A lot of founders think narrative is about control.
They want to script every word.
Approve every question.
Debrief after every interview.
Manage every headline.
They treat storytelling like code:
Write it. Deploy it. Expect it to behave exactly as planned.
But that’s not how this works.
The best stories don’t come from control. They come from energy.
From momentum. From being in sync with a cultural current that’s bigger than your company.
From knowing when to loosen the grip and follow the heat.
We’ve seen it over and over:
The more a founder tries to steer the narrative word-by-word, the flatter it lands.
The more a founder learns to ride the wave, the faster it travels.
We once worked with a founder building advanced, AI-controlled modular factories.
His goal? A zero-waste, hyper-efficient, reconfigurable manufacturing future.
Cool, right? But the way he wanted to pitch it was… interesting, but a tad dry.
Engineering breakthroughs. Factory specs. A new model for global production.
Technically impressive. Narratively... hard to connect with.
Then, in conversation, he let something slip.
“Honestly, I’ve been chasing this idea since I was nine. I saw the Replicator on Star Trek—a machine that could materialize anything from thin air. A perfect manufacturing system. Zero waste. Zero friction. That’s when I knew what the future should look like.”
That was it.
We didn’t pitch a new factory system.
We pitched the founder who watched Star Trek at nine and decided to build the future.
The story hit a nerve.
Bloomberg was so into the idea, they turned it into a broader piece about how Star Trek had quietly inspired an entire generation of technologists—including Elon Musk.
Our client got the quote, the mention, the narrative foothold.
Then Inc. followed up with a full founder profile—anchored in that original insight.
Why did it work?
Because we didn’t force the story.
We found the energy—and we rode it.
Oh, and it just so happened that Star Trek had a new season premiering that week.
You can’t make that up.
But you can catch the wave when you see it forming.
The best founders don’t see press as a transaction.
They see it as a strategic tool for riding attention that’s already gathering speed.
They know when to drop the pitch deck language.
They know how to be human.
And most importantly, they know that the story that travels isn’t always the one you planned—it’s the one that feels alive.
If you want press that actually hits, stop trying to control everything.
Start listening for the signal. And be ready to move when it appears.
That’s how stories break.
That’s how perception shifts.
That’s how real narrative power is built.
