Justin M. Nassiri

I’m the Founder and CEO of Executive Presence, where we help leaders build trust, visibility, and influence through authentic executive thought leadership on LinkedIn.

In just over three years, we've bootstrapped past $3M ARR, partnered with more than 250 executives, and conducted more than 750 CEO interviews. When leaders show up consistently in their own voice, their entire company benefits.

Most executives already have a network that trusts them. They just lack a system that keeps them top of mind. My team and I help them articulate what they believe, stay relevant in moments that matter, and expand their influence to hire better, sell faster, raise capital, and shape their industry's narrative.

Our work is built around three principles:

• Authenticity: capture the leader’s real voice and worldview
• Efficiency: require as little as 90 minutes of their time each month
• Measurability: track progress weekly with clear KPIs and outcomes

I work with CEOs, founders, and senior executives at high-growth companies who want their leadership to be an asset that compounds.

My own path shapes how I think about leadership, communication, and influence:

• Officer aboard nuclear submarines, leading teams of more than 200 in high-stakes environments
• Stanford MBA and three-time founder
• Former CEO of StoryBox, funded by Eric Schmidt and used by over 1,000 brands
• Host of the 450-episode leadership and career podcast Beyond the Uniform

Every role taught me the same lesson: Executives are among a company’s most underutilized assets. When leaders communicate with clarity and consistency, they elevate culture, attract talent, deepen trust, and move their industries forward.

My work at Executive Presence is about helping leaders do exactly that - authentically, efficiently, and with measurable results.

CEO ◆ We turn leaders into thought leaders

We specialize in helping top-tier executives boost their visibility, activate their network, and position themselves as thought leaders via our premium, fully-managed LinkedIn service.

Our unique process involves ex-McKinsey, BCG, and Bain consultants conducting monthly hour-long interviews with our clients, and turning them into impactful daily LinkedIn posts to establish their unique voice and authority. 

We've helped over 100 CEOs become thought leaders. On average, our clients see a 500% bump in engagement in their first 30 days with us. Data is continuously analyzed to improve engagement and identify impactful messaging that you can use for conferences, podcasts, and internal communications.

One of my clients sold his company for over $2 billion, and LinkedIn was part of his exit strategy.

When we started working together, he had posted 5 times in the last year, with minimal traction and no visible narrative. Eighteen months later, he was posting 20 times a month, pulling 400-plus likes on his top posts, and had become a recognized voice in his industry.

Then a Fortune 500 company acquired his company.

When the announcement went out, it reached his entire industry because two years of consistent publishing had already built the audience to receive it. Acquirers, partners, and investors had been watching him think in public for two years before the deal closed.

Most CEOs never think about LinkedIn until a liquidity event, a fundraise, or a leadership transition is already in motion. But by then, it's too late to build the credibility that makes those moments land.

At Executive Presence, we work with executives before those moments arrive.

So join me on March 18 for a live webinar where I'm breaking down this case study and three others, with real before-and-after data (replay available if you can't make it live).

Register here: https://lnkd.in/gpMdqxwF

CEO @ Executive Presence | Executive LinkedIn Strategy | Say Something Worth Reading

One of my clients IPO'd at $6 billion.

He did it by posting less on LinkedIn, not more.

Before we started working together four years ago, he was already posting 18 times a month. More than most executives ever will. But 52% of his content was industry commentary. Safe. Professional. Forgettable.

We shifted the mix. He posted slightly less. 
Impressions went up 71%. 
Engagement rate went up 52%. 
Personal content drove 2.5x the reach of industry posts.

Less content. Better mix. $6 billion IPO.

I'm breaking down this case study and three others - with real before-and-after data - in a live webinar on March 18.

Register here: https://lnkd.in/gpMdqxwF

Yesterday, Executive Presence turned 4 years old. 

The last four years have been the most fulfilling years of my career. 

My first two companies didn't pan out as I had hoped. 
My third company has felt like the culmination of everything I learned in those first two endeavors. 

As I look back on our journey to this point, I want to thank people who played a key role on this journey.

David Lyon - you were the first person I told about this idea during a coaching session. You told me "this is the most clearly I've heard you describe a business. I love it." That encouragement was the initial spark. 

Ryan Hogan - you were our first official client. I couldn't have picked a more energizing, supportive client. 

Abby Cunningham - you were the first employee I hired. I never thought I wanted to hire another employee again. Your positivity & dedication made me change my mind. 

Kelley Braegger - you and I worked side-by-side in the trenches at all hours of the day. Your indomitable mindset kept me going. 

