1. If nobody would argue the opposite, it isn’t a differentiator
One designer brought a pitch built around shipping growth and revenue features. The motivation behind it is right. The trouble is that nobody disagrees with it. Nate’s check for any value prop: is there a designer out there who’d argue the opposite? No designer says they’d rather not help the company grow, so the line doesn’t set you apart from anyone else applying. And setting you apart is the point, because your portfolio’s job is to get you interviews.
Later in the same review, the designer tried a line about bringing product thinking and end-to-end ownership to fast-paced teams. The honest read was that it sounded copied out of a job description. Same test, same result. The rewrites that started to work were ones Nate couldn’t put on his own portfolio and have make sense.
Write your one-liner, then try writing its opposite. If no working designer would put that opposite on their own site, keep rewriting until one would.
2. Some narrowing only shrinks the pool
Niching down usually trades fewer jobs for better odds on each one. Some constraints only do the first half. Nate’s example: a product designer who builds design systems for healthcare has a discipline, a craft and an industry, and reads as someone who’s good at something specific. Add “for healthcare teams in Ohio” and you’ve cut the jobs you can apply for without making anyone think you’re better at the work.
Positioning yourself as the sole designer at startups lands in that bucket. You’d interview well for those roles, but there aren’t many of them. Tim rarely hears “sole designer” as a flex, either. It can read like you got the project because nobody more specialized was around, and it invites questions you don’t want a reviewer asking. Do you take feedback? Would you work under someone else, or under a VP who’s hard to work with?
The stronger material was already on the page, in a subheading about years spent in another field before design. It had been demoted after interviewers asked about the switch. Nate thought it was doing more work than the headline, because it shows why this candidate is different from everyone else applying. Go through your own line word by word. Keep what makes you look better at the work, and cut what only rules jobs out.
3. Want more than one industry? Build more than one niche
A senior designer came back with a tight enterprise position that’s true to their experience, plus a pull toward a couple of other industries. It’s a fair worry — Nate’s own site shows the trade. It’s narrowed hard toward healthcare and enterprise, which makes him a strong candidate for those jobs and poorly positioned for anything else.
His answer was to niche down more than once rather than generalize. He keeps a second domain pointed at the same site, with different wording for a different audience. He admitted his second version drifts generic, which he called the wrong call and a bit lazy. Aim each version at a specific industry instead. Extra domains run maybe $10 to $15 a year.
Tim’s add: whatever niche you lead with, back it up. A “previously at” line or a few chips under the headline gives a reader proof that you’re who you say you are. Start with one specific position, and when you want a second, build a second version for it rather than sanding down the first.
4. No numbers? Estimate, and label it
A student asked how to show impact on a conceptual project. Tim’s frame is that the impact section closes the loop on the problem you set up. If the problem was that users feel uneasy, the impact is that they feel at ease. Then put a size on it: how many people it touches, whether it moves retention or churn or upgrades, and what price tag you’d put on the project if you had to work one out.
Most businesses are estimating too. Tim’s word for it is soup. The numbers are approximations, and plenty of companies have no real metrics at all. Start from anything you know, estimate down from there, and say plainly that it’s an estimate. Go easy on dollar figures you can’t support, because a claim that feels suspicious gets read that way.
Write your impact section as the mirror of your problem statement, add an estimate with the reasoning showing, and say that it’s an estimate. Don’t cut it to keep the page short, either. Nate’s view is that everyone skims a case study whatever its length. A long one might bore someone partway through, but a missing impact section can rule you out.
5. Job posts are a poor guide to startup hiring
The designer with the growth pitch had been reading job descriptions to decide on a position. Tim thought that was working backwards, and sketched the hiring path to show why. In the usual process, an ATS and a human reviewer read your resume first. A hiring manager then looks at resume and portfolio together, and the portfolio works like part two of the resume.
A startup usually can’t pay for recruiters. The CEO sees your work, you talk with them and an engineer, and that’s the process. Specialist roles like a growth designer tend to come out of networks and conversations, so you won’t see many job posts for them. Tim also said startups don’t want someone who designs for startups. They want someone who looks like they could design for the biggest companies, because the goal of a startup is to stop being one.
He was frank that startups often have the least money and the worst schedules, so be sure it’s what you want. If it is, spend your effort meeting the people who work there, and pitch yourself to the company they’re trying to become. His example was “high-velocity teams”, with the caveat that you might not want that either.
We also looked at a senior designer’s case study that was already in good shape. What it lacked at that level was a section on leading stakeholders and facilitating the team, which matters more now that output is so easy to produce. A few UI notes came up across portfolios. If information matters, don’t hide it behind hover. A hover effect should switch off the moment the cursor leaves. A very small cursor makes it hard to tell what’s clickable, and Tim isn’t a fan of dot cursors in general. And if people hire you directly instead of through an application, your contact button needs to be easy to find.
We mostly held back on a site for a personal business, since judging it means knowing an audience we don’t. In Q&A we disagreed on whether a student should learn AI tools or fundamentals first. Nate says the basics of AI take a couple of weeks and the market is already filtering on them. Tim says the tools will keep changing, so build durable knowledge first.