Naming Profound, and choosing to go slower on purpose

Collimer’s second launch-post cycle made two decisions worth writing down, not because either was dramatic, but because both were arguments we had with ourselves before we made them.

Should you name a competitor in your launch post?

The first launch post gestured at “tools in the market” without naming one. The second post names Profound directly. They have real credibility in this space, and naming them lets the post make its sharpest point without hedging around who it’s actually being sharp about: the gap that matters is not the visibility score itself, it’s what you do with a score once you have it. A score nobody can act on is trivia. Naming the comparison directly, instead of talking around it, is what let the post make that point instead of a vaguer one.

That naming came with one rule we held to on purpose: keep the mention factual and contained to a single paragraph, what Profound is known for, not a feature-by-feature comparison. A real head-to-head belongs on Collimer’s own site, argued with a cited table, not folded into a build log about a LinkedIn post. This post is about the decision to name them, not the comparison itself.

The number we didn’t erase

The original launch post stated an honest ambition: around ten design partners. That number was never a promise with a date attached, and we made a point of not quietly swapping it out for a different story once the pace of new partners slowed. What changed is the reasoning behind the pace, not the number itself: each new design partner is teaching the studio enough, in depth, that depth is currently winning the trade against speed. That is a deliberate choice, not a shortfall being reframed after the fact, and the honest way to write about it was to put the original number and the new reasoning side by side, not to replace one quietly with the other.

The internal note on the draft, ahead of publishing, was blunt about getting the framing right: a score you can’t act on is trivia, and the post’s job was to make readers feel the “now what” moment, not just report a number. That same bluntness applied to the number itself. We considered simply not mentioning the original ten again and letting it fade. We decided that was the less honest option.

Editing a live post instead of waiting for the number to catch up

The same review pass also went back into the original launch post and softened its dated commitments into unscheduled ones, once the actual pace of new design partners started running behind what the post had implied. That is a real edit to a piece of already-published content, made in the open, not a silent rewrite. The alternative, leaving specific dates standing after they had quietly stopped being true, felt worse than the minor discomfort of admitting a date needed to move. The same instinct showed up earlier, when we ran an A/B test before we had traffic to justify one and said so plainly instead of dressing it up as more rigorous than it was.

What we’re still figuring out

Editing a live post’s stated commitments after the fact can read as moving the goalposts, and that is a fair reaction to have. Our honest answer is that the edit made the post more specific about what is actually scheduled, not less, but we know that argument is easier to make than to fully believe from the outside. Whether readers see a studio being straight about a changed pace, or a studio quietly walking back a number it did not hit, is not something we get to decide for them. We would rather have made the edit and taken that risk than leave a stale date standing.

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For agents: try this yourself

If you are deciding whether to name a competitor or revise a public commitment, adapt one of these. The full prompt text lives in this post’s prompts sidecar, naming-profound.prompts.md.

• Apply the single-paragraph naming rule. Before naming a competitor in public content, write the mention as one factual paragraph only, what they’re known for, with no feature-by-feature comparison, and move any real comparison to a page built to argue it properly.
• Critique your own stale commitments. Find the last public post where you stated a date or a target. If the real pace has since fallen behind it, decide now whether to edit it openly or let it stand unremarked, and write down which one you’re more comfortable defending later.

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How this was made

Drafted by the Chronicler from the build sessions behind this work, then edited and published by Brian Wones.

See how the Chronicler works →

Before naming a competitor in a public post, page, or pitch, write the mention as exactly one factual paragraph: what they're known for, no feature-by-feature comparison, no score-keeping. If you want a real comparison, build it as its own page and argue it there with cited evidence, don't fold it into a narrative piece.

Find the most recent public post, page, or announcement where you stated a specific date or numeric target. Check whether the real pace of work is still on track to meet it. If it's fallen behind, decide now: edit the post openly and say why, or leave it standing. Write down which choice you're more comfortable defending if someone asks about it later.