Okay. And five, six, seven. Hey, hey, everybody. Thank you for dancing. That makes me feel better. Um, everybody, welcome to the Smart and Public Podcast. This is a podcast that discusses business, careers, life through the eyes of PR people and communications experts and marketers and CEOs and all that good stuff. Today we have a journalist. We have a guest on. His name is Alex Conrad. You may have heard of him before. Alex, I was just looking up your background and you were at Forbes for 12 years. Is that right?
Yeah, it's about 12 lifetimes in media. I know.
I looked at I was like, surely not. That's crazy. Before that, at Fortune for Two. I'm sure that everybody has heard of Alex in some way, shape, or form. Um, he's a great friend of ours, great friend of the pod, and uh now he is the founder and editor of Upstarts Media. So, also very hot topic, the Substack, the Substack lifestyle. How are you liking it?
Yeah, it's it's it's great. Every day is a new adventure. Um, like five puzzles I did not anticipate solving to uh present themselves.
What's it like doing the whole gamut yourself? Like, what does support look like? What does planning look like?
Well, I tweeted that I'd hired a first employee and it was my dog. But some people got confused because I did a public talk a few weeks ago and they were like, 'Tell us about your hiring process.' And I was like, 'Well, um, I got some really good treats, you know, like a nice bed.' And they were like, 'What?' So, so I have to be really careful. It is just me. Um, it's I have a lot of friends and advisers helping and then my wife who is a full-time investor is, you know, moonlighting in her spare time helping. So, I I'm grateful to have support, but I wanted to make sure that I could build a sustainable business all myself before I brought on more people.
Yeah, that's good business acumen, I have to say. Um, what is has pitching been crazier for you now or is it like has it dialed back or I'm just wondering because it's just you. There's no filters, right? And maybe it was just you in the first place. I know Duffy and I were just talking to a journalist that got like 200 pitches a day, which is crazy, but like is that what your life is like? Tell us about your world.
I think at Forbes I had spent years developing spam filters and like blocking people so that my inbox was actually not horrible, but I was like missing most of the emails getting sent to me and was like, 'Oh, it won't really matter.' Now it's a little harder because I do feel like I need to be checking everything, you know, responsible. You never know when an opportunity is going to come in and so I am like making an effort to really look through everything. So it feels like I'm getting way more inbound. It's hard to actually say what I was getting before, but now I feel much more accountable.
That's interesting cuz now it's like you are the brand, right? And so it's almost like you're wearing two hats. It's kind of like the journalist hat, but you're also in this like founder hat as well.
Yeah. And customer service is a big part of that. You know, every comment that we get either a response to a newsletter email that went out or on Substack itself on the app or on social media. I try to like it or respond or, you know, if there's any feedback, I try to take it seriously. So, I think it's really important to put in the extra effort there, but it can feel overwhelming sometimes, like, you know, I'll be like, 'Do I really want to check LinkedIn now?' That that could be a rabbit hole that I never escape from.
Totally. I I actually feel you so hard on the LinkedIn thing cuz sometimes I'll get on there and I feel like I'm completely behind everyone. I'm just like, 'God, like, what did I miss today? I missed like I'm not on it.' And then sometimes I get on there and I'm like, 'Everyone is a ding-dong and like just like what am I doing on here?' But sometimes it makes me sad and sometimes it makes me feel motivated. So I totally feel you on that.
Can we um take a step back just for those that maybe and particularly like maybe the audience in Australia who's not as familiar um with your work. Can you give us a little bit of the like the why of Upstarts? Like what drove the decision and kind of what's it what's at its core? What are you trying to do with it?
Yeah. So if there are any fans of of the Katies who is are completely lost and like what the heck is going on? I'm happy to explain myself. So I launched Upstarts earlier this year as a new media publication focused on the startup ecosystem. So our tagline is startup news starts here and we can really look at founder journeys and in-depth fair and empathetic reporting about the startup ecosystem from inception through IPO. So it's it's a new challenge for me to build this fun business with different you know areas of focus and then at the same time this is a publication that we hope is trustworthy and fun and another place to get storytelling about founder journeys data um and and sort of venture side information really tactical helpful feedback uh for anyone who's interested in the startup ecosystem at a time where I felt like a lot of big media was really focused on just a few tech companies. You have five reporters on the Elon Musk beat. There's so much attention on on those folks. And I felt like for a lot of the builders out there, that's actually not the most relevant news. And so I wanted to have fun providing news for them.
