Mind the Gap | The ultimate entrepreneurial achievement can be seen in Steve Bannon’s rise to the White House

Those bankers who knew Steve Bannon when he was a banker, long before he ascended the path to Chief White House Strategist to President Trump, will see the unique tale of a true American entrepreneur – someone who turns subversive observations into profound actions.

In the 1990s, he left Goldman Sachs and formed his own boutique media investment bank called Bannon & Co, which evolved in 1998 into a joint venture with Societe Generale called SG Bannon. Then, suddenly he departed with little explanation.

Bankers described Bannon as a relentless deal maker, driven to rise early in the morning for a 5am workout ahead of a breakfast meeting at 7am. Sheathed in an Armani suit, lean and businesslike with slicked back hair, he epitomized the unctuous 90s media banker.

Leaving banking to become a political entrepreneur or social movement leader could make you the subject of ridicule. But years later he was running Breitbart, propelling what is now labelled as the ‘alt-right’ platform and hosting a radio show among the fringe voices lurking in the far right wilderness.

In 2011, he gave a sensational presentation of his political manifesto (business plan) to a sparsely attended meeting in a Sheraton ballroom in Orlando, Florida, which you can find on Youtube. “I talk to the same 100 people everywhere I go three nights a week,” he said.

He starkly laid out the opportunity lying beneath the socio-political crisis that continues to shake America and change its future as told in his 2009 documentary Generation Zero. At the heart of the crisis was “a compromised political class, crony capitalism in a permanent political class. If the elites are so good, how did we get in this jam?”