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The best About page I've ever read

“I left Uber in 2017 heartbroken.”

That’s how Travis Kalanick opens the vision page for his new company, Atoms. It’s a short snippet of a raw, vulnerable and an honest moment that broke him.

And honestly? It’s brilliant, especially coming from such a huge company. I highly recommend reading through the whole thing, because it’s a sign of things to come for all things strategic narrative.

Kalanick tells a story.

He takes you through the loss, the fight, and his vision of a “Golden Age” where the means of growing, mining, manufacturing, and moving physical things becomes fully divorced from human labor. He’s not shy about the ambition: “God’s work — human progress in service to the battle against entropy, dust, and death.”

It’s pretty epic.

It’s the kind of writing that makes you feel something, that makes you believe it, and that makes you remember it.

Which is what AI can’t do, not without human insight, a perspective, a big idea.

Most of the copy we get today is emotionally vacant. It sounds like it was written by a committee and even if perfectly optimized, it ends up being forgettable.

The irony is delicious. Companies are using AI to cut costs on copy, and in the process, they’re eliminating the very thing that makes copy work: a specific voice, a unique perspective, genuine emotion. True, as I always say, 70% of the work is research, but then the remaining 30% is strategy and the actual words. Vague and generic won’t cut it, no matter how much research you’ve done.

Kalanick’s vision page works because it sounds like one person. One person who has been through something. One person who believes something specific. One person who is willing to say something bold rather than everything to everyone.

That’s the lesson here. In a world of algorithmic content and AI slop, your genuine voice is the differentiator.

Your story.

Your perspective.

Your risk.

How can your company sound like one person?

DISCOVERY

The case for narrowing your message

“When you are talking to everyone, you’re talking to no one.”

That’s Arielle Johncox, CEO of Balsamiq, on this week’s podcast. Her team went through a complete messaging overhaul last year — and their conclusion aligns perfectly with the Atoms theme.

Stop talking like a committee, to everyone.

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Balsamiq had drifted from their original positioning. They started as a tool for non-designers, then added features for designers, and ended up with a split audience and diluted messaging. Their old tagline was “Life’s too short for bad software”. It was a nice cheeky, and fun philosophy, but it didn’t tell anyone what the product actually did or who it was for.

The fix? Get specific.

Their research revealed the real ICP: engineers, product managers, and tech leads who need to visually communicate requirements without being designers. That’s who gets the most value. That’s who the messaging should speak to.

The new homepage: “Wireframe your way to faster, better product decisions.”

Clear. Specific. Qualified.

Remember, clarity over creativity. Every time.

​Check out the episode here!​

In this Messaging Breakdown, Arielle breaks down the entire journey: jobs-to-be-done research, customer language analysis, before-and-after homepage walkthrough, and why they prioritized clarity over brand delight. One of my favorite quotes: “You can’t delight someone who doesn’t understand what you do.”

This one is packed with frameworks you can apply to your own messaging — right now.

The problem isn’t your copy. It’s everything before it.

I spent 10 years as an engineer before getting into copywriting.

That background still shapes everything I do today, especially how I think about messaging as a system, not just words on a page.

In this podcast, we unpack that system: → why research is 70% of the work → why most teams fix copy instead of fixing positioning → and how to actually use AI without producing generic, forgettable content.

If you’re working on messaging for a B2B SaaS product, you’ll probably recognize a few uncomfortable truths in here.

RESONANCE

Derek Sivers, Anything You Want

Have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Chris

Chris Silvestri Founder & conversion alchemist

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