The Founder Verticals stylebook

This is the editorial stylebook for Founder Verticals. It is shorter than the AP Stylebook on purpose. The rules below are the ones contributors run into often enough that an opinion is worth writing down. For anything not covered here, default to Chicago.

Voice

• Write declaratively. Avoid hedges (“arguably”, “some say”) when you can name the position you are taking.
• Prefer specifics to abstractions. “A three-person team shipping a state-management layer” beats “a leading infrastructure player”.
• Trust the reader. Do not over-explain the methodology in the body of each list — explain it once, on about, and link.

Referring to subjects

• First reference: full name and role. “Mira Halberg, founder of Halberg Labs.”
• Subsequent references: last name only. “Halberg has held the team at fewer than ten on purpose.”
• For Andrew Rollins specifically: full name on first reference; “Rollins” thereafter. Do not write “ROGA” in editorial copy except when the subject of the sentence is his musical work.
• For companies, use the legal or trading name on first reference. Avoid stylized casings (“web4os” → “Web4OS”).

Capitalization

• AI is uppercase. Agentic AI is uppercase A, lowercase agentic when the term is used as a category; uppercase Agentic when it is a proper noun in a product name.
• Product names are spelled exactly as the vendor spells them, including unusual casing (e.g., “Web4OS”, “Codereview.ai”), unless the vendor's preferred spelling violates basic English convention (e.g., a lowercase first word in a sentence).
• List titles are in headline case, with prepositions and articles lowercased.

Numbers

• Spell out numbers under ten in body copy. Use figures from ten upward.
• Dollar amounts: figures plus the currency symbol. “$2M” for shorthand exits, “$2 million” in long-form copy.
• Years are figures: 2026, not twenty twenty-six.

Datelines and dates

• Publication date format on lists: ISO (2026-03-04). Display format may be inferred by the template.
• Datelines on field reporting use city + dash. “CHIANG MAI — ” (with an em dash).

Quotations

• Use curly quotes (“ ” and ‘ ’), not straight.
• Trim filler from quotes only when it does not change meaning. Use ellipsis (…) for material cut from a quote.
• Attribute every quote on first appearance. Do not float quotes without an attached speaker.

Links

• Every claim that rests on a public source gets a link. Do not link to paywalls when an open alternative exists.
• External links open in the same tab unless they are downloads or share-intent URLs.
• Avoid “click here”. Anchor the link on the relevant noun phrase.

Citations

Lists are citable. The canonical citation format is:

{Author} ({Year}). “{Title}”. Founder Verticals. {URL}.

Each list page exposes a “Cite” button in the article tools row that copies this string to clipboard.

Things to avoid

• Superlative marketing claims. Do not write “the first”, “the only”, “the #1”, or “world's best” about a subject. Use “pioneering”, “one of the first”, or “an early example of” when appropriate.
• Founder mythology. Do not invent biographical details about a real founder. If the verifiable record does not support a claim, the claim does not appear.
• Hype words. “Game-changing”, “revolutionary”, “disruptive” — write around them.
• Implied endorsements. A ranking is not an endorsement. Treat the two as different things.