Table of contents
- What the founder writes and why it usually goes wrongpage 4
- The three sentences every founder page needspage 11
- The homepage, rewrittenpage 22
- Product pages that price themselvespage 34
- The founder story, done in one paragraphpage 46
- Final piece: a shipped page you defend in classpage 58
- Glossary and rubricpage 70
Module 3 introduction: The homepage, rewritten
By the middle of week three the workbook stops asking you to read and starts asking you to ship. The module is thirty pages of teaching and thirty-two pages of workspace. You will finish the module with a full homepage rewrite of your own company, judged against a rubric you helped write.
Three things are true about a founder's homepage. First, the founder wrote it in a hurry, usually the same afternoon the site went live. Second, the homepage has not been touched since. Third, the homepage is doing more work than any other page on the site because it is the one every prospect lands on. The rewrite is not a redesign. It is a reread by someone who has learned to read like a stranger.
What you will do in this module
- Diagnose your current homepage against the seven-question checklist introduced in Module 2.
- Rewrite the hero, the value proposition, and the first content block.
- Cut fifty percent of the words on the page without losing any of the meaning.
- Ship the rewrite by Friday of the module week.
Sample lesson: The hero sentence rewrite
Lesson 3.1 · 45 minutes
The hero of a founder's homepage is the single most read sentence the company will ever publish. It also tends to be the least revised sentence on the whole site. This lesson rewrites the hero sentence in three passes.
Pass 1: Say what the product is, plainly.
Rewrite the current hero as a sentence a friend would understand. If a smart friend cannot pass the sentence back to you and describe the product accurately, the pass has failed. Do not use the word solution, platform, or ecosystem. Do not describe capabilities. Describe the thing itself.
Worksheet 3.1a
Pass 2: Anchor the reader to a moment.
Every hero sentence works better when the reader can locate themselves inside a specific situation. Add one clause that names the situation the buyer is in when they need what you sell. This is where the founder page turns from feature list into a mirror.
Worksheet 3.1b
Pass 3: Cut adjectives, keep nouns.
Adjectives are the fingerprints of hurried writing. Delete every adjective in the Pass 2 sentence. Read the sentence again. Restore only the adjectives that carry information no other word can carry. Ninety percent of the time you will restore zero.
Worksheet 3.1c
Lesson 3.2 · 45 minutes: The three-block below-fold
The lesson introduces the three-block below-fold layout used by every high-conversion founder page reviewed for this course. Each block answers one question. Block one: who is this for. Block two: what does it do. Block three: what has it done for anyone yet. The workbook space for Lesson 3.2 sits opposite this page.
Worksheet 3.2 · Three-block below-fold
Rubric for the shipped page
You will bring the rewritten homepage to Friday's session. Your peers will read it against the rubric below. Every field carries a score from 0 to 3. A page that scores 15 or more is ready. A page that scores 12 to 14 is close. Below 12 goes back into the workbook for one more pass.
| Hero clarity | A smart friend can paraphrase in one sentence. (0-3) |
|---|---|
| Buyer moment named | The reader locates themselves in the first two sentences. (0-3) |
| Adjective density | Fewer than two adjectives per hundred words. (0-3) |
| Below-fold structure | Three blocks, one question each. (0-3) |
| Proof concrete | At least one number, one quote, one named user. (0-3) |
| Cuts made | At least fifty percent of the original words removed. (0-3) |
Glossary
- Founder page
- Any page on the company's site the founder wrote alone, usually in a single sitting, usually never revised. Every founder company has three to five.
- Hero sentence
- The first sentence on the homepage. Read more often than anything else on the site by a factor of ten.
- Buyer moment
- The specific situation the reader is in when they arrive on the page. Named or unnamed.
- Below-fold
- Anything the reader has to scroll to reach on a laptop screen at 1440 pixels wide.
- The friend test
- A paraphrase check. A smart friend reads the sentence, closes the tab, and describes the product back to you. If they get it wrong, the sentence gets rewritten.
Notes for the facilitator
The module is designed for a live cohort of six to twelve founders. If you are running this as self-study, the friend test can be run with any reader who is not familiar with the product. The rubric works alone as long as you are honest.
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