A private review build: pick the cover & title, read the full book, and see the landing page live. Everything's on one page — scroll, or jump:
Same clean teal palette and flat premium style — but the “after” is no longer the chair. It’s the result of becoming the leader: a shipped product, working code, an app, and especially a revenue / growth chart scaling up. Each cover reads left→right: muted chaos (?, { }, 101010, tangled wires) resolving into a clean business outcome. The green-flagged covers are the strongest “what you get” — revenue / growth-chart outcomes. Scan the contact sheet first, then tap any cover full-size.
Same clean teal palette and the flat office-chair you chose — now telling the transformation in one image: a non-technical founder goes from confused and surrounded by tech chaos (?, { }, 101010, tangled lines) to confidently sitting in the CTO chair, in control. The chair is the destination — the role. We kept it premium and tidy (no cheesy split-photo). Scan the contact sheet first, then tap any cover full-size. Notes flag which read best as a cover vs the bolder, more ad-like splits.
The clean teal chair looked great but didn't say what the book does for you. So we kept that exact chair and palette and added one intentional, premium symbol to each cover — each one explains the outcome: a non-technical founder becomes the leader of the people who build their software (the CTO), going from confused and ripped-off to confidently in control. Scan the contact sheet first, then tap any cover to open it full-size. Each is captioned with its symbol and what it explains.
We kept the teal palette and the clean flat office-chair you liked from wild-07, removed the leftover faint box, and gave each cover one deliberate, premium background idea — float, badge, card, dot-grid, blueprint, rings, gradient, color-block, two-tone and a single minimal accent. Scan the contact sheet first, then tap any cover to open it full-size.
You picked the clean product-book chair — bold title up top, a single flat office-chair icon on a solid ground, subtitle and author below. The chair says the CTO seat is open — take it. Here are 20 polished executions of that one idea: palette, chair style, accent and composition vary; the concept stays. Scan the contact sheet first, then tap any cover to open it full-size.
The hand-drawn stick-figure direction the author flagged — black-ink doodle cartoons on off-white paper with a single burnt-orange accent. Scan the contact sheet first, then tap any cover to open it full-size.
Each emulates the format of a hit business book — style homage only, no reference book's text, wordmark or logo reproduced. Scan the contact sheet first, then tap any cover to open it full-size. Each is captioned with the book it evokes.
Round 4 — stick-figure treatments (01–04) plus 16 fresh directions: whiteboard, sticky-notes, org-chart, the empty CTO chair, cockpit, levers, puzzle, translator, iceberg, compass, chess, blocks, duotone portrait, solved maze, blueprint-person, lift-off.
A wide exploration across illustration, single-object, metaphor, retro, photographic, schematic, playful and abstract — all on the locked title. Scan the contact sheet first, then tap any cover below to open it full-size.
Tap any cover to open it full-size and compare. Start with Round 3b at the top — the latest, same four designs as Round 3 but with a more aspirational subtitle. Round 3, Round 2 and Round 1 are kept underneath for reference.
Same title (The Accidental CTO, locked), same four layouts, colourways and path devices as Round 3 — these are refined versions, not new designs. Only the subtitle changed, to a more aspirational line: How non-technical founders become one — on purpose. Type stays the hero; author stays Ryan Richardson.
Title locked: The Accidental CTO on all four. The title says how the reader got here; each cover keeps the premium type-led look but adds one quiet path / journey / system device to signal there's a deliberate route (the six-lever system). Subtitle stays small: The non-technical founder's path to leading the build. Type is the hero; the path device supports.
Built from an evidence-based design brief: type is the hero, one ruthless concept each, high-contrast brand palette, subtitle kept small. Three new title directions — The Self-Made CTO, From Idea to CTO, The Accidental CTO — across five cover concepts. The brief's top 3 are flagged ★ top pick.
The first directions. Most carry the title The Non-Technical CTO; covers 6 and 7 test alternative titles (cover-06 = "The Accidental CTO", cover-07 = "Non-Technical Founder → Startup CTO").
The repositioned full manuscript — The Non-Technical CTO, 146 pages. Open the PDF in your browser, or grab the epub for an e-reader.
This is the full repositioned manuscript, not an excerpt.
The $9 book funnel, deployed and live. Opens in a new tab so you can flick back here.
bst-funnel.pages.dev — the hero now shows cover-01.