Bill Youstra - you challenged me when I needed it the most. "We've seen the limits of what Justin can build on his own." The day after you told me that, I got serious about becoming a recruiter for my company. 

Erin Dierker - I still cannot believe I ever convinced you to work with me. You are truly a unicorn - equal parts BCG-level strategy and Y-Combinator-level execution. 

Mitzi Mock - I've never campaigned so hard to hire someone. You convinced me that working with a close friend can be one of the greatest gifts in life. 

Greg Alexander - I still tear up thinking of your generosity. Your invitation to spend the weekend with you in Dallas changed the course of my company. You've shaped my thinking about business more than anyone else on this journey. 

My Entrepreneurs'​ Organization forum, No VC Coffee Club, and Collective 54: Thank you for being a sounding board, a support, and fellow travelers on this entrepreneurial journey.

And most of all - my team:
Thank you for joining me on this journey.
Thank you for making celebration, kindness & positivity a deep part of our culture.
Thank you for a commitment to constant learning, growth, and rapid iteration.
Thank you for supporting me and each other in a selfless way.
The best is yet to come. 

2026 is going to be our best year yet, and I can't wait for the next four years ahead.

LFG

One of my clients went from $0 to $200 million in revenue in <5 years.

2 of the 3 biggest retailers in the US regularly reference his LinkedIn posts in B2B sales meetings.

When we started working together, he had posted about 5 times a year for a decade, with minimal traction and no visible narrative. Two years later, he was posting 7 times a month with 5x the engagement, and the people reading his content were the buyers who matter most to his business.

When he walks into a meeting now, they already know who he is. His LinkedIn presence turned cold meetings into warm ones before a single word was said, and the biggest retailers in his market became familiar with his thinking long before any contract was on the table.

When a top-three retailer walks into a meeting already quoting your LinkedIn posts, the sales conversation starts from a completely different place. That kind of familiarity takes years to build, and it only comes from showing up consistently long before the meeting is ever scheduled.

I'm breaking down this case study and three others, with real before-and-after data, in a live webinar on March 18.

Register here: https://lnkd.in/gpMdqxwF

I watched a video of the McDonald's CEO eating a burger from his own restaurant, and I immediately recognized the problem.

He held the burger awkwardly, called it "the product," and took a tiny nibble before describing it like he was reading off a spec sheet. Millions of people roasted him for it, and one commenter said he looked "incredibly alien."

The thing is, Chris Kempczinski reportedly eats McDonald's three to four times a week. He probably loves the burger. 

But nobody who watched that video believed him, because the way he talked about his own product didn't match how someone who genuinely enjoys a burger actually talks about a burger.

That disconnect between what someone feels and how they express it is something I run into constantly in my work with CEOs on LinkedIn.

A CEO will be genuinely passionate about their company or their team, and then write a post that sounds like their PR department drafted it during their lunch.

I've helped hundreds of CEOs communicate on LinkedIn at @Executive Presence, and the first draft almost always has this problem. CEOs default to corporate language because it feels safe and polished, even though safe and polished is exactly how you lose people.

When a post reads like a press release, people scroll past it. And the audience you're trying to reach - employees, prospects, potential partners - never gets a sense of who you actually are.

The CEOs I've seen generate real traction talk about their business the way they'd talk about it over dinner. They name specific people, describe specific moments, and share specific lessons they've learned along the way. They sound like themselves, and their audiences respond to that.

Kempczinski's video went viral for the wrong reasons. But the lesson for every executive is the same one I share with our clients every week.

If you love your product (or your burger), talk about it like you love it. 

People can tell when you mean it, and they can absolutely tell when you don't.

Most of us need more time with more people.

I realized how true that was on a recent 48-hour trip to San Francisco, where I spent maybe two hours alone aside from sleeping. I'm someone who usually withdraws after big social events to recover, so I expected to be drained by the end of the trip.

But this trip was different, because I shared it with friends I have decades of depth, safety, and connection with. Being around them doesn't pull from my reserves the way a networking event or a conference would.

One afternoon, for example, I went on a two-hour hike with a friend near where he lives. There's something about being outside, in the sun, walking with someone and processing ideas together that effortlessly deepens a conversation. Hiking alone brings up ideas for me, but hiking with another person creates an exchange that goes beyond what I'd come up with on my own.

Later that weekend, I spent hours playing video games with a friend's son while his parents sat down and read. They clearly appreciated the breathing room, and I genuinely enjoyed feeling useful and connecting with their kid.