Yeah. I want to dig into something that you just mentioned around like five reporters on Elon Musk, that sort of thing. I'm just there's so many repeat stories that happen across the news. like how do you pick the ones that you want to drill into? Um and then like how do you kind of pick the ones where you're like all right like they've got it like people people understand cuz the reason that I asked that I feel like I'm talking for a really long time but I just need to like let me therapy session for Katie. You guys I'm upset about something is important. Yeah. I just feel like there's so like the great example is um what's her butt leaving X yesterday. Like there's not a lot of commentary, but so many people need to comment on that. Like so many people need to write about that. Like at what point are you like, 'Okay, let it go.' And then open up space for smaller companies that like have some really cool going on. Like what does that balance look like? I'm going to stop ranting. You can tell I'm passionate about
I get where you're coming from. No, it's And it's been a crazy week as you noted. So So we're all we're all just surviving there. I would say um two things. one, I am trying to have a pact with the Upstarts community where everything that I am writing is fresh or interesting or differentiated that hopefully they're not getting before. And so because of that, I can sort of I'm liberated in a way to pick my battles. And so if everyone is writing about Linda Yakarino leaving X, um unless I had inside information into why she left or what it means for startup founders, you know, maybe maybe there was some angle there that would be relevant to my audience. Like if I had that, I would feel obligated to chase it. But otherwise, I think you just see big media companies playing defense where they're like, we need to have our Linda leaves X story because everyone else does. And I think when I'm only writing as as few as 10 12 times a month, you know, it's my newsletter is twice a week and then I do have a couple, you know, scoops or special editions. Um, but that means I have to really just pick my spots, focus on my own race, and not get sucked into the the rubbernecking of, you know, what other people are talking about.
Do you think that there's a bit of freedom in that from a Substack perspective? Obviously, I think that the answer is yes. But I guess the bigger question is why do you think that that's still happening in the media where everyone's just trying to get those clicks?
Yeah, I think that there are a couple things I'm sorry. I feel like I'm just like the last line you just threw out there. I'm like, oh, she's having a go today. You know that this isn't about you. Like I am a No, this is spicy. I love it. Um I'm sorry. I think I think there's a couple things and if and hopefully we'll edit out my my dog if you hear her. Um so I apologize but this is the life of of working from home still without a real office. Um so I think two things are happening. One you have um publications that are still trying to reach some sort of wire service or subscriber value like a Bloomberg. you know, they want all the news to be on the terminal and they kind of act like if it's not on the terminal, it it hasn't happened. Similarly, you know, other reporters will joke that, you know, news isn't news until the New York Times reports it. That's kind of how they can act sometimes where, you know, we might write something and then they do it again. Um, and and feel like, oh, now it's the moment. And so there's a little bit of that where I think people are like, we need to hold cord. And then also I think people are accepting that audiences are so fragmented that one of us really paying close attention would be like hey five people already wrote that story but I think their thinking is oh but has our entire audience seen that story? Totally. Like is there a chance that a push alert on our app will delight some of our readers or at least make them feel good about subscribing? And so I think there's just a lot of like business incentives that lead people to fast follow even though I don't think it's a fun task for anyone involved. It's not like a reporter's like, 'Hell yes, I'm going to be the second on this story.'
No, I feel like I you're right. Like it's probably a bit of like the PR world of knowing where the bodies are bearing in terms of like reading every publication and so I see it everywhere. But you're right. It's like there's that element of, you know, the the delighting the eyes that maybe hadn't seen it that subs don't subscribe to everything. And and potentially like there's people who are loyal to their publications and so they're like, you know, that's where they get their news. They're waiting for that, you know, that there's I think there's that element, too.
I think um it's interesting to me and we had this conversation on a previous pod and I'd be really interested to see what you think, Alex. Like is there room for some of this reporting where it's like purely reporting news in the sense that this has happened, we're going to put a piece up that says, you know, ex what did you say? What's a butts left X? Um Linda has left X. Um that that is where AI plays a role in reporting and maybe can do some of that and then journalists can spend more time on the investigative stuff. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago and I'd just be interested in your take on like where should media companies maybe be leveraging tools like that to sort of do that type of news versus maybe more in-depth stuff or do you think that's kind of sacrilege as well? I just would love your take on that.
