Sabrina Majeed wrote a really great piece on portfolios as products. There is a larger problem with portfolios and how they are crafted that needs to be addressed in the design community.
What is the Portfolio Problem, anyway? Put simply, our portfolios are afterthoughts. Often times, we don't have the time or knowledge to make them or the desire to learn. We don't make portfolios often, so we don't have trial-and-error data on how to present our work until much later in our careers. Perhaps worst of all, we have a false perception that we have to make a portfolio for the rest of the world.
The last point is important. Many people think they have to make a portfolio for when a recruiter comes along. Others think that a portfolio update is a signal that they're looking to move on from their current job. Some people think that they have to make a portfolio to be known to other designers. These are valid concerns, but a lot of the stress of making a portfolio stems from catering to someone else's needs.
What if you made your portfolio for yourself?
A portfolio should be the one thing you make for you. Sure, you need to build your brand and be attractive to potential employers. If you make your portfolio something that you think is wonderful and have fun using, then others will naturally enjoy it as well.
You can think of portfolio updates as your own personal checkpoints. Be regular with them and they can help you gauge your progress as a designer. Assembling and crafting a portfolio should be treated as dedicated reflection time.
Sometimes, you learn the most by going back to a project after it's done and analyzing what went right and what went wrong. Regardless of what kind of design you do, your work has a process, and that process is worth documenting and evolving. There should at least be a few sentences worth of work to write about, be they implementation details or mental notes of what worked and what went wrong.
The Portfolio Problem is ripe for solving. You'd think that there might be really great solutions for some, or if we cross our Photoshop-worn fingers, all, of these problems. The sad reality is that there isn't. Cargo Collective comes the closest to making a decent portfolio management tool, and is much farther ahead than all of their competition, but it could still be leagues better. It could be personal. At the end of the day though, these are all just tools. Your work and your process deserves better than that, but for now, these tools will have to do.
Your work can feel personal, though. Tell your story through the work. When you make it about other people, you only build barriers for yourself. Make this thing for you, to the best of your ability right now, because you love what you do. The more you pay attention to it, the better it will get.
P.S. I'm very mum about Foundation because apparently they weren't joking when they said working at a growing startup is a full-time job. We are making progress and there will be more news "soon."