Alex Konrad spent 12 years at Forbes interviewing some of the biggest names in tech before walking away to bet on himself and launch Upstarts Media. So, did the gamble pay off? Today, he shares how cold calls built his career, the byline that changed everything, and what it takes to go independent in today's media landscape.
All right, on today's episode, we are joined by Alex Konrad, founder and editor of Upstarts and podcaster as well. Alex, thanks so much for joining us. I feel like in the world of journalism, all of us are either content creators or we are podcasters. That is the thing to do now, right?
Yeah, it's and sometimes both, right? So, that's what I'm figuring out at Upstarts every day.
Amazing. Well, thank you again so much for joining us. Alex, we want to sit down and talk to you because of your career and where it's gone. I mean, you started as a traditional journalist, and we'll talk about that soon, but now you're venturing into your own work, right? You have your own business Upstarts, which I am so impressed because not a lot of us can actually say goodbye to our nine-to-five job and say, 'Let's just start something of my own.' But let's go back a little bit and tell me what young Alex was like. Why did you want to get into journalism in the first place? And how did you break into the business?
You know, I think young Alex dreamed of being Indiana Jones, but then found out that real life Indiana Jones would be in jail right now for committing all sorts of international crimes. And so, not a great career move, it turns out. But in college, I did study pretty much every class you would think an Indiana Jones would need across the gamut. And then I had to hard pivot into a place that would actually pay me to do what I love, which is tell stories.
Amazing. You know, that's interesting because when I was breaking into journalism into the business, a lot of my mentors actually said, 'If you want to make money, don't go into journalism.'
I was lucky enough to have some ties like friend-of-a-friend type thing to a couple Pulitzer Prize winning journalists and I did write them in college and say, 'Hey, I think now I want to become a professional journalist. What should I do to really kickstart my career?' And of course, I'll never forget the feedback I consistently got was don't do it. Which was not exactly what college age me wanted to hear. Maybe it actually helped because it made me stubborn in a weird way. And I was like, well, all these successful people are saying not to do their business. You know, they're just pulling up the ladder behind them. I'm going to figure it out. Little did I know, you know, now I would say probably to people, do it, but here are the caveats, right?
Those are the characteristics though of a true journalist, right? Asking somebody a question, being skeptical, and wanting to find out on your own.
Wanting to find the truth.
Although I've tried to get better at absorbing the feedback of my elders and wiser people as well over the years.
By the way, when I say young, Alex, you still are young. I just wanted to, you know,
I appreciate that. Some days I feel younger than others. You know, running a business, I'm aging way too fast now. So, there you go.
Oh my gosh. Well, we'll get into you owning your own business here soon. So, remind me again where you went to school.
So, I grew up in New York City and I was lucky to go to Harvard and that's where I studied all these kind of silly things. Journalism was actually not a major at Harvard. And so, people write for the newspaper, they do other extracurriculars, but it's almost if you want to be a journalist, it's a challenge of what intellectual pursuits can prepare you. I wish I had taken computer science. I did not. But I did take, you know, anthropology and some other things that were helpful. And then got fought really hard to get that summer internship at a publication and start writing for them.
Yeah. You know, I think what's interesting too about what you just said is you really used your network, right? You were networking even early on. And I feel like that really is the key as well to break into this business is using your network to your advantage, getting yourself out there and meeting people and having those mentors, right?
I also think I'm sure you've done this many times, it's a skill to just force yourself to cold call people or write people that you think are probably going to say no to you or tell you to buzz off. And I think that just building up those calluses to just make the ask, try to get the answer even if people think you're annoying. That's a big part of being a journalist. You know, it's hard to want to always be liked and also be good at this job.
Yeah, great advice. So, you become an intern.
I do for Fortune magazine in New York. And I found out that no intern had ever been published in print in Fortune. And so I made that my personal challenge and mission to achieve.
Okay. And I'm assuming you achieved it.
Yeah, I wouldn't tell the story if I didn't achieve it. That'd be pretty depressing. So I did pull it off with a one-page article and then they offered me a job and I started the first workday after graduation.
That's amazing. Dive into that story a little bit. How did you actually accomplish that goal? Because that is not an easy goal. What did you write about? How did you get that in front of editors? And how did you actually get it approved?
