Work History / Common Ground
commonground.venturesThe group's site, restructured section by section in 2026
Jimmy built and ran the Common Ground site through 2026. He holds 71 of the 72 commits on its main branch, and the other one is his own agent's.
Brand · 2026
| Project type | Company website, design and build |
|---|---|
| Industry | Operating partners and advisory |
| Seat | Principal, Brand and Product Merchandising |
| Ran through | Common Ground |
| Dates | March 2026 to September 2026 |
| Worked with | Jesse Fowler made one commit on the remote copy, a redirect and robots change on July 22, 2026, and supplies the wins behind the news strip. Robby Prochnow is credited with a redesign integration between April and June 2026. No document describes what it covered. |
What it is
commonground.ventures is the public site of Common Ground. It is one file. All of the markup, styling and scripts sit inline in a single page, with no framework and no build step.
In March 2026 a site brief asked for a restructure. The site led with a service menu, "Brand. Capital. Execution. Legal.", and showed six portfolio cards. The brief asked for a conviction headline, a bar of partner and press logos, a larger portfolio, formal titles for the principals and softer calls to action. In June the site also had to take in a fifth principal, Robby Prochnow, and a new story about strategy plus execution through AI.
The site in its current form dates from March 2026, when the rebuild began.
What Jimmy did
- Made the initial commit on March 4, 2026 and ran the restructure one section at a time. His working rule is in the handoff report: "Don't do anything without my guidance. I want to take it step by step, section by section."
- Replaced the service-menu headline with two words, "We Build.", and added a moving bar of 17 partner and press logos under it. On July 14, 2026 he cut that bar back to press outlets only.
- Added a fourth line for Legal to the belief bar, and rewrote the About section so the belief bar states the problem and About gives the answer.
- Grew the portfolio from 6 cards to 27 companies, with filters for arena, role and status, and a hover state that floods each card with that company's own color.
- Wired the pre-engagement terms form to the group's customer relationship system through a webhook and added a PDF receipt, on April 13, 2026.
- Added the search and AI readiness layer on April 2 and 3, 2026: structured data, robots rules, a sitemap, canonical tags, an llms.txt file, a questions and answers schema and analytics.
- Added Robby Prochnow as the fifth principal and AI as a fifth pillar on June 3, 2026, with a full visual and mobile overhaul. The principals sit in two rows, with the two founders, Jesse Fowler and Jimmy, in the top row.
- Shipped the July 2026 refresh: a Current Projects section, a new section order, his own ordering of the top 12 portfolio cards, and a news strip of 33 cards that rebuilds from a data file.
- Moved the site from Netlify to Vercel. A June 3, 2026 commit removes the old Netlify settings.
Results
- The July refresh went to production on July 14, 2026 and was checked at desktop, tablet and phone widths.
- The site graded B plus in the search and AI readiness audit of July 17, 2026. The audit found that the llms.txt file still told the four-principal story. He replaced it the same day.
- The restructure ran past its March 4, 2026 deadline. A log of June 19, 2026 still listed sections 3 to 11 as pending.
- No traffic, inquiry or lead figures for the site exist in any document read.
- A rebuilt site sits on staging and has not replaced this one. See the work and seat map page.