Hi everybody, this is Seth. Welcome to the Aging Intelligence Podcast where we talk to society's leaders about what they're doing and how they're involved in helping society face its aging challenges. We have today Alex Konrad on the podcast and Alex is a very, very interesting guest because he usually is the person doing the interviewing and today we're flipping the tables and I'm going to do the interviewing. So, Alex was a senior editor at Forbes for a lot of years. How many years were you there, Alex?
12 years. Okay. So, that in startup land that would be forever. Um, and then
It's forever in media, too. Yeah.
Okay. So, in media counts, too. Um, and then Alex went and did something risky. He left Forbes and he launched his own company called Upstarts Media. And at Upstarts Media, he's been interviewing I think particularly founders, right? Hence the name. Um, really looking at companies and founders and what creates durable companies and what lasts and what are people working on. Um, and this is particularly interesting because obviously Honor was a startup at one point and one of the thoughts when we launched Honor was, hey, if we can help pave the way for other founders to create startups around the aging space, that would be really awesome. Um, and Alex has interviewed a number of founders and companies that have been tackling problems around the aging space generally. So, it'll be really interesting to get Alex's opinions and thoughts on the topic. Alex, is there anything I missed in your introduction?
No, that's great. Um, having a lot of fun one year in with Upstarts.
Yeah. Awesome. Well, why don't we start there? Um, you know, so many people, like I said, the aging space has a bunch of players in the field, but there are a whole bunch of new players who have come in. Um, and when people think about should I do a startup, does it make sense? Can you take us through just your own journey? Like, you know, how do you decide to bail from something that seems pretty stable with a pretty big name, Forbes, and do your own startup?
Yeah. You know, I think back in the day, a lot of people started companies because they felt like they maybe had maxed out their jobs at a place like Google or, you know, Meta. And I think for me, it was a little bit similar where after 12 years at Forbes, I felt like I had checked off all the boxes that I had aspired to and was kind of pursuing side quests. And I'm a very impatient and motivated person. And so to not have everything building towards a new challenge was hard for me. And then I thought if I'm going to do something new, I don't want to just run it back and do another Midas list of top VCs or, you know, a lot of the sort of same cover story type stories for a different newsroom. I should just blow it up, do the craziest thing, and start my own company and think about what media should look like, you know, moving forward. And so I definitely kind of took the riskiest but I think the most exciting route.
Huh. And how has that been? Like you know you leave it's all exciting and then reality hits. Like what's different versus what you thought you were getting yourself into?
I think the biggest lesson has been that I am my own biggest blocker and sort of worst enemy in the sense that I don't infinitely scale. I think we're thinking about expanding Upstarts in the future so that there are ways to do more than just me. But ultimately my reporting, my role in the ecosystem is a lot of our product. And so the biggest challenge for me is that I could spend 100% of my time doing fun interviews like this. I could spend 100% of my time just writing articles and I could spend 100% of my time selling sponsorships that bring us revenue. But if I did any of those things too much, everything else would go on fire. And that has been a sort of a balancing act that I feel like you really need to experience firsthand as a founder.
For sure. Okay. So, you just had this experience. You've got someone out there who's thinking, "Geez, I should start a company that somehow helps in the aging space, right? Somehow helps older adults in one way, shape, or form." What do you say to that person if they come to you and say, "Hey, should I do a startup?"
Well, I think first off, it is good to have a mission that you care about. I think I'm seeing firsthand that if you don't love what you're doing, startups are just so much work and it is easier to not do it, right? So, I think if you're going to do it, you have to be really passionate about it and really want to attack the opportunity because it is a 7 day a week job. I know you've lived this as well, Seth, over many more years than I have. So, that would be my first thing. The second thing I'd say is what is your right to win? You know, why do you care about, let's say, the aging population or elder care or one of these areas? What do you bring to the table that is unique there? And then we'd kind of get more detailed from that starting point. But I think very linearly in terms of sort of like, okay, do you really want to do a startup in the first place? Is this a random idea? Should you really be doing this? And then we can talk about, you know, is it an insane idea?
Yeah. So, it's funny the way I talk about that. It's actually my number one criteria I evaluate founders by. Like if I'm trying to figure out is this person likely to win, right, in the company that they're creating, I say, how many times can they hit a brick wall and get back up and keep going? Because startups are lots and lots of successive brick walls. And if you don't hit them and then figure out, okay, this one I'm going to, you know, kind of tunnel under and that one I'm going to throw a rope over, you're in trouble. And like the only way you get that energy when you get to year five or year seven is that you truly truly love the mission.
And I think it is one of the reasons at least in the aging space that you see founders being able to tackle it because it often calls to people because it's something that happened in their own lives. And I'm kind of curious about that because I've seen you write about a couple of companies recently in the aging space. So it's a space that you're following a little bit which is actually kind of rare because a lot of people just don't follow the space. Um, is there something that happened in your life? Like is there someone or something that kind of made you more attuned to that space?