In both of those moments - the hike and the video games - everyone involved walked away with something they needed. 

When you spend extended time with people you trust, there's a natural give and take that's hard to replicate in a one-hour dinner or a scheduled Zoom call.

Both the give and the take are worth their weight in gold. After my trip, I walked away from 48 hours of nonstop togetherness more energized than I've felt in months. 

And I keep wondering why I don't do it more often.

I work with a CRO who built a $200M+ market from scratch, and three of the biggest retailers in the US now reference his LinkedIn posts in B2B sales meetings. 

Not his company's marketing materials or press releases. His LinkedIn posts.

And two years ago, he was posting five times a year.

He's one of four investor-backed leaders I've been tracking over the past two years, and the pattern across all four is almost identical. 

The same framework produced a $2B+ exit for a healthcare software CEO, 26% headcount growth for a Chief Clinical Officer during a nationwide talent crisis, and a $6B IPO for an enterprise software CEO who shifted his content mix and saw impressions jump 71%.

Every one of them either started from near-zero visibility or was visible in the wrong way. And every one of them almost quit in the first three months because it felt like nothing was happening.

But the ones who kept going are the ones you've heard of.

Four case studies that changed how I talk to operating partners about visibility I recently presented to a room full of PE and VC operating partners w

Open article: Every CEO Who Stayed Invisible Paid for It by Justin M. Nassiri • 6 min read

Every CEO Who Stayed Invisible Paid for It

I didn't know one of my employees was a baker until I spent an afternoon with him in San Francisco.

Having a remote team is one of the reasons we've been able to attract the best talent at Executive Presence - geographic separation within the U.S. hasn't limited our hiring. 

But remote work comes with a tradeoff. 

I miss breathing the same air as my people and getting a sense for who they are beyond a Zoom screen, where conversations tend to be scheduled, succinct, and specific, with rarely any room to wander.

So on a recent trip to San Francisco, I spent several hours with one of our newer Engagement Managers, Joey Perotti. We met at a coffee shop, went for a walk, grabbed dinner, went to lunch the next day, and walked some more.

After about an hour together, we’d already covered all the obvious work topics. And that's when the conversation got really interesting.

I learned that Joey's a baker. We talked about his creative journey writing screenplays and prose, and hosting a podcast. I got to see a side of him that a 30-minute Zoom call would never show me.

His time in film school, his documentary work, his podcast - all of these creative pursuits have sharpened his ability to help our clients communicate their stories, which is exactly what we need him to do.

Even as a fully remote company, I want to keep investing in these in-person moments with my team - and I only have 2 more team members to meet in person (hoping to see you soon Juliette C. and Melissa M.!).

So if a few hours over coffee and a walk can show me something months of Zoom calls couldn't, I'll keep booking the flights.

In 48 hours in San Francisco, I saw six Stanford University Graduate School of Business classmates and five of their children.

The length of my program at Stanford was only two years. But those two years were so intense - the workload, the pressure, the late nights figuring out what we wanted to do with our lives - that the bonds we formed run much deeper than two years would suggest.

And those bonds have persisted long after graduation, even as our lives have gone in completely different directions.

One friend runs a massive company, and another pivoted careers entirely. A few are deep in the weeds of parenthood, trying to figure out screen time rules and school choices and how to be present while also building something professionally.

Despite all that variance, every conversation I had that weekend landed in a similar place. 

Career is one piece of the pie, and for all of us, it's becoming a smaller piece. Fulfillment, family, health, being intentional about how we raise our kids - those are the things that dominated our conversations.

Even how we spend time together has changed. A far cry from how we spent our Friday nights at Stanford.

But no matter how different our lives look, these people still have a real read on me. They knew me during a formative period of my life, and because of that, they can be honest and direct in a way that few other people in my life can.

I'll always make time to invest in these friendships. Even when it means flying across the country for 48 hours.

Good people who genuinely know you - and are willing to tell you the truth - are always worth the trip.

I spent 32 years at Bloomberg LP and left in early 2022.

Since then I’ve founded Principals Media, a ghostwriting agency for executives. I am also advising startups, consulting media and financial firms on content strategy and angel investing.

I'm open to mentoring anyone interested in journalism, content strategy or fintech product. Please reach out to me via direct messages on LinkedIn.

I use LinkedIn to write about fintech product innovation, my career at Bloomberg, my views on leadership, and life lessons from my parents. 

