M Group built its niche in the narrow, consequential gap between a crypto founder's vocabulary and an institution's tolerance for risk. Its product is not publicity alone. It is translation under pressure.
Makovsky spent 47 years making a counterintuitive bet: in public relations, knowing the client’s business can matter more than knowing how to make noise. The firm is gone. Its most useful idea is not.
A 35-person communications consultancy competes with larger agencies by knowing the insurance world from the inside - then turning that narrow expertise into global reach.
For twenty-five years, Eric Starkman sold companies a reporter's eye for the sentence that would not survive scrutiny. Then he decided the more interesting business was scrutiny itself.