Steal my personal website

Because you need one and because I made it really easy

Mario Zigliotto and I built Somebody.io, so you could easily build a beautiful personal website in a few minutes. Here’s the story…

The hunt for the perfect personal website

After graduating college, moving to San Francisco, and beginning my career in tech, I decided it was time to get serious about my personal website. I wanted a single place where I could easily tell my story.

After hours spent on Squarespace, Weebly, Wix, Strikingly, etc., followed by a series of attempts with free Bootstrap themes, I still couldn’t get it right. Everything looked nice, but my personal story wasn’t coming through.

Then, a few weeks ago, I made this. Although simple, it was really compelling. For the first time, I felt like my personal site actually represented who I felt I was.

The site was one page, looked great on mobile, and only had a few sections…

1. The Hero Area

In this section, I introduce myself and share my personal mission statement on top of a nice bold “Hero Image”.

2. My Story

Below the Hero Area, I share my story. I start with my professional/educational statement, followed by a healthy paragraph highlighting some big parts in my professional and creative life.

3. My Projects

Below my story is a collection of 15 projects and passions that (when taken together) create a well-rounded picture of who I am. Every project (when you hover over it) reveals its name, description, and sometimes a link.

4. Contact Info

Lastly, at the very bottom, there is a “Get in Touch” button, which links to my email.

It’s simple, but captures everything perfectly. I hooked it up to my maxdeutsch.me domain, and my site was live.

I was on to something

Once live, I added the link to my LinkedIn profile and sent it around to a few friends for their feedback. I was hoping for some gentle compliments like “Cool, man” or “Looks great”.

Instead, I got “Dude, please send me your code…I want one exactly like this” and “This is so sick! After reading this, I would instantly hire you for anything” and “If I paid you $200, would you make me a site just like this?”

I was onto something.

It seemed like the simple design and the focus on storytelling strongly resonated with everyone. Plus, I was surprised to find out how many of my tech-obsessed friends didn’t have a personal site at all.

My new life’s mission: “Make a personal site for the masses and change the world”. Okay, not really — but I did realize that I had something here, and I was definitely going to milk it.

Building a website to build other websites

The obvious thing to do wasn’t to send my friends my source code or individually build them each a site. Instead, I was going to build the most basic, no-frill website I could that would allow anyone to easily create a personal website just like mine.

So, I did (by teaming up with Mario Zigliotto). And Somebody.io was born.

It’s dead simple. You start here…

You sign up.

You fill out this form and click “Publish”.

And you’re done. Your site is live.

Somebody.io is free to use, and super quick. You can publish the first version of your website in less than 10 minutes, plus a little extra time to get the Projects section right (I recommend using canva.com to make the images for your projects).

Give it a try at Somebody.io, and let me know what you think. You have no excuse now not to have a beautiful personal site.