The document is called Origin Narrative and it has been sitting at v6 since June. I have written some version of that section four times this summer, for four unrelated clients, and every single one of them opens in a kitchen. One opens in a garage. One opens at a dinner party where the founder got so frustrated by the state of the category that he went home and sketched something on a napkin.
The napkin is always there. I have never once been shown the napkin.
Founders love this section. It is the first thing they ask for and the first thing they redline. It is also, reliably, the section nobody outside the building reads. I have sat in enough research sessions to tell you what a customer does on an About page. She scans for shipping policy, she scans for whether anyone real works there, and she leaves.
A founder story is not a reason to buy. At best it is a reason to trust, and only when the story explains something the customer can actually feel in the product.
Which gives you a usable test. One: does the story explain a decision the customer can verify? Yvon Chouinard made climbing pitons and then stopped selling them because they were wrecking the rock. That is not a charming anecdote. That is why you believe Patagonia twenty years later when it does something expensive and inconvenient. The story earns its place because it predicts behavior.
Two: could you swap in another founder's name and have the paragraph still work? Salt & Straw started with two cousins and a pushcart, and that matters because it tells you why the flavors are strange and local and slightly overconfident. Take the cousins out and the pear with blue cheese stops making the same kind of sense. Most founder stories fail this test in the first sentence.
Three: does it survive being told by somebody who was not there? Your sales team will tell this story. Your recruiter will tell it badly. If it only lands when the founder tells it, with the pause and the laugh in the right place, you do not have a narrative. You have a performance.
None of this means kill the section. It means demote it. Put it after the thing you actually do and the reason it is better, and write it in four sentences instead of six paragraphs. The founder will hate this. Send the analytics.
If it only lands when the founder tells it, with the pause and the laugh in the right place, you do not have a narrative. You have a performance.
Barnaby has an origin story. He came from a shelter in Milwaukie and his card said shy. He has never once used it to explain why he gets the good chair. He simply takes the chair.