About On Message / Off Record
Notes on markets, leadership, and the art of being understood.
Markets price more than numbers. They price credibility — how leadership communicates, how governance holds up under pressure, and whether a company’s story survives contact with its investors.
The through-line
Most executives and boards look for risk in the obvious places: missed numbers, volatility, capital constraints. But the risk that actually catches companies arrives earlier and more quietly — when governance, messaging, and investor expectations drift out of alignment, and no one notices until the market reacts.
Performance problems are visible. Credibility gaps show up first: in governance that lags growth, in messaging that drifts from reality, in expectations nobody recalibrated. Left unattended, the market corrects them on its own terms — through discounts, activism, and lost trust.
That’s the thread running through every issue. In public markets, credibility is capital — and trust is the multiple. This newsletter is about how both get built, priced, and lost.
What you’ll get
One issue a month, built around a few recurring pieces:
The Lead Story — whatever is most top of mind that month. Often a market shift, sometimes leadership, sometimes a pattern that hasn’t reached the headlines yet.
The Big Idea — usually the application of an idea: a concept or mental model put to work in markets, boardrooms, and communication.
From the Field — notes from wherever the month takes me: boardrooms, investor meetings, conferences, and the conversations in between.
Signal vs. Noise — the takeaways that outlast the headlines.
One Last Thing — a short closing thought, occasionally personal.
I don’t chase headlines or manufacture hot takes. But I do call balls and strikes — and when a prediction is worth making, I make it and put my name on it.
Who writes this
I’m Zachary Graeve. I work with CEOs and boards as companies grow into public-market scrutiny, helping them stay aligned on governance, messaging, and investor trust before problems surface.
That work takes a few forms today. I lead investor relations at QumulusAI, serve as an independent public company director — where I chair a nominating and governance committee and sit on audit and compensation committees — and manage a value-oriented investment partnership. I hold the Investor Relations Charter (IRC), serve as Vice Chair of NIRI’s Examination Development Committee, and am a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors, with board director certification through the UCLA Anderson Board Director Program.
In other words: I’ve sat in most of the seats this newsletter writes about — issuer, investor, director, advisor. The letters draw on all of them.
Who it’s for
CEOs, CFOs, and directors read these letters. So do investors, IR and communications professionals, and operators on their way up. But they aren’t written to a job title. If you love markets, care about the principles of leadership, or are drawn to where finance, communication, and governance meet — whether you’re in the boardroom today or working toward it — you’re who I write for.
Credibility isn’t a C-suite topic. It compounds at every level.
Why subscribe
Each issue lands in your inbox once a month. That’s it — no filler between issues.
If a letter resonates, reply. The conversations these letters start are the best part of writing them.
— Zachary