100% there is. Shout out to my 93-year-old grandma Lucky in Connecticut. Lucky is someone who means a lot to our whole family. She's my only living grandparent and she's also someone who has embraced technology in very kind of amazing and endearing ways. One of the first times I ever went viral on Twitter/X was because I posted a screenshot of my family group chat years ago where someone had responded to my grandma with a GIF of Steve Harvey clapping. My grandma had tried to figure out how to make Steve Harvey stop clapping. She thought it was going to kill the battery on her phone and had gotten so flummoxed that she'd gone to the Verizon store in Connecticut to try to make them, you know, stop Steve Harvey from clapping. And these updates were just adorable and she's gotten very good at texting. But Mashable, all these websites like a decade ago covered my grandma's tech moment and Verizon even had her reunite with the salesperson and it was like this hilarious thing where many years later I meet a media union rep and she's like, you know, we've met before. And I was like, I'm sorry, I don't know how. And she said, I covered you and your grandma many years ago in Mashable or one of these sites. So that was really funny. And then more recently, my grandma has talked to an Alexa and she's seen technology in her assisted living facility. And that was really a big trigger moment for me because I was thinking, my grandma asked it to play the Bee Gees, asks for the weather, but she really kind of wants to talk to this thing more than it can handle. And also what are the other ways that technology could be helping her and her friends in this facility? And that just kind of unlocked this whole side of my brain that when I started Upstarts, I was like, you know what, I now have myself as an editor. I can write about this as much as I want. And so it really was an intentional thing. Like, is this a technology that could help my grandma is one question that I asked myself.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So like, and so this is like a really interesting topic because when you talk to people who have been kind of let's call it toiling away in the aging space, right? It could be someone who's in a more traditional business and they're working in an assisted living or, you know, a SNF. Um, it could be someone who's doing a startup in the space. But there's always this kind of underlying feeling of what I'm working on is like really really important. It's important for society. It's being done to give back to society. And yet, like people don't care, right? Like the powers that be don't care. The media doesn't care. They're off covering the next hot thing. And no one cares about this big societal challenge. Like how should people operating in this space think about that? Like why do you think they find it harder to get attention and like should it even matter to them?
I think there are two big challenges we're facing there. One is that the customer is not an early adopter, tech-savvy, highly online person sharing their story posting it on Twitter. And I think the sad reality of a lot of news today is that journalists can write about a lot of topics if the story doesn't get picked up by the ecosystem there's a very good chance an algorithm never shows it to you. You know when you see people complain why is nobody covering this topic honestly usually someone is. It's just that it's not getting in front of you. You know, most of my followers are not seeing any one article I write. And so, I think one challenge is that we don't have great advocates for these stories who are helping them reach a wider audience. And that creates a negative feedback loop where if there are no advocates, the story is not doing well for the reporter and their editor is not letting them write about that topic in the future. Then I say that the second challenge is that this stuff takes a really long time. I mean, how long have you been working on Honor? When I talk to some of these new founders and I'm like you're signing up for a 10-year slog. This is not going to be one of those Cursor-like, you know, AI record ARR stories, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Totally. So that's really interesting. So what people have to understand because you just said something in there that's implicit, but I want to make it explicit for everybody. So, you're a journalist. You're going to write something. And what you need to think to yourself is given the way algorithms work, given the way media works, is this thing actually going to get picked up? Like, are eyeballs going to hit it? And it's going to get picked up if the algorithm picks it up, basically, I think, is what you just said. And so, it's got to be on a topic that the journalist believes lots and lots of people are going to choose to click on. Is that roughly accurate?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean at the broadest strokes I would say yes because if you think about another way to try to just make this relatable to people, let's say there are at least 20 startups in my head that at any given time I'm like these are cool companies. I love the founder. I think the technology is really cool. Why am I not just writing about those 20 companies and emptying the list constantly? Because there isn't the right time or the news peg or the meta discussion around their area such that anyone will pay attention and you only get sort of limited shots on goal per technology or per founder to talk about. And so there's nothing more devastating than to spend a lot of time on a story, try to sell it to the world and nobody reads it. The founder feels bad like they spent all this time with you and they're not getting any boost from it. And also it just feels pretty sucky to have no one reading the work that you put out. So getting that kind of sense of taste of when is the market ready for this article is unfortunately a big part of media today.
Yeah. And so that's really interesting. So when you think about the timing of when the market is ready is that because you see the conversation online move to a given topic like you know it's the season for Medicare renewals for example because I saw you just wrote about Chapter and so you know since lots of people are searching on Medicare right now therefore now is a good time to write about that company. Is that the way you think about it?
