# Why this site is a letter and not a landing page

> I rebuilt my website from scratch. Here's why, and what I plan to do with it.

- Author: Sumit Bhagat (https://sumitbhagat.com/about)
- Published: 2026-09-26
- Updated: 2026-09-27
- Canonical: https://sumitbhagat.com/writing/a-letter-about-this-site
- Topics: work, philosophy

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I had a WordPress site for a couple of years. It had a hero image, three cards, a bio that said I "pioneered AI-powered solutions", and two blog posts. I set it up from a theme, filled in the boxes, and told myself I'd write later.

*[margin note: I did not write later.]*

The other problem was that it looked like every other personal site. Lately the words on most sites sound the same too. You can tell when a page was generated. The sentences are all the same length, there's a neat summary at the end, and nobody seems to be home. I use these tools every day at work. I still didn't want my own site to read like that.

So I started over. The question I began with was: what would this look like if it were a letter from me to one person?

## What changed

The site is written in first person, to you. The old bio said "product and technology leader with 8+ years of experience". The new one says I studied chemistry and took a year off to start a company. Same facts, but one of them sounds like a person.

There's a red pencil in the margins for the things I'd say out loud if we were reading this together.

Every post ends with a way to reply by email. I want to hear it when you think I'm wrong, because that's the kind of feedback that changes my mind.

*[margin note: If you email me and I'm slow, send it again.]*

There's no "featured in" strip and no subscriber count. If the writing isn't worth reading, those wouldn't help.

## What I'm going to write about

### Product

I've spent ten years shipping in India, mostly at companies too small to have a playbook. I have opinions about what the frameworks miss, and I want to test them against yours.

### AI and the job

I lead a product team, and I also went back to school for data science, so I see both sides of this. The question I keep coming back to: if a model can draft the PRD, run the analysis and suggest the roadmap, what is the product manager for? I have a rough answer. I'll argue it here in pieces.

### Work, and why we do it

Careers, ambition, what a working week is actually like. Sometimes the slower questions too, because "how do I ship faster" eventually turns into "why am I shipping this", and I'd rather deal with that question on purpose.

## The goal

I want to be the person you think of when product management and AI come up together. Shreyas Doshi and Aakash Gupta have each built something like that, and I've learned a lot from both of them. I'm not trying to copy either one. I want to do it from where I am, with the problems I've actually worked on.

It feels like a lot to write that down. I'm writing it down anyway.

## What I'd like from you

Read something. If it's wrong, tell me. If it's useful, send it to someone. And if you'd rather have the next one arrive in your inbox, there's a box below for that.