Storytelling is on a heater. Brand wants it. Conference panels praise it. Leaders seek “Storytellers” by name. A sizable share of founders believe they’re great, natural storytellers. After all, they’ve sold investors, their first hires, and early customers. They’ve “muscled” the narrative through their sheer conviction. But here’s the hard truth: Early success is often a false positive. Often, a founder’s story is subsidized by their “Founder’s Halo” – charisma, passion and domain expertise. These cover for lack of narrative structure, flow, and resonance. If a firm’s narrative isn’t optimized to win without its founder in the room, it’s a growth bottleneck. To excel, young firms must move beyond the “Art of the Founder” and build a system that both optimizes and then clones their conviction. Two things are needed to bridge this “Founder’s Gap”: Story Design (the science of the art) and Story Operations (the art of the science).…