It's not quite that specific. Although I do know of journalists who will check Google Trends and we've seen multiple startups even come up with new versions of that where they're trying to basically do the market research to say, "Hey, this topic is very relevant." Honestly, I could probably do a better job of that. For me, it's sort of like has there been a wider conversation happening in the news around this category? Have there been major fundraises or customer signs, product launches? And I think obviously this is one area where startups are very competitive with each other, but if there's more hype around a competitor or a category that's actually better for attention to everybody. And then if there isn't really any of that, I'm looking for a hook from the company that could be my easy why now. So, for example, with the robots I wrote about from the startup Andromeda going into senior homes, they were launching in the US and they're going to be actually shipping their robots to homes in California for the first time. That was my justification of the why now. But candidly, it might have still been too early. Like there's a good chance these guys go on CNN on 60 Minutes in a year or two and everyone's like, "Oh, that's obvious." And no one really cares that I was early on the story, you know, except me, right?
Yep. It totally makes sense. Okay. So, there's this other thing that I think you've talked about which is kind of interesting and it certainly relates to people who are operating in the aging space. Curious to get your take on it. What is a company that is kind of durable versus hype? Because like when you're thinking about, you know, I actually call what you just said like, you know, the hey, the world's talking about it now, therefore we should talk about it. I call that meme hopping. And startups have this tendency to meme hop, right? And it's because they're seeking attention, right? It's like if I want an investor to put money in, if I want a reporter to write about it, I kind of have to be on meme. And if I'm not on meme, then it's a lot harder to either get money or get attention or whatever it might be that that startup kind of needs to help fuel its growth. There's this huge risk in meme hopping though, which is you always hop. You keep changing what your company kind of does at core and then you're never focused and you never really win because you don't stay in a space. And so that's almost like the antithesis in a way to a company that's durable because like if it's always meme hopping, then it's like almost definitionally not durable. So how do you think about this company, these founders, this principle, whatever it is when you're looking at and evaluating a potential startup or a later stage company, what makes durability?
I think you want to see clarity of direction with the nimbleness to catch whatever wind is kind of behind you. You don't want to see a boat that is just changing course constantly to your point, that shows indecision, lack of differentiation. And also we've seen startups fail because they try to do too much too fast, right? They have five ideas like you should just have one really good idea. That said, and this is true for Upstarts as a small startup ourselves, you will see these winds going by that could be tailwinds or headwinds and you obviously want to have the wind at your back. And so if that's a discussion around loneliness with companions or it's about people living longer and what are the diet implications, like as there might be trending stories, I think you can draft off of those in a way that is beneficial without being so cynical as like let's refocus our entire product. Um, you know, with Upstarts, for example, the sale of The Information to OpenAI set off a big conversation around new media and it would be silly for me not to engage with that even if I'm not really an apples-to-apples competitor to The Information. Those guys are friendly with me, but just their sale just got people talking about media and that helps me. Does that make sense?
Yep. Yeah, totally. And so when you think when you kind of get past the meme hop then you get to a company that's like, okay, we're doing this and you evaluate kind of more the fundamentals. So like when we launched Honor, we actually had this criteria for the kind of company we would do and we said it had to be a company that we thought was a legacy company. And what we meant by that is it needed to be the kind of company where we believed it would actually have the right to outlive the founders. Um so that's a pretty long live statement, right? Like hey this thing should last for many many many many decades I hope.
We would hope. Yes, I knock on wood on that. Yeah.
Yep. Um but so how do you think about that? Like how do you think about the qualities of a company or the qualities of a founding team that can endure over decades as opposed to and this thing's just kind of a flash in the pan?
Well, it's gotten harder to answer that in this AI era for sure. I was just talking to a very popular AI app maker a couple hours ago and I was basically asking that question which is what is a moat today? You know, if your technology could be copied by the big labs in three months, what does that actually mean for the long-term future of your business? They said, well, if we have a three-month moat, we just have to keep iterating and trust that we are on the marathon of improve, ship, improve, ship, and just constantly stay 3 months ahead.
Not the most maybe relieving answer or if I were them, I feel
But it almost reminds me of a story. Um, there's an old cliche story that I think an early technologist told of the people picking up dimes in front of the steamrollers, you know, where you have the giant companies or the steamroller going down the road and they're not going to stop and pick up the dimes on the street. If you're a small startup, maybe you can run and make a good business just picking up all the coins faster than they get to you, but if you ever mess up, they squish you and you're dead. So I think for a lot of these startups right now speed and ability to ship fast is their moat. I think you have to really believe in the team to feel good about that. Um because otherwise I personally usually feel more comfortable writing about a product I think could be disruptive over a long time. For example in longevity I had the CEO of Loyal on my show. She actually started out in human longevity, saw a faster route to progress with dogs and canine longevity and is in a clinical trial to extend the lifespan of dogs. Now, she would love to go back to humans someday, I think, but like this dog project will be the next 10 years of her business and that is easier for me to intellectually understand than like we will ship a new thing every month, right?
Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because I think the founder of that is Celine and I was just I think I just saw her two days ago. So yes, Celine is a great founder. Um I love showcasing people like her. Yeah.