I think in the first use it would be just improving the pipes and the rails to get the information out there. So, you know, there still isn't an obvious tool even for someone like me and a few people have said, 'Oh, we're trying to build this.' And if anyone in the audience knows a company that I should try, I I welcome it, too. But but for a tool that basically just uses AI to um rewrite my social media across every platform, I I know there's ways to do that, but I still think it could be better where it's like the reporter says, 'Hey, I have a scoop coming. Let's generate that tweet or that LinkedIn post immediately in a very like easy non like marketing software way.' uh you know I think the market more people will pay for like ad campaign tools and so I think they kind of take the tools that are used for like a a business you know post and then they like transfer that over to journalists it doesn't work that great so I think that's one obvious place or like you know if I was writing an article and while I'm writing it headlines were automatically suggested to me that might be helpful I'm I'm one of those people who usually likes to try to write the headline last unless that's really standing out to me because I don't want it to not fit the story once I've actually written the story. Um, but you know, a tool could be like, 'Hey, Alex, this seems like it'd be a good headline.' I don't always love the headlines that I that I end up using. Um, in terms of actually generating the article, though, I do think that would be really dangerous because you know, the downside is high if Bloomberg or the New York Times or someone sends out an automated alert that was AI generated that was wrong. You know, that can really lose trust.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see how it kind of evolves. I think you're so right about the tools are designed for like one thing and they're trying to adapt it to all these other places, but it's just Yeah.
I always tell founders I'm like, you know, journalists and and media, we are obviously like a relatively small market. And so I understand that you're not always bu like notion is not building specifically for my business necessarily. I still use notion in my my biz flow, but like I'm well aware that I'm a small fish in the pond.
Yeah. Yeah, that's funny. But I mean, big media companies have big budgets to some extent, but maybe not for that stuff. Um
Yeah. But, you know, it's funny like I was just I was just thinking about Reuters. like Reuters is a really big, you know, company in a lot of ways, but it's still in the grand scheme of things, it's it's going to be um a company that has to make hard choices what it would build internally versus buy off the shelf, you know, and I think the technology teams at a media company are going to be smaller than the tech team at WPP, which I believe has hundreds of engineers working on AI alone. You know, that's that's crazy.
Yeah. in this like media landscape with all these tools like what advice Alex do you have for comm's people who are like trying to navigate this new market now like not just from a substack and a traditional media perspective but like all the tools that we have at our fingertips like what does writing look like in the future like like what what advice would you give to like a comms or a PR person to kind of help stay on track and prioritize?
Well, I think you just need to have resilient workflows that can adapt to embrace a new tool or to like be candidly um shelved if they're if they're not working great. You know, I think when people get too attached to a flow, that can be really dangerous. And so, we see these fads that are not appreciated. like you know everyone uses I I'm not sure which tool it was but everyone uses a certain uh email generation tool to like pull in a recent headline that the person was involved with and it's like hey I saw you wrote this great article like headline uh wouldn't you like to talk to us and and half the time it's not an article the person wrote or it's not at all relevant or they wrote the article 5 years ago and it's like it would be better if you just didn't pretend you know like if you're if you're not going to put in the time, it's not worth it. And so I think how I think about these tools is like pay attention to the individual people as much as the brand, you know, the reporter at Reuters or the reporter at the New York Times or Upstarts. And think about us as people, not just like what is this company that I'm pitching.
And similarly with the pitches, just don't be too cute, you know? Don't if you're going to use Writer or Grammarly or Google's email feature or Superhum or whatever to to generate your email flow um really personalize it or don't. I think like trying to fake it um the pattern recognition is going to go against you, right? where if we are getting those dozens of pitches a day, we've seen every trick in the book and um it it's just it's going to end up feeling worse than if you just sent the more generic thing, you know, like like the fake the fake chumminess is kind of more annoying. So,
what if it's just it's just pure awkwardness and that's what they're feeling and it comes as fake chumminess. I feel like that's the general vibe that I
work friend. I have like a work friend who I like who um I've done some stuff with already who will just sort of awkwardly tack on musings about baseball to every message they send me. And I think I said I follow baseball at one point, but like this is not something I'm asking for, but it is kind of like awkwardly endearing now where I just like expect that musing about the Mets, a team that I don't care about, and I'm just like, good for you, man. So, so like it's fine as long as it feels authentic, you know? I'm more of a Yankees fan personally since I see Katie's wearing the hat. I don't know if it's for style or for preference, but yeah,
I know nothing about baseball, so
Well, you're a Yankee fan now, so there you go. The best this and the Dodgers hat are the best looking hats in baseball, I would say, which is the two that I wear.