As a journalist, especially in tech reporting, but probably also politics and lots of other areas, I feel like you could either be a heat-seeking missile where you go really for the in-demand buzzy topic or beat and just really catch a wave there. Or you can do the opposite, which is kind of the approach I took, which is what is the green field? What is the area that nobody's paying attention to? So, maybe if I do something that people care about, it'll stand out because there isn't as much competition. And so I started to write, this is back in 2009, 2010, about startups here in New York City because most tech reporters, they still are in San Francisco, but an even higher percentage were on the West Coast at the time. And so I felt like there were these cool companies here like people might remember Zocdoc or some of these other companies, apps that they use, Foursquare, that were not getting a lot of attention. And so I started to really try to write there and build some trust. And then for the magazine story I kind of hitched my wagon to a phenomenal veteran reporter now who writes about big lawsuits and sort of court cases. His name is Roger Parloff. And you know, I sort of hitched my wagon to some of these mentors and then eventually someone had a big project and it was such a big project that Fortune said, 'Oh, we should have a one-page secondary story that sort of corroborates or elaborates on what the big one is doing.' And the main writer is way too busy for that. And so that's where I got to raise my hand and be aggressive and be like, I'll do the baby piece. And then I just tried to not screw that up.
That's amazing. And so how do you think it went? How when you saw your byline for the very first time in this big magazine, what was your emotion and what was it like?
I was really excited and it ruined me forever because I thought that being a journalist we would get to talk to cool celebrities all the time because I got to interview Robert Redford for that piece and which really impressed my mom and that's when I was like okay this is a good career because my mom is like losing it that I spoke to Robert Redford. He said, 'Call me Bob.' And I was like, 'Oh my gosh.' And then I also had a huge company Chevron mad at me. And so I was like, 'Wow, this is like straight out of Devils Wear Prada or something. This is really exciting.' That prepared me maybe or insulated me for years of grind to get back to that kind of thing. But it was like a very funny trial by fire for sure.
I have to say it is those stories, you know, that keep you going to the newsroom every single day. And so you actually built a really successful career.
Thank you. I tried. I ended up going to Forbes 18 months after I started at Fortune and I ended up spending 12 years at Forbes where I worked my way from the most thankless job which was the editor of the homepage of Forbes.com back when people cared about homepages and I was literally programming which journalist articles should go on there and making the headlines fit. And I just tried to do that as fast as I could in the day so that I could do some reporting in the afternoon. And then I proved my value again as a reporter and got put on the tech beat at Forbes. And then yeah, it was over a decade of really fun times in tech reporting there.
That's amazing. And all this on the East Coast?
Yeah. So, my father lives in San Francisco. It's a second city for me. And I would spend a lot of time there crashing on his couch. But I've always been based in New York City. I think being in New York covering an ecosystem that is a little bit focused somewhere else was harder but also liberating in a way because I wasn't caught in the bubble of the hype train or everyone kind of affirming each other and I think bringing a little bit of a cynical New Yorker's view to some of these startups was a healthy thing and so I would say it's a harder degree of difficulty but once I cleared that I really enjoyed being here and I resisted any pressure to ever move out west.
Yeah, I mean it really is reporting and doing good stories, you know, it really is kind of strengthening your sources and if you're all the way on the east coast, I mean that paints the picture that you had really strong relationships with people in the industry who you needed to interview. What were some of the most exciting interviews that you've had, good and bad?
Yeah, I mean I had a couple interesting ones. The first cover story I wrote was about an investor who was on Shark Tank for a long time named Chris Sacca and he was involved with the early days of Uber. So as Uber was becoming very contentious and the investors were fighting each other, I was kind of thrown into that world a bit. And so that was really kind of interesting and exciting to be cited in some of the books that came out about Uber and all of that. And then I got to travel the world for a cover story on Marc Benioff which was surreal. Ended up singing karaoke with him and some Japanese CEOs in Tokyo for that story which was an experience. A funnier story, when I've had a beer, you know, we're not there right now, but I'd say the most rewarding one was going to Australia to write a cover story about this amazing entrepreneur named Melanie Perkins. She's the CEO of Canva, which is valued at over 40 billion. It's a leading design software tool, but not just for other tech people, for everybody. You know, I use Canva for my graphics, brick-and-mortar stores, grandparents can use Canva. It's a real kind of every person's tool. And Melanie is just this amazing down-to-earth woman. Grew up in Western Australia, you know, mixed background, wasn't really someone that venture capitalists would identify as an obvious investment. And she and now her husband and their third co-founder built this global iconic business from Sydney. And so it was really cool to get to be one of the first journalists to tell that story. I had to really fight to put her on the cover of Forbes. They were nervous about putting a less proven tech company like hers on there and I was like trust me or I will fall on this sword but like we will look good. And she's now been on the cover of most business magazines and I'm always really proud that we were able to lean into that one.
It's amazing. I mean, who doesn't use Canva these days, right? I'm glad they listened to you.
It helps me now. So, selfishly, I'm glad that I played some small part.
