I Wrote 21 Articles Before I Had Users. Here is Why.
A Note on Expertise
I'm not writing as an "expert" or claiming to have all the answers. I'm a builder sharing my journey on what worked, what didn't, and what I learned along the way. The tech landscape changes constantly, and with AI tools now available, the traditional notion of "expertise" is evolving. Take what resonates, verify what matters to you, and forge your own path. This is simply my experience, offered in the hope it helps fellow builders.
When someone looks at Havnwright today, they see a blog with twenty-one articles. That number looks planned. It looks like somebody sat down and said "we need twenty articles to launch properly." That is not what happened.
The twenty-one articles are the result of seven months of writing, starting in September 2025 and continuing every week since. The first ones were on a WordPress site before the web app existed. Back then we had seven articles, then nine, then the whole direction shifted and the content moved with it. It was never a launch strategy. It was a habit of writing what I was researching.
I am writing this post because how you think about content as a solo founder matters more than most people admit. And because almost everything I would tell you about it is the opposite of what you will hear from most marketing advice.
The problem with most articles
If you start researching "how to write content for your startup" you will find the same advice everywhere. Long-form. Comprehensive guides. Target a keyword, build backlinks, rank on Google. Two thousand words minimum. Do it at scale.
I read a lot of that advice. Then I tried to read the articles that followed it. I got bored within the first two paragraphs. Not because the information was bad, but because I was looking for a specific answer and the article was giving me a lecture.
If I get bored reading my own research, how do I expect a homeowner who has never renovated before to keep up? Someone planning a kitchen does not want to read two thousand words about planning permission. They want to know if they need it, what it costs, how long it takes, and where to apply. Four short answers. That is it.
That realisation changed how I wrote everything.
Sections instead of paragraphs
The first thing I changed was the format. I stopped writing articles as walls of text. Each article is broken into sections that can be scanned. Where it makes sense, I use tables to compare options side by side. Where a figure would help, I add one. Colour-coded callouts where a warning or a tip matters. Numbered lists where order matters. Structure that lets you jump to the part you care about without reading the rest.
This sounds obvious when you read it. It is not common in practice. Most founder blogs still write in the classic blog style, where you open with a long intro, build up to the point in the middle, and summarise at the end. That format exists because print journalism works that way. It does not work for people who are three browser tabs deep looking for a specific fact about their renovation.
The Instagram story format
The second thing I built was not standard for a blog at all. Every article has a story mode.
The idea came from Instagram. Attention spans are getting shorter. People scroll, tap, flip. They are trained to consume in bursts. If you do not give them what they need in the first few seconds, they go somewhere else. That is not a personal failing. It is how the internet works now.
So I took each article and condensed it into about twelve slides. The same information, stripped down to the essentials, laid out visually, one point per slide. You can flip through the whole thing in under a minute. If you want the full detail, the full article is one tap away.
This was the biggest behaviour change. People who would never read the article will flip through the story. And once they have the gist, some of them do go read more. But even the ones who do not, they got what they needed, and they remember that the information came from us.
Information first, monetisation second
The part that matters most is the philosophy behind all of this.
I did not write these articles to rank on Google. I did not write them to build a funnel. I did not write them to capture leads for contractors. I wrote them because there was information that homeowners needed and nobody was presenting it in a way that respected their time.
Somewhere inside Havnwright is a business that needs to make money. That is real and I am not pretending otherwise. But the content side of the platform is not where I want to monetise. The content is where I want the brand to become a source people actually trust. A place where a homeowner can go, get what they need, and leave better informed than they arrived.
If that sounds naive in an age where every blog is also a sales funnel, I understand. But there is a long-term thing happening here that I think about a lot.
The LLM citation angle
AI models are becoming the layer between search and information. When someone asks an AI about renovation, the AI does not send them to a webpage. It summarises what it found and cites a few sources. Which sources get cited matters enormously. They become the implicit authorities on their subject.
If the goal is for your brand to be trusted, traditional SEO is not enough. You also need to be the kind of source that holds up under AI summarisation. That means clear information, well-structured content, accurate research, and a consistent voice. The articles I write for Havnwright are partly aimed at humans, and partly aimed at being the kind of source an AI would cite when someone asks about home renovation.
This might be a pipe dream. I am aware that the game is changing fast. But the alternative, writing thin SEO-optimised content hoping to rank above the next person doing the same, feels like a losing strategy over the next few years. Investing in being genuinely useful seems like the better long-term bet.
What I would tell another founder about content
A few things I have learned in these seven months of writing.
Start before you think you are ready. I started with seven articles on a WordPress site. The site was not great. The articles were imperfect. It did not matter. Starting built the habit, and the habit is what eventually produces twenty-one articles.
Write what you are researching anyway. As a solo founder you are constantly researching. Zoning rules, material costs, contractor practices, platform APIs, whatever your domain is. That research has to happen regardless. Turning it into content is marginal effort, and it compounds.
Respect the reader's time. Sections over paragraphs. Tables over walls of text. Story-mode summaries for people who want the gist. Give them a way to get what they need in thirty seconds, and a deeper path for the ones who want more.
Do not optimise for search engines first. Optimise for being useful first. Search engines are increasingly rewarding useful content anyway, and AI summarisers are definitely rewarding it.
Keep writing. Most content strategies fail because people stop after three months. The compound value of a content library is real, but only if you keep adding to it. Twenty-one articles in seven months is not a lot by content farm standards. It is a lot by solo founder standards. Both are fine.
This is part of a series about building products as a solo founder. Earlier posts cover my personal journey, why I built Havnwright, the authentication pattern, what building with AI actually looks like, the memory system I built, and shipping a native mobile app. More coming.
About the Author
Alireza Elahi is a solo founder building products that solve real problems. Currently working on Havnwright, Publishora, and the Founder Knowledge Graph.