Get featured in The Icon

Some founders are the business, in the sense that the name on the door is the thing people research. A personal profile serves them better than a company announcement ever will.

Here is what The Icon publishes and how a feature there works.

What The Icon publishes

The Icon is a digital title at theiconusa.com covering billionaires, money, innovation, lifestyle, business and leadership. The interest is in how money gets made and what people do with it, which makes it a title about people more than about markets.

On scale, the honest description: a focused digital publication, not a national magazine. The pages here make no claims about readership or reach, because there is no reason to. What the title produces is a permanent, indexed article about you, written to an editorial standard and published under a byline.

Why a profile is worth having

A company page tells people what you sell. A profile tells them who is behind it, which is the question most people are actually asking before a meeting, an investment or a partnership.

It is also durable. The article does not scroll away or need renewing; it sits in the results when someone searches your name rather than your company, and it goes on doing that.

There is a practical use for it too. A profile gives you one link to send when somebody asks what you do — to a potential hire, a bank, a conference organiser, a journalist deciding whether you are worth a conversation. Written once, properly, it saves you explaining yourself from scratch each time, and it explains you in a register you would not use about yourself.

If you are unsure whether a personal title or a business one is the better fit, how to choose the right publication is the place to start. The parallel piece on Times Square Journal covers the more commercial end of the same question.

How a piece gets published

We develop your story, write it to editorial standard and place it on The Icon. You approve every word, and we confirm the publication date up front.

Worth being precise about what that does and does not mean. At a publication nobody controls, the decision to run a story belongs to that newsroom, full stop, and no agency can honestly promise it however good the pitch is. Here the uncertainty is removed, so what is left is the work: the angle, the writing, your approval, the schedule. We are not telling you an outside editor chose the piece, and we are not claiming the reach of a national magazine.

The editorial standard is the part that does not flex. The title publishes to its own standards, and a piece that does not meet them does not run.

What makes a strong profile

Wealth on its own is not a story. What it took usually is.

• The decision that changed the size of the business. Say what it was, when, and what you would do differently now.
• A view you can defend. Where you think value is moving and why, stated clearly enough to be disagreed with.
• An innovation explained problem-first. What was broken, why the obvious fix does not work, what you did instead.
• Something learnable from how you work. What you stopped doing, what you delegated, what you took a real risk on.

Avoid the register of a press release. A profile that admits a cost reads as true; one that only lists wins reads as bought, whoever published it.

It also helps to have one detail nobody else would print. Not a confession — a specific: the price you started at, the client you turned down, the year the plan stopped working. Detail is what stops a profile sounding like every other profile, and it is the thing readers quote back to you afterwards.

What to expect from the process

A short brief from you, an angle and a section from us, then a full draft from our writers. You revise it as many times as it takes — the facts, the quotes, the emphasis, the details about your family or your finances that you would rather leave out.

Nothing runs before you approve it, and you get the link when it is live. You can see other titles we place in on the publications page.