In this episode of Inside the Media Minds, our hosts Christine Blake and Madison Farabaugh chat with Alex Konrad about the various hats he wears as Senior Editor at Forbes.
“It is a lot of air traffic control,” states Alex, on the routing and evaluating of stories for Forbes and balancing this responsibility with what he wants to cover as a reporter focused on cloud, AI, venture capital and Forbes’ renowned awards programs: The Cloud 100 and AI 50. “There are more good stories than we can possibly cover right now.”
What Determines a Standout Company for Coverage and Awards?
For Alex, the simple answer comes back to general business impact and real business outcomes. Forbes does not prioritize speculative coverage. When talking about a startup, for example, the publication wants to hear about real contracts, real revenue, the valuation, not just how much they raise but the context of that raise – all to inform that more general business audience.
Specifically for Forbes’ awards programs, Alex offers a few clarifications. The Cloud 100 is a mostly numbers driven list – think growth rate, size, sales pipeline over the previous couple years – but it has other influencing factors like reputation score evaluated by industry judges who are public company leaders. If your company is growing really fast in secret, make sure to let the team know early! As for the AI 50, while having similar financial focuses as Cloud 100, this program emphasizes leadership in one’s field and rewards excellence across all use cases in the AI landscape.
Whether pitching Alex for awards or company profiles, communicating with him early in the process is key. He urges companies to consider why now is the time to write about them, what the inflection point or key moment is, any jaw-dropping numbers, and any other evidence to create a surprise factor. In short, what makes the story provocative or how does it add to broader discourse on major news? He confirms, “One thing I ask founders or executives at a company is, if this story were about your competitor and not you, would you read it?… If you can’t get the haters, you know, you’re probably going to get apathy.”
To hear more from Alex on his previous studies in medieval history, his favorite type of PR professional to work with and his most memorable profile story on Canva CEO/Co-founder Melanie Perkins, listen to the episode or read the full transcript below.
Timestamps
1:04 – Alex’s background (and prior aspirations for an Indiana Jones career)
2:18 – What keeps Alex engaged in tech
3:25 – Life as Senior Editor
4:52 – Key topics Alex is tracking
6:21 – Trends impacting future coverage
8:05 – The Cloud 100 and advice for vendors
12:29 – The AI 50
14:57 – Determining which companies to cover
17:49 – Navigating AI coverage
19:59 – Alex’s most memorable story
23:01 – How PR should approach Alex
25:08 – Alex and his wife’s appreciation for the arts
Want more from Inside the Media Minds? Find all of our past episodes here!
Transcript
Christine Blake (CB): Welcome to Inside the Media Minds. This is your host, Christine Blake. This show features in-depth interviews with tech reporters who share everything from their biggest pet peeves to their favorite stories, from our studio at W2 Communications. Let’s go inside the media minds.
CB: Hi everyone. This is Christine Blake, the host of inside the media minds, and I’m here with my co-host Madison. Today, we are excited to have Alex Konrad join us. He is a senior editor at Forbes. Alex covers everything from venture capital startups, cloud, AI. He is at the helm of a lot of the lists that we hear about often at Forbes, including the cloud 100 and AI 50. So we’re excited to have you on our podcast today, Alex, to hear more.
Alex Konrad (AK): Yeah, thank you for having me.
CB: So let’s get started with a quick overview of your background. I know in looking at your bio, you have studied Medieval History at Harvard, correct, and then you now are obviously writing Forbes. Can you tell us a little bit about that journey and then how you got where you are today?
AK: Totally. So I kind of hoped to create a Indiana Jones career as a kid, but I learned the hard way that a modern day Indiana Jones would be in jail, if not the original. So I studied classics, history, archeology, Arabic, Middle Eastern history in college, hoping to kind of cobble together this focus area. But while that is really a passion of mine, I also like storytelling, and my internships in college were in the media at WNYC, the New York City affiliate of NPR, and also at Fortune Magazine, which I joined after college. And so getting paid to tell stories became my focus, and then I didn’t want to be a politics writer, and technology seemed to be the other growth area where where there would be exciting stories. So I jumped in completely unprepared into tech reporting around 2009-2010.
CB: Great background and cool story. So what keeps you engaged in the industry? Gets your attention.
AK: Yeah, I think one thing that’s fun about covering tech is that you get to be out of your depth really quickly and frequently, meeting with super smart people who are passionate about one thing. And whether it’s you know, a PR professional, a journalist, a VC, we all are meeting with tons of people who are really in depth on that one thing, and we’re kind of broad on maybe a bunch of things. And so to kind of understand new trends, like what’s going on with large language models, or what exactly is an agent, you know, all these things in AI today, but there have been different moments like that through my career where I’ve had to scramble, learn a market, come up with a point of view, and for me, that’s intellectually really fun.
CB: Yeah, it’s like something new every day. It always shifting, always changing.
AK: Exactly.
Madison Farabaugh (MF): Awesome. Well, it’s been great to hear about your background and how you got to Forbes and everything. Could you tell us a little bit more about what your day to day role at Forbes looks like as the senior editor, and maybe how that role has either shifted in the past year, or maybe where you see it going over the next year?
