Perspectives on business models, investor relations, capital markets, AI, and what it actually takes to build something real. Not everything here will be comfortable. That's the point.
The issue isn't distribution. It isn't targeting. It isn't the investor deck format or the roadshow calendar. The issue is that the company hasn't decided what it actually is — and investors can smell that ambiguity from a thousand miles away. You can't solve a clarity problem with better IR tactics.
Founder AdvisoryA product is what you built. A business model is how you get paid, who pays you, and why they'll keep paying. Most founders are three steps ahead of this question — and the gap between where they think they are and where the evidence suggests they are is exactly where companies die.
Most organizations are still treating AI as a productivity tool. That's like calling electricity a lighting upgrade. The real value of AI isn't coding faster — it's knowing what the intelligence and outputs should look like. That judgment is deeply human, and most organizations don't have the people who can exercise it well.
Most IR programs are designed to distribute information. They're logistics operations, not strategy operations. The IROs who command real influence are the ones who can tell management what story investors are actually hearing — and why it differs from the story management thinks it's telling. That's a different skill set, and it's genuinely rare.
After eleven years in investor relations at a public company, I've watched hundreds of management presentations. The ones investors remember — the ones that drive long-term institutional loyalty — aren't the ones with the most precise financial models. They're the ones where management proved they actually understood what was happening in their business. That's a different thing than knowing the numbers.
Most board meetings are structured around the information management chose to present. The most important governance work happens in the questions that aren't on the agenda: Does the board actually understand the business model? Is the strategy one this team can execute? Is the narrative we're telling investors consistent with what's actually happening inside the company?
The most common failure mode I've seen in over 300 founder engagements isn't a bad idea. It's a good idea positioned at the wrong stage of validation. Founders who raise money before they've understood their customer well enough to know whether the problem is real — and whether enough people care enough to pay for the solution — are building on a foundation that hasn't been tested yet.
Capital markets are heading toward major structural disruption. Tokenization of assets, extended-hours trading, and eventually 24-hour markets are not incremental evolutions of the existing system. They're replacements for it. The investor relations and capital markets functions that exist today will look meaningfully different on the other side of this. Most organizations aren't preparing.
When a fire destroyed 35% of Zep's production capacity, the instinct of any management team is to control the message, get ahead of the narrative, and minimize the appearance of damage. That instinct is almost always wrong. The approach that preserves long-term institutional credibility is also counterintuitive: say what you know, say what you don't know, and say what you're doing about it. Then do it.
Over several weeks, using Claude Code and AI-first development tools, I built a sophisticated investor relations intelligence platform — narrative alignment scoring, analyst perception analysis, institutional targeting intelligence, secure internal document analysis — without being a developer. What that experience taught me about AI's real implications for strategic work is more significant than the platform itself.
The visible work of board governance is well-documented: financial oversight, CEO evaluation, strategic direction. The work that actually separates effective boards from ineffective ones is less discussed — it happens in side conversations, in the questions asked before the vote, in the willingness to say something uncomfortable before it becomes a crisis.
The most expensive problem in investor relations isn't coverage. It isn't targeting. It's the gap between what the company says it is and what the business actually does. When that gap exists — and it exists in more companies than people admit — the market discounts the entire story. Closing that gap is the most leveraged work in capital markets positioning.
"Valuation is driven by credibility, clarity, and consistent execution — not by financial engineering. The companies that understand this early are the ones that earn lasting institutional trust."
— Don De LariaNew insights published regularly. Connect on LinkedIn to follow along.