I spent three decades working for Bloomberg, half of which was spent in editorial and half in product development. The common thread is deep thinking about how to create and find information. 

Bloomberg was still a startup when I was hired in 1990. I was the fifteenth person in the editorial group and worked the graveyard shift, starting at 4 a.m. Mike Bloomberg sat at a desk across the room. 

My first big assignment was to expand operations in Latin America. I opened 7 offices in the region and ran the group for many years. In the mid-1990s, I was named one of Bloomberg’s first five Managing Editors. I became New York Bureau Chief before the 9/11 attacks and directed that coverage. I was promoted to Managing Editor for the Americas in 2001. 

I was recruited to join the nascent product development group in 2006. I managed web scraping operations and pioneered content deals with media companies including the New York Times and Washington Post. 

In 2012, I integrated Twitter onto the Bloomberg terminal. Later, my team focused on automated news and data analytics. That included working with machine learning and AI engineers to build models for news sentiment, news volumes and other algorithms to surface the highest-quality content. 

I enjoy connecting with people who want to talk or work on projects involving content, search and technology.

Ted Merz, CFA

The word of the day is Stammtisch. 

I was at a dinner party of a group of guys in Manhattan and we were talking about how to communicate more regularly and effectively. Right now, we meet three to four times a year. 

People threw out all kinds of proposals, most of them tech solutions like a Whatsapp group chat or a private social media page or AI organized calendars. 

And one of the guys - a German artist - shot those down. He said we should adopt the German tradition of a Stammtisch, which is a “regulars table” at a restaurant or bar. 

The idea is that once a month or so on a specific day everyone just shows up at a certain bar. 

There’s no organization or communication. It’s a standing invite. People come or they don’t. The group could be one person or 20. Whoever shows up, shows up.  

And honestly that sounds awesome.

Founder Principals Media - Modern Storytelling for CEOs / Co-Founder Pricing Culture / Former Global Head of News Product at Bloomberg

The View from the Office.

I met up with Sauli Kiviranta, founder and CEO of Delta Cygni Labs, at the Chelsea Diner. We both had omelettes.

Sauli is from Tampere, Finland, an industrial city of about 250,000 people with two universities and a manufacturing base. He was in New York for meetings a day before heading to Houston and then Austin for South by Southwest.

The company’s origins trace back to research at Finland's Technical Research Center and with the European Space Agency. The initial focus was on how to enable ground control to remotely guide astronauts through complex technical tasks in real time. The challenge turned out to be the connectivity.

Unreliable networks quietly destroy performance in ways most people don’t realize. Sauli’s team built a purely software and algorithmic solution to fix that.

I first met Sauli three years ago when he visited the U.S. to attend the Build Summit organized by Anthony Pompliano. He said that trip changed the trajectory of his company, convincing him he needed to pivot. 

He realized the market wasn’t interested in connectivity infrastructure. People wanted a solution to make any data transaction between a user, a device, and a server faster and more reliable.

That focus has helped the company grow rapidly as he sees applications for remote data connections needed to operate drones and equipment for the mining industry.   

A good demonstration of what the technology can do came the moment he landed at JFK on this trip.

After he arrived, he bought a T-Mobile SIM at the airport, connected to 5G, and remotely piloted a drone sitting in his company’s office back in Tampere — running on a 4G network on the other side of the Atlantic. 

He posted about it on LinkedIn: “Just landed to NYC! What is the first thing to do when you arrive to hotel? Obviously remoting a drone from NYC to Finland over T-Mobile 5G (US) as remote operator while the drone in Tampere is on DNA 4G (EU)!”

The application has serious military and industrial applications.

In Ukraine, drone operators need to stay dangerously close to the front lines because the controllers require proximity to their aircraft. Sauli’s technology would allow those operators to be pulled back to safety and also quickly redeployed. 

He said the same principle applies to remote mining operations, medical tools, and first responder communications. For example, he imagines a future where equipment used in forestry could be operated remotely.  

You can connect with Sauli via LinkedIn or DM me for a warm intro.

There’s no free lunch on social media. 

McDonald’s CEO Chris K discovered that when the Internet roasted him for a video he posted last week promoting a new Big Arches hamburger offering. 

It’s ironic because he has been one of the few S&P 500 CEOs who posts first person videos regularly on LinkedIn. 

I encourage - and help craft - content for clients who post online because I think a) the visibility generally provides a business advantage b) you need to build those muscles because that kind of direct communication will become increasingly the standard. 

