Voice

Voice

Third-person positioning voice. Modeled on the credential-forward "Why?" blurbs Sequoia / curated job platforms generate for founders and engineers. Compresses real proof points into sentence fragments that earn the reader's attention without sounding like a cover letter.

Scope: self-positioning only. Bios, blurbs, headlines, openers, About sections.

• For social posts in the subject's voice -> social-draft
• For generic marketing copy -> copywriting

Source of Truth (read every time)

Before writing anything, load the subject's source-of-truth files (their wiki, profile doc, resume, and any past public bios). Never invent a fact, company, metric, or title. If the proof isn't there, ask or use a different angle.

If any of these are stale or missing, surface the gap before writing.

The Core Pattern (Why? blurb)

[CREDENTIAL NOUN] [optional CONTEXT TAG] with [PROOF NOUNS]

Examples (real Sequoia recruiting feed shapes, swap the proof nouns to fit the subject):

• "Founding engineer with full-stack and AI infrastructure proven"
• "Founding engineer at ideal YC company with agentic expertise"
• "Princeton CS founding engineer with infrastructure and systems experience"
• "Bloomberg + AWS engineer with 0-to-1 shipping and full-stack capabilities"

Anatomy:

• Credential noun (lead): Founding engineer, Princeton CS founding engineer, YC founding engineer, Bloomberg + AWS engineer, Agent infrastructure engineer. Strongest single noun phrase first.
• Context tag (optional): at YC AI company, at agent infrastructure startup. Only add when it sharpens the fit for the audience.
• Proof nouns (the differentiation): comma- or and-joined nouns derived from real shipped work. agentic expertise, 0-to-1 shipping, multi-tenant auth, MCP-powered SDK, customer delivery experience.
• Length: 10-22 words.
• Person: third-person fragment. No "I", no verb-led sentence.

Length Variants

Pick the variant that matches the surface area, not the other way around.

Voice Rules

Lead with the strongest single credential. "Founding engineer at $COMPANY (YC S25)" beats "20-year-old undergrad". Audience-relevant noun first.

Specificity > superlative. multi-tenant auth + microVM sandboxes beats world-class infrastructure work. Numbers from the resume are fair game (85% doc analysis reduction, 4.6x relevance gain, $32k raised).

Proof must trace to a real shipped thing. If you can't cite the resume bullet or wiki page that produced the claim, rewrite the claim.

One angle per blurb. Don't try to land founding engineer + research + design + nonprofit in one sentence. Pick the one the audience cares about.

Stack-rank credentials by audience:

Anti-Patterns (cut on sight)

Generic AI-application voice:

• "passionate about", "driven by", "thrilled to", "humbled to"
• "results-oriented", "self-starter", "team player", "fast learner"
• "leveraging", "synergy", "ecosystem", "unlock", "game-changer"
• "I am a Computer Science student at $SCHOOL interested in..." (every CS undergrad on the planet)
• Vague proof: "experience with AI", "worked on infrastructure", "built systems"
• Fluffy openings: "As a founding engineer..." (just say founding engineer)
• Three-adjective stacks: "fast, scalable, reliable"
• Hedges: "some experience with", "exposure to", "familiar with"

If a sentence could describe any $SCHOOL CS junior, rewrite it until it can only describe the subject.

AI writing tells (hard cut)

Two patterns are signature AI writing tells. They make a blurb read as machine-generated even when the proof is real. Cut both on sight.

• No em dashes (- long-form, --). Use periods, commas, colons, or parentheses. The em dash creates the AI rhythm "X, and here's why, Y." Bios in this voice are fragment-style; periods do the work.
• No negative parallelism. Cut: "Not just X, but Y." / "It's not X, it's Y." / "X isn't the goal. Y is." Make the positive claim directly. The Why? blurb pattern is [CREDENTIAL NOUN] with [PROOF NOUNS], not a rhetorical contrast.

Bad: "Not just a CS student, but a founding engineer at $COMPANY (YC S25)." Good: "CS founding engineer at $COMPANY (YC S25)."

Bad: "Founding engineer at $COMPANY (YC S25) -- shipping MCP-powered SDK and microVM auth." Good: "Founding engineer at $COMPANY (YC S25) shipping MCP-powered SDK and microVM auth."

Workflow

1. Identify the surface. What is being written, who reads it, what action do they take after.
2. Pick the audience-stack-rank credential. From the table above.
3. Pull 1-3 proof nouns from the source-of-truth files. Open resume.md if specific metrics are needed.
4. Pick a length variant matched to the surface.
5. Draft 2-3 angles, not just one. Different lead credentials, different proof.
6. Cut anti-pattern words. Run the cut list above as a final pass.
7. Show variants to the subject. Let them pick or remix; never assume the first one wins.

Default Deliverable

When asked to write a bio, return:

1. The requested-length variant (3 alternatives, different leading credential)
2. A micro version (8 words, X-bio-friendly) as a bonus
3. A note on which source facts each draft is grounded in

Format:

### Variant A: [angle, e.g., "founding engineer angle"]
[draft]
Grounded in: career-profile.md "Differentiators #1", resume.md "$COMPANY bullet 1"

### Variant B: [angle]
...

### Micro
[8-word X bio]

Maintenance

When the subject ships a notable new project, lands a new role, or publishes new work: update the proof inventory. The skill is only as sharp as the proof inventory.