Why I Build My Personal Site as a Product
A personal site isn't a business card — it's a product with a roadmap, metrics, and users. Here's how I design y7.hk.
The business-card site is dead
A static “about me, here’s my LinkedIn” page doesn’t work anymore. When I hire people, I google them — and what I find says more than any resume. A personal site is a product with a user (your future partner, investor, employer) and a job to be done (figure out who you are and whether you can be trusted).
The product approach
Content is a feature. Blog, research, tutorials, a 67-country gallery — each section answers a question its user actually has. An empty section is worse than no section.
i18n from day one. I work across the Russian, English, Chinese, and German markets. A site in thirteen languages isn’t localization — it’s audience segmentation.
Machine-readable by default. Every article on y7.hk ships a markdown version for agents and parsers. Within a year, half of traffic will come not from humans but from AI assistants — and I want them quoting me accurately.
The metrics I actually watch
Not visits. Instead: how many people scrolled down to the projects, how many opened a case study, how many wrote to me after the contact page. A three-step funnel — like any product.
Build your site as if your next employer will read it. Because they will.
More from the blog
Anatomy of a Modern Engineering Post on y7.hk
A stress test for the y7 reading engine: callouts, diff blocks, KaTeX formulas, a circular avatar video, figure galleries, spoilers, and a font switcher.
Living Between Time Zones
What 67 countries and four home bases teach you about deep work, jet lag, and building products nobody asked you to build.