Hey! Alex here. This article is a deep dive into my recent project for Dynamo Ventures. We'll start with a general overview, and then go further into what made this build really unique. If you want to check out the finished site while you read, you can do so here: dynamo.vc
Project Overview
Dynamo Ventures is a US-based venture capital firm focused on backing relentless founders challenging how our industrial economy operates at the pre-seed and seed stage (provided by client 😉). In early 2025, they were nearing the close of their latest fund, and faced a common issue: their website wasn't keeping pace with the growth of their business.
Their existing site, built on Super.so and Notion, worked well in the beginning, but as Dynamo grew as a firm, the platform's design and functional constraints became... constraining. They needed a site that could scale with them, supporting better content presentation, rich thought leadership, and professional design standards. The challenge was preserving the simple workflows their team had grown accustomed to with Notion.
TLDR; They needed something more sophisticated, yet still easy to manage.
The Design Foundation
Before any code was written, my colleague Nanjin Li led Dynamo through a comprehensive design process. This included deep dives into Dynamo's brand positioning, a thorough audit of their existing site, competitive benchmarking, and ultimately defining a clear direction for their new digital presence.
The result was a polished system that captured Dynamo's evolution as a company and brand.
Beyond Template Limitations
With that now in place, I stepped in to solve the technical challenge: how do you transform a custom design into a website that's as easy to manage as Notion?
While Super.so had served Dynamo well initially, their requirements had outgrown what any template-based solution could provide:
- Complete design control: The new design required pixel-perfect implementation that no template could accommodate
- Sophisticated content architecture: They needed modular, scalable structures for pages, blog posts, company profiles, podcasts, team members, and more...
- Enhanced reader experience: Long-form thought leadership demanded better layouts, automated summaries, structured navigation, and a better table-of-contents experience
- Maintained simplicity: Despite these advanced features, the editing experience needed to feel as intuitive as their beloved Notion workflow
Selecting the Tech Stack
At this point, I faced the most important technical decision of the project: selecting a Content Management System (CMS) that could deliver.
The CMS landscape in 2025 offers no shortage of options, each with different trade-offs between power and simplicity, customization and convenience. After evaluating the most popular platforms today, I landed on PayloadCMS.
Why PayloadCMS Won Out
Next.js Native Architecture: PayloadCMS is built for Next.js. The CMS sits within the same repo as your frontend, leveraging React Server Components to reduce client-side load meaning faster load times, page edits, and optimized SEO. It's 7x faster than alternatives like Strapi.
Local API: Payload's Local API lets you interact directly with your database on-server, bypassing third-party latency entirely. While platforms like Contentful force you through their API endpoints, Payload delivers instant data access that transforms speed and efficiency.
Visual Editing: Payload's visual editor allows Dynamo's team to edit their website as they browse. The live preview feature lets them see content changes instantly across all breakpoints, making content creation feel natural and immediate.
Developer-First Flexibility: I could define Dynamo's content schema directly in the codebase. This gave me complete control over data structures, relationships, and logic, plus the ability to extend and customize the admin panel however we needed.
True Ownership & Cost Control: As an open-source platform, Payload eliminates vendor lock-in entirely. You own your infrastructure, control your data, and face no bandwidth, document, or usage limits. That being said, they also offer $35/month for their managed cloud service, it includes everything like MongoDB Atlas, file storage, and bandwidth. This was far less for a managed system than any of the competitors, potentially priced at hundreds per month.
The Alternatives Fell Short
Contentful offered robustness but at a premium price with limited customization. Their extensibility is significantly limited compared to Payload's flexibility, and you're essentially renting access to your own content.
Strapi provided open-source flexibility but lacked Next.js native integration and real-time visual editing capabilities. The performance difference alone — Payload being 7x faster — made this a clear choice for Dynamo's content-heavy site.
Sanity excelled as a visual content platform but created vendor lock-in with limited control over your data and infrastructure. Their pricing model also becomes expensive at scale, unlike Payload's predictable costs.
PayloadCMS delivered the perfect combination: enterprise-grade capabilities with developer flexibility, all wrapped in an interface simple enough for busy VCs to manage independently. Amazing.
Key Features & Technical Highlights
Now with tools in hand, it was time to build. The whole process took about three months and what emerged was less of a traditional website and more of a digital platform.
A True Page Builder Experience
Rather than limiting Dynamo to pre-built templates or hard-coded designs, I developed a modular block system that functions like a custom page builder within PayloadCMS. Their team can now construct any page using flexible, branded components like sections, headers, cards, embeds, and testimonials. This allows them to create new pages when necessary, and update not only content, but the design and layout of existing pages whenever they want.
Complete Navigational Control
Dynamo's team can restructure their entire site navigation without touching code. Whether they want to highlight a new fund announcement, reorganize their content sections, or add external links, the custom navigation system handles internal pages, collection items, and external URLs seamlessly.
Seamless Content Migration & Automation
This was a doozy. Dynamo had hundreds of blog posts, podcasts, and company profiles that needed to be migrated while preserving images, files, and designs. So I built custom migration scripts for each collection type that preserved all of the good stuff, while organizing the information into our new schemas. On top of that, I created daily a CRON job that imported newly published podcasts without the need for manual intervention. Through all of this, their content library retained its size while growing more organized and automated.
Performance & Polish
Beyond functionality, animations bring the design to life with subtle hover effects and transitions. Every page is SEO-optimized with customizable meta fields, automatic sitemap generation, and performance considerations that keep the site fast and discoverable.
Working With Dynamo
VCs operate demanding schedules with limited availability, so it was clear from the beginning that we needed to prioritize asynchronous communication throughout the project. This didn't mean working in isolation, but instead putting more effort into documenting and creating content that allowed the team to follow along with the build on their own time. This meant weekly updates through email, video walkthroughs, and Q&A sessions that were straight and to the point. It also meant providing Dynamo with access to the development site so they could see progress in real time. By keeping the work transparent and open, we were able to minimize surprises and quickly address any concerns as they arose."
In the end, the real measure of success wasn't just in the features delivered, but in how Dynamo's team adopted and began expanding upon the new platform.
“Alex has an ability to wrangle a variety of requirements to deliver an elegant and effective solution on time and on budget with a high level of responsiveness and service.”
The Result
What started as a Notion-based site that had outgrown it's templates, became a sophisticated digital platform that scales with Dynamo's business. Their team now has the independence to manage complex content, build new pages, and maintain their thought leadership presence, all while working within a system that feels as intuitive as the Notion workflow they loved.
The new Dynamo Ventures site is now live: dynamo.vc
Ready to Scale Beyond Templates?
If your company has outgrown basic website builders but you want to maintain the simplicity your team loves, I can help. Whether you're a growing VC firm, B2B company, or digital-first organization, I specialize in building custom platforms that feel as intuitive as Notion but perform like enterprise software.
What I bring to the table:
- Custom digital platforms built with modern tech stacks (PayloadCMS, Next.js, React)
- Seamless content migration from existing systems without losing data or design
- Team-friendly admin experiences that require zero technical knowledge
- Performance-first development optimized for speed, SEO, and user experience
The Dynamo project took 3 months from design to launch. Most similar platforms require 2-4 months depending on complexity and content volume.
Ready to discuss your project? Reach out at hello@alex.cn.com with a brief overview of your current setup and what you're hoping to achieve. I'll respond with thoughts on approach, timeline, and next steps.