You see a lot of celebrities wearing that hat. That's definitely true. Who are definitely watching baseball.
Um, what about like M dashes and weird that like now is known as like AI kind of writing language? Like do you have a feeling about that? I personally I love an M dash before chat GPT claimed it and so now I feel like I can't use it. I reject this whole discourse. I think that if you
if you know how to use an M dash, it's fine. If you're forcing one in because you didn't already use one, it looks really sus suspicious. But I use them in every single story. I try to be judicious and not have one in every paragraph. But I also love a good M dash. And I've never had a reader accuse me of using AI for that.
So, yeah. I just I write how I speak a lot of the times and I feel like my natural tone just has a lot of m dashes in it.
I will say we probably abuse them. We probably use them too much.
Yeah, maybe the discourse about AI generated M dashes has made me dial it back a little bit in a healthy way, but that's because I think a lot of sentences are too long as it is. For example, the one I'm currently speaking.
What do you from a substack like writer perspective is pitching the same for you? Like do you like outreach to be the same as you were like say at Forbes or Fortune or is there a different technique or something that works on you better now that you're on that that platform?
First off, you know, there's there's the idea of kind of the the publication market fit where there were definitely going to be stories that don't ever make sense for Forbes or don't ever make sense for Fortune. And similarly, Upstarts has kind of a vibe as well, but it's much more my own. So that, you know, the overlap right now is is heavy. It's like not everything in the world I find interesting what I write about for Upstarts, but I wouldn't write about anything for Upstarts that I didn't find interesting. Yeah. So, it's kind of more like concentric circles. Whereas, when you're writing at a big publication, maybe there's startups or stories you think are really compelling, but they don't they're not big enough. You know, the numbers are too small or it's not national in scope. It's a local story. And I think, you know, that kind of thing is something to always keep in mind. You know, where where for me now it's like, will my audience, some of whom are paying, some of whom are just free, but I but I want both communities to to be happy. Are they getting value from the story? Do they feel like I'm kind of sustaining the quality that I've promised? And and I'm very paranoid about that. So, it's it's a different pressure than, oh, would my editors at Forbes think this is a good use of my time? But it's still pressure.
Yeah. And do you what is your preferred like if people are listening and they're like, I've got a great story for Alex for Upstarts. Are you a like text me, call me or are you a email me kind of guy? What do you prefer?
People who have my number for a reason like can always use it. I do prefer people who will text me tips or ideas or like try to like help me in a way that is not directly always beneficial to them. I think, you know, it's less cool when people like only DM me on Twitter to be like, 'Hey, I just sent a pitch to your email inbox.' like that just feels like kind of trying to cut the line like in an annoying way. Um, you know, versus someone who's like, 'Hey, great story about Pette Tech. I love the photos of Margo. Have you guys tried this product?' Like that is like more of a conversation. So, I do text with PR people every day, but it's usually the people who want to actually engage with me or give me feedback. Um, if it's someone who doesn't know me well or it's more of just the straightforward pitch, I do like email and I want it to be personalized. I want it to be very succinct. I don't want a head shot. Some people send photos like like seeing the person's face is going to change my decision. Like, oh, they look so earnest. I have to write about them. Like, it's so weird. No head shot. Yeah. Um, al also like if it feels very over the top or like contrived, like you know, it's a little like dating where like we're looking for the red flags there, you know, like the dating apps, which I haven't been on in many years, but, you know, I still can remember and and and I think in this case, like the reporters are the ones in the high demand who are like, I'm looking for the red flags, you know. Um, and so I'd say just keep it succinct, keep it specific. One piece of advice I also want to give is like why does Upstarts have the right to win this article? And this is true for any publication. If it's in Australia, if it's in Europe, if it's in America, big or small, like the I think the reporter is always thinking, why is this story right for me? If the answer is just, well, every bigger outlet said no, that's not going to be compelling. If there's a reason like why this feels better for Upstarts, I'm going to take that much more seriously.
