An Apple Alum: On Storytelling

Apple is known for many great things: beautiful design, intuitive products, industry-changing deals, relentless innovation, and some of the most iconic marketing in modern history. But underneath it all lies something quieter and far more powerful: storytelling.

When Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone, he didn’t start with a spec sheet. He didn’t list features or performance benchmarks. Instead, he stepped through his own art of showmanship by foreshadowing, creating anticipation, and then leading the audience through a narrative that made the device feel inevitable before it was even revealed.

He even added in a bit of humor for good measure. It was a masterclass in product launches that would define the standard in the technology industry.

Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone by telling a story, because at its core, Apple is a storytelling company.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was my many years there — in the corporate trenches of spreadsheets, keynotes, and presentations — that ultimately led me to be who I am: a storyteller.

Not because I always wanted to be one, and definitely not because I set out to become one. Interestingly enough, my life was deliberately designed to avoid such a vague or romantic career choice. Nevertheless, I was slowly and unintentionally shaped into becoming one, and it was a simple but wise statement from my father that led me down this path.

He once told me, “If you know what you love, do that. You’ll be happy in life. But if you don’t know what you love, then do something technical. It’ll pay you well, and life will show you the rest.”

Growing up, I loved a lot of things — video games, fantasy novels, epic stories — but none of them felt like a viable foundation for life. So instead, I chose the second path, the one my father had taken; he held a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Chemical Engineering, a masters’ in Engineering Economics, and a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).

I started my journey in computer science, but two years of that in college didn’t feel right, so I switched to a double major in mathematics and economics. I loved math, especially the upper-division courses like abstract algebra that were less about numbers and more about logic and theory. I always tell people that if you don’t believe in God, study math. Nothing is so beautiful and whimsically perfect in life by accident.

But I still wanted a solid job when I graduated, so I settled on engineering, like my father, and unexpectedly began my career in banking. Mind you, I had never taken a business or finance class in my life — my father taught me financial statements so I could sound competent in my interviews — but I landed an analyst position at Citi. The work was a grind, but it paid well and allowed me to live in New York City, ideal for a young and single fresh graduate from college.

I wasn’t orienting myself towards anything that felt fulfilling, I didn’t even have an inkling of what my calling was, I was simply pursuing competence, stability and financial security, while having fun some fun in the midst of it all.

Then I arrived at Apple.

I had never considered the company before, but my mentor from a college internship reached out randomly about a new role. It didn’t align with my future goals, but I figured a few years in product and operations would complement my engineering and finance background well enough for an eventual switch into private equity or venture capital.

Still, I didn’t come chasing purpose, I was chasing experience. What I didn’t know was that I was walking into a forge.

I joined Apple at a moment when it was still in the process of becoming what we now think of as “Apple.” The iPhone was new. The iPad didn’t yet exist. The company was ambitious, intense, and demanding in a way that was both exhilarating and exhausting. But the work felt familiar.

Instead of deal management from banking, I was essentially in product management, which involved meeting stakeholders, running Excel spreadsheets, preparing slides, and presenting them to the people who mattered: executives.

Unlike banking, it wasn’t enough to be smart, hardworking, and technically capable. You also had to be precise and coherent, and be able to stand up in front of a group of people who had little time or tolerance for mediocrity. You had to make complex things sound simple, defend every number on a slide, justify every slide’s existence, and have every claim survive scrutiny — three layers deep — from someone smarter, sharper, and more prepared than you.

I survived at work by burying myself in spreadsheets, dependencies, and constraints, and by tying off with cross-functional partners for backup on everything to be presented. I thought I was doing fine, but my manic manager was relentless. He rode me hard, asked me questions I couldn’t yet answer, and forced me to defend every number, every assumption, and every conclusion I put on a slide.

At the time, it felt unforgiving, even cruel, like a psychological experiment on a new patient. I struggled at first, and even second-guessed whether I was cut out for the grueling culture at the company. But I remember thinking to myself, “I survived banking… I can do this!”

Looking back, I realized my manager wasn’t just torturing me for the fun of it. I’m sure he enjoyed parts of it — even if he denies that years later now that we’re fast friends — but what he was really doing was training me for the demanding and rigorous culture that Apple prided itself on. He was teaching me how to think under pressure, organize complexity in a succinct way, and take responsibility not just for being right, but for being understood.

So somewhere along the way, without consciously realizing it, I stopped thinking of my work as managing products or operations or data. I started thinking of my job as shaping narratives. Every number had a story, every slide had a purpose, every deck had an answer, and it was my job to piece it all together.

Apple’s approach for presentations is simple: tell them what you’re going to tell them; tell them; tell them what you told them.

I followed this philosophy, but I wanted to take my work to the next level. I wanted to create suspense, build anticipation, and end with a satisfying payoff, just like Jobs did in his keynotes. I didn’t know it at the time, but these were the calling cards of my craft.

When presenting to executives, I began anticipating not only what questions they would ask, but when they would be asked. I wanted the most important question to naturally arise at the end of a slide, and I wanted the answer to already be waiting on the next one. I wanted their curiosity to carry them forward, while I was in control of the narrative.

I was leading the witness, and I enjoyed the thrill of the theatre!

I became so good at this that one executive jokingly called it “Mohsen Magic”, the ability to structure a story with careful anticipation and controlled reveals in an easy-on-the-eyes approach. Apple calls this “surprise and delight”; editors call this being “surprising yet convincing”; I call it storytelling.

And I didn’t just find it at Apple, I was trained into it. I was rigorously taught that everything had to make sense, it all had to flow, and the punches had to land without ambiguity. Without realizing it, this had slowly shaped the way I think, and in that shaping, something that had always been latent in me became visible.

The boy who loved myth, narrative, and meaning had not been abandoned by the engineer or the banker or the operator. Instead, he had been given the tools to carry his craft and find his personal myth — not a fantasy about destiny, but a story about formation.

I didn’t chase my calling. I built a life around structure and stability, and the pressure of that life forged me into what I was meant to be.

We’re often told to look inwards to find ourselves, as if our true nature is hiding somewhere inside of us, waiting to be uncovered. But I don’t think that’s how it always works. I think we’re also shaped by what we commit to, and what we choose to build even before we know why we’re building it.

For me, Apple wasn’t just a company I worked for. It was the friend that set me on my true path. It taught me that storytelling is not decoration or entertainment, but the fundamental way human beings make sense of complexity, transmit information, and create a shared reality. And in learning that, I finally understood what my father meant when he told me that life would reveal the rest.

It did, just very slowly, indirectly, and through a path I never would have chosen if I had known where it led. But in the end, it led me exactly where I needed to be.