-jitsu champion. But innovation happens at intersections. The best product insights come from connecting disparate experiences, not deepening expertise in isolation. I would argue that most innovation happens by taking a known solution from one problem domain and applying it to a new field.
This site bridges those worlds. It's a knowledge transfer system for my kids (so they don't repeat my expensive mistakes), a pattern library for fellow product leaders, and an open invitation to the startup community: if something here sparks an idea, let's explore it together.
The real magic happens when the messy imperfection of invention meets the structured discipline of product leadership.
Curious about the technical implementation or want to share your own product lessons? Drop me a line — I'd love to hear what resonates and what you're building.