But that doesn’t mean that just because you post online that it goes well. There is no guarantee. No free lunch, so to speak. And it doesn’t mean there is no risk that it will be called out. 

In this case, the issue was that the video seemed phony. He pretends that he’s never seen the sandwich before. And he uses corpo-speak to describe it as a “product.” Twice. 

And it just didn’t seem like he enjoyed or planned to finish the meal. The body language seemed to signal that that one bite was all he was going to take. 

But Chris K’s instincts about posting online weren’t wrong. It’s how you reach your audience these days.

My main advice to his team is that now is the time to get back online and make a second video. Acknowledge the first one. Poke fun at yourself. 

And this time, eat the whole burger.

Dad shared the story about when he first heard about Pearl Harbor. 

A friend from high school, Frank Baldwin, had offered him two tickets to a concert at Frank Daly's Meadowbrook, a nightclub. 

Dad said yes and called up Betty Griffinger, a girl who lived across the street. Frank's father drove them.

Dad said that toward the end of the program, a man came on stage and stood in front of the microphone.

He said the Empire of Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor, the naval base  in the Hawaiian Islands.

Dad had never heard of Pearl Harbor and didn’t know there was a naval base there. Being from the East Coast, he didn't know much about the Pacific.

He said everyone was focused on the war was going on in Europe. The United States was not in the war yet, but was supporting England and France.

The announcer said there were casualties and walked off the stage.

Dad said that for a moment no one knew what to do. He said the band members just looked at each other. 

And then, spontaneously, the musicians struck up the National Anthem. 

Everyone stood up and sang.

Then everyone went home. 

(Part of a series of life lessons from interviewing my parents.)

In the attention economy, visibility is critical. 

I wanted to measure how prominent people are online so I spent time using Claude Code to build an app. 

I wanted to use it for my business, Principals Media, which creates video and written content for executives in an effort to raise their profile. 

The app generates an overall visibility score ranging from 0 to 10. 

That breaks down into subcomponents  for being quoted in the legacy media, writing on social media, or appearing on podcasts. Finally, it ranks them against a peer group. 

I’m still iterating, but the initial results are promising. 

The ability to get insight that shows where someone is more or less prominent online and provide them a gauge versus others is powerful. 

If you haven’t tried Claude Code, it’s probably a good time to start.

You may not want to hear more about the viral McDonald's video, but there is more to say.

That’s because it is such a perfect embodiment of the new media versus traditional PR and such a good Harvard case study of the opportunities and risks of posting online for CEOs and companies. 

There are THREE big takeaways:

-TIMELINES DON’T CONTROL NARRATIVES 
-FRAMING IS EVERYTHING
-RAPID RESPONSE WINS

To recap: McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski posted the original video in which he famously took what looked like an unenthusiastic nibble out of the burger chain’s new Big Arch burger on Feb. 3.

It was probably done on that date because it was exactly one month before McDonald’s planned on the actual unveiling of the new burger and companies love that kind of conventional timeline. 

That video sat quietly unremarked upon for THREE WEEKS! Seriously!

It sat there until it was FRAMED by people on social media, including comedian Garron Noone who declared "this man does not eat McDonald's!”

That brush fire started raging when @Raindropsmedia1 posted on X:  “McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski goes viral after seeming reluctant to eat his own burgers—he takes a tiny bite, looks uncomfortable, and calls the food ‘product.’ “ That X post has accrued 16 million impressions. 

I’m assuming McDonalds felt blindsided and besieged. But as they hunkered down, they were hit by the third lesson of the new media landscape, that responding quickly matters. 

That was when Burger King president Tom Curtis posted a TikTok of himself taking a huge, messy bite of the revamped Whopper, a not-so-subtle trolling of McDonalds.

Hard lessons, but worth learning. 

If you are in PR or comms, here’s a timeline to tape to the wall:

Feb 3 — Kempczinski posts the Big Arch taste-test video to Instagram and LinkedIn. Minimal engagement; flies under the radar.
Feb 26–27 — Comedian Garron Noone stitches the video on TikTok with commentary, declaring "this man does not eat McDonald's." The clip starts gaining traction on TikTok.
Mar 1 — @Raindropsmedia1 posts the video on X with the framing that the CEO looked reluctant and uncomfortable eating his own food. The clip jumps from TikTok into the X/Twitter ecosystem and explodes.
Mar 1 — Pile-on begins on X. @MikeBeauvais posts the Simpsons/Krusty Burger comparison. @TrungTPhan and other large accounts amplify.
Mar 2 — Wall-to-wall media coverage: TMZ, Newsweek, Daily Dot, Fast Company, Adweek, Kotaku, and others all run pieces. Instagram views on the original post pass 3 million.
Mar 2–3 — Burger King president Tom Curtis posts a TikTok taking a huge, messy bite of the revamped Whopper. Internet reads it as a direct troll of Kempczinski.
Mar 3 — The Big Arch officially launches in U.S. McDonald's locations, arriving into a news cycle completely dominated by memes about the CEO's awkward promo rather than the burger itself.