Yeah. because you know cuz I'm picking and I'm turning down a lot of pieces and so just because the number was too small for Bloomberg but maybe it's not too small for you is not going to be a good reason
100%. And I think that type of shopping is something that's like a little bit systemically broken at the moment from like a fundraising announcement type of perspective too.
And I I you know I welcome stories that are not funding based but then you have to give me something new as well. you know, like it's it's rare that I will just do a, you know, Q&A or interview, you know, interview with a person in the industry because why would busy people read that, you know, why now? Like like would would the PE people pitching that story read it if it wasn't their client? And I think often the answer is no.
Yeah. What I guess let me flip that on its head then like what founder stories are you founder startup company story are you loving right now? like what's really doing it for you?
Well, I would say people who are willing to come off a little crazy is always fun. So like I did an interview based story with the poolside founders and they are you know smart AI founders who have a lot of hot takes and and are just sort of willing to be out on a limb publicly and I think that's always interesting. I also enjoy stories about efficiency, startups that are like, 'We're not trying to just play the maximum venture game. We're trying to have real revenue or we're profitable.' And sharing those numbers can be really interesting, too. And then I also think um you know, I like I like stories that I just think speak to a zeitgeist or a trend in a way that is relevant to the wider audience, you know. So, if you look at some of the stories that I will publish over the course of the summer, you might be like, 'Oh, I'm not quite sure why Alex covered that company and then you read to the end and you're like, 'Oh, there was a lesson here that he thought was interesting.' You may not agree, but at least like it should speak to a bigger thing. It's not just like, 'Hey, I pulled a startup out of a hat and wrote about it.'
Yeah. Yeah. And from a local kind of startup story versus an international one, do you have a good example of kind of what each of them look like from a good what good looks like perspective?
Yeah. So the first profile I actually wrote about for upstarts was a Londonbased startup called Granola. Granola is an AI note-taking tool. It competes with Fathom and Notion and even Zoom has a tool. You know, Google has a
A lot of folks have this. Granola has just really resonated with a lot of people because it's so easy to use. It feels like a seamless experience and the CEO put a ton of time into the product development experience there. So I was just playing with it before I launched the company and messaged the CEO and was like, 'Hey, would you want to do an interview?' And we ended up doing a really fun story that was relevant to anyone who might need a productivity tool or might have tried a notetaker and hates it. It wasn't really geo-specific. The company's fully based in London and I'm based in New York, but I don't think that really mattered to people. They don't care where their users are. They have language support, too. So, I think that was a great one.
Historically, I've also gotten to take advantage of the old Forbes expense account. I took trips to Bucharest to write about UiPath. I went to Sydney to do a cover story on Canva that I really loved. And I think both of those companies again had sort of the international relevance whether it was in automation or it was in design. Not specific to the geo. It would be a lot harder for me to be like, 'Oh, I'm going to go to India for Upstarts and write about a startup that only matters to India or that is laser focused on one legal situation in Australia and has no relevance to a US audience.'
But if I could justify going to Australia again to write about a company there that sells globally, that would be awesome.
Yeah, that makes sense. And I think that's helpful because I think there's a lot of people probably in Australia who think, 'Oh, he's not interested in Australian stories,' but to your point, if the company is an Australian company, but selling globally has global relevance, then yeah, it's worth thinking about. And there's a much smaller but a really good strong VC and startup community here that I think could benefit from thinking outside the box a little bit in terms of the media landscape here as well, because it is a lot smaller and there's not necessarily these kind of niche publications focusing just on the startup VC world here. So yeah, I think that's really helpful.
One I didn't write about, but they did a good job just getting their name out there is actually a New Zealand company. Supabase may not want to give them any credit, but they've been pretty successful. The CEO lives in New Zealand and I think an investor actually, a whole story came out of an investor flying to New Zealand on a dime from California to meet with the guy. And I just saw him posting earlier today about their offsite is going to be at a nice beach resort and he was like, 'Come work remotely for me because we'll all go to this off-site.' So there's an example if people want to look this up later of a company where the founder is in New Zealand but they've got that sort of global interaction and conversation.
