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Alex Konrad

Editor, Forbes Midas List

Search every verified Alex Konrad interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Alex Konrad, former Forbes editor who ran the Midas List for a decade and co-created the Cloud 100, left Forbes in February 2025 to found Upstarts Media, a subscription-based media company covering startups. In recent podcast appearances, he discussed his transition from journalist to founder, describing the challenges of building an audience and monetizing independent media. He said he asks readers to pay roughly $10–12 per month for his work, framing it as a test of whether they value it more than a sandwich. He also reflected on his editorial approach, including how he evaluated venture investors for the Midas List, identifying three inflection points in investor-founder relationships: who sourced the deal, who made the investment decision, and who drove value over time. Konrad also shared observations about founder traits and media industry dynamics. He said the most successful founders he has interviewed tend to be "almost sick in the head" with an obsessive love for building, rather than motivated by wealth or social media popularity. He expressed caution about evaluating claims from AI companies, noting that he lacks the time or expertise to fully vet all product comparisons. He attributed the wave of independent journalists leaving traditional outlets to those organizations "creating a profit margin from their best talent" and to journalists hitting perceived ceilings. He also commented on startup culture, saying that apathy, rather than disagreement, is the greater threat to a business, and that intense personal security at startups should be reserved for figures like Elon Musk or Sam Altman, not unnamed cloud CEOs.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“I think that there are obviously exceptions so I want to caveat that but I think that the founders who are almost sick in the head because they just have a love for the game and they are building not for wealth, not for Twitter popularity, but because this is all they know to be doing and they couldn't live with themselves if they weren't still working on that company. That is usually the trait that I can just see an”

“I am so paranoid about this. One of the things that causes me a lot of doubt or at least extra pause is that it can get harder and harder for me to evaluate what a company is telling me about 'we are the fastest X' or 'we are more powerful Y.' I've been playing with some AI assistant agents, for example. It's hard for me personally to have the time or the knowledge to do a bake off of all these tools. And so I think ”

“The valuations and the funding rounds for these AI companies are so insane that it makes small numbers look even smaller. I had a company try to pitch me the other day a $2.5 million funding round and I almost think that number doesn't matter anymore. It's like pitch the merits of your company, pitch the idea you have, but no one's going to care that you raise $2.5 million when a pre-product AI company could raise $2”

“This topic is really near and dear to my heart because Upstarts is a one-year-old ultra-lean startup itself with some contractors and help and then I'm the only full-time employee after being in a large media for 12 years, and I feel like I'm living firsthand what is the balance of growing fast but also efficiently as leanly as possible.”

“If one of their companies was saying, 'Hey, we want to grow cautiously, focus on profitability,' that might not be exciting to investors who want a power law outcome — like huge growth.”

“I'm building like revenue funded, careful business. I never want to be a media company that hires a bunch of people, raises money, falls into a growth trap, and then fails.”

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