There are two hard lessons for companies thinking about doing podcasts. 

The first is that you should do one. The second is that they aren’t easy.

I was reminded of those truisms when a friend, Michael Billings, sent me a link to the new podcast from Morgan Stanley called Hard Lessons.

First of all, kudos to Morgan Stanley for getting out of the gate. It’s a commitment to spend the money and time and effort to come up with a concept and execute it. 

It should be noted however that it took them a dozen years to catch up with rival Goldman Sachs, which started their Talks at Goldman series in 2014. 

But late is ALWAYS better than never. 

And we are still so early in the content game and there is still so much opportunity for companies to connect with clients and audiences by hosting these interviews. 

Morgan Stanley’s podcast stands out for a) filming at the Campbell Apartment (a bar in Grand Central Station) b) having senior executives (though, not CEO Ted Pick) host the interviews and c) committing to a structured approach of asking guests about one win and one loss. 

There are pros and cons to all those choices. But I appreciate the effort and thought that went into creating a high-quality program. 

Production quality isn’t the hard part, though. Creating memorable content is. And that is such a hard thing. You can’t engineer it anymore than Marvel can guarantee a great movie. 

So far, Morgan Stanley has dropped four episodes. The first three - including the inaugural one with Jon Gray from Blackstone - didn’t jump out.

The fourth, with legendary Wall Street trader Stanley Druckenmiller, caught fire. 

It’s been a week and many of the top financial influencers on X are still posting clips.

Druckenmiller weighed in with thoughts on being a contrarian and the anxiety he felt over performance for many years and how the biggest driver of performance isn’t the trades you pick but the size of your allocation. 

Great interview! 

And great job by host Iliana Bouzali, head of derivatives at the firm.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his famous “Day of Infamy” speech, my father heard it live.

Dad, who turned 99 last December, was a sophomore at Columbia high school at the time. 

He described how the entire school body assembled in the auditorium where a radio was put on a podium. 

FDR started with the famous phrase  and then proceeded to say he was going to ask Congress to declare war on Japan, Germany and Italy. 

Dad said everything changed quickly, with the seniors realizing they would be heading to war.

There are probably few times in world history that can match the emotion and feeling of that moment.

Origin stories can be powerful and effective. 

I spent the week working on a project to help two founders frame their story.

I told them that a successful origin story has three criteria: 

-It has to be true 
-It needs to be simple 
-It must be memorable 

The story shouldn’t be an exhaustive list of the steps that preceded the coming together of the co-founders and the details of everything that was required to launch. 

It should be one anecdotal yarn  evocative of the character and spirit of the people and culture of the company. 

I cited three three widely known examples: 

AMAZON: Jeff Bezos left his Wall Street job at D.E. Shaw in 1994 after seeing that internet usage was growing over 2,000 percent a year. He famously took a walk in Central Park with his then boss David Shaw and shared his vision for building an online bookstore. He wrote the business plan during a road trip from New York to Seattle. He named the company Amazon to evoke the vastness of the Amazon River and to appear early in alphabetical lists.

CITADEL: Kenneth Griffin began trading convertible bonds in 1987 as a 19-year-old Harvard sophomore, running a small hedge fund out of his dorm room equipped with a fax machine, telephone, personal computer, and even a rooftop satellite dish he convinced maintenance to wire down to his room for real-time quotes. Between classes, he built a track record that attracted the attention of Chicago investor Frank Meyer, who offered seed capital. 

NVIDIA: Jensen Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem over a late-night brainstorming session at a Denny's restaurant in San Jose, sketching the initial design of their revolutionary graphics chip on a napkin. Frustrated by the limitations of existing 2D graphics processors for gaming and workstations, the trio envisioned a dedicated 3D graphics chip that would accelerate rendering and transform computer visuals..

It’s interesting that none of those  origin stories include the actual incorporation and launch. Instead, they  set the table and provide the context. 

They are effective because of what they leave out as much as what they include.

As with many things, less is more. 

If you run a company do you have an origin story?

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