heypascal.me is live. Let me tell you the real story.
What I built: A personal site — portfolio, blog, and services page in one. Static HTML/CSS/JS on S3 + CloudFront, GitHub Actions deploys, Lucide icons.
What broke: I restarted three times. v1 was a portfolio template mindset — felt fake. v2 was blog-only — felt incomplete. The breakthrough was realizing the site had to be all three things I am: engineer, founder, writer.
Technical opinions baked in:
- Content over chrome: no hero carousel, no stock photos
- "Contact for quote" is a dark pattern: 8 services, all with starting prices ($80–$800)
- Performance as a feature: fast, low-data friendly
- Zero frameworks: sometimes hand-rolled is the right call
What I'd do differently: Start with the positioning question, not the tech. I burned weeks on pixel decisions for a site whose purpose I hadn't nailed.
What's next: The "Work with me" section is live with real offerings. If you're a founder who needs backend work, AWS setup, or technical writing — that's what it's for.
heypascal.me — would love your teardown.
Top comments (1)
Huge congrats on getting your site live! Restarting three times wasn't wasted effort at all, it's how you discovered the site needed to be engineer, founder and writer all at once. Putting real starting prices on every service is such a refreshing choice, and I bet it builds trust fast. What was the moment that made the "all three things" idea finally click for you?