AK: Sure. So I wake up every morning, and I look at my email inbox, and I start crying, and then I fantasize about throwing my phone into the East River, and I don’t, and I have some coffee, and I jump in. No but seriously, it is a lot of air traffic control. I am one of the most senior writers at Forbes, and I’ve been on the tech team, you know, longer than anyone else I think. So I have a lot of that institutional knowledge. There’s a lot of kind of routing of things, thinking about what are good stories for us, and then focusing on what I want to cover as a reporter. And so, as we noted earlier, I cover, you know, cloud, AI, venture capital, a bunch of things, and so I really have to pick my battles.
And I think, you know, the worst feeling, Madison, is to spend days on a project that doesn’t pan out, or it feels like, ultimately, it was maybe low impact compared to a bigger story that was, you know, next up online for me, or I had been thinking about, but I never did, and someone else got to. And so I’d say a lot of my time is just trying to really focus myself and our team on what is the best story for us to be telling in that moment. Because there are more good stories than we can possibly cover right now.
CB: Yeah, and what are some of those key topics that you’ve been following and that you’ve been covering the past couple months or so?
AK: Forbes is, of course, a national business publication, and so we have a bit of a different lens that we look at these companies and angles versus some other of our awesome peers. And for us, that’s really coming back to general business impact, real business outcomes. Is it eventually going to be a stock that our parents could purchase, or is it going to be a company that one of our college peers could you know, pay a subscription for? But, like, there has to be a real value there. We don’t do a ton of just sort of speculative coverage. And so I think that’s one thing that we really try to focus on, is, you know, when we’re talking about a startup, we want to hear about real contracts, real revenue. You know, we want to know not just how much they raise, but what is the context of that raise? What is the valuation? You know, we want the real numbers that can inform that more general business audience, and then we leave to maybe tech industry specialists, some of the in the weeds, or, like, really inside baseball facts that that, honestly, I think, would go over the head of some really busy people.
CB: Yeah, that makes sense.
MF: So then looking ahead at all of what you’ve been focusing on recently, are there any trends that you’ve noticed over the past few months that might impact your coverage area looking ahead to the next, next, rest of the year?
AK: Absolutely. So I would not have predicted, maybe two years ago that I would have spent so much time covering AI. I think for the last year it’s been pretty consistently busy. We’re trying to think, what are the next big trends that are relevant in AI from a business context, such as, what are real business outcomes? Where are people actually finding value from these LLMs? You know, you can see endless debates on Twitter, like, is AI real? Is it a sham? Is it going to end the world? Is it harmless math, you know? And we’ve written about that too, but I think we’re especially interested in, like, what is the next phase there. You know, are these companies going to run out of money, or are they going to actually make money because they help people do their jobs, you know, and what does that look like?
So that’s a big focus for us, trying to understand where the puck is going with things like the compute or GPUs needed for all this AI use. Nvidia has obviously become almost like a cult-like stock, you know. My own father in law, you know, is all up in what’s going on with Nvidia, and that’s always interesting, but it reminds me a bit of, you know, the rise of AWS and Amazon 10 years ago, and that, of course, created a whole ecosystem. And so what’s going to happen with the equivalent, you know, will that be Nvidia? Will that be new companies? That’s another thing we’re watching.
And then in cloud, you know, we’re waiting for a bunch of these companies to go public. The Cloud 100 was a little less fun for me this year because the companies at the top were pretty much the same, barring a couple of AI companies, as they were in the past. You know Stripe, Canva, Databricks. These are all great companies that we would love to see go public and then think about the impact that’ll have across the ecosystem.
CB: That’s that’s good to know so the AI ecosystem as a whole, and then looking at these cloud companies, how they’re evolving when they’re going public, which is actually a great segue into one of our favorite questions about the Cloud 100 list. I know you’ve been at the helm of this list for a while now, and the AI 50.
AK: I created it, I created it. Yeah, and I can’t get rid of it. 2016.
CB: Okay, so eight years, or, yeah.
AK: Well, I think we just had our ninth year, and next year will be our 10th year of the list. Yeah, so maybe I forget what that means for the math, but that’s what I can tell you, because we’re planning a 10 year party. Everyone’s invited.
CB: Perfect. Well, we won’t forget. So tell us now about the creation of those lists, and then also, many vendors you know, seek to be on the list. What’s the process? Can you walk us through that a little bit?
AK: So every list of Forbes is a little different with Cloud 100 it is an open submission process. One thing that is true for all Forbes lists is we do not charge for submissions, and you cannot pay your way onto a list. If you ever hear otherwise, it’s a scam. Don’t fall for it. It’s annoying when we hear about this, but we’re not condoning anything like that. It does not help.
With Cloud 100, we work with a data partner, Bessemer Venture Partners, who co-created the list with us back in the beginning, and they are have an analyst team that is crunching some numbers. Companies that feel uncomfortable sharing specific numbers can always share a range of numbers. And you know, Bessemer is a good partner here because they’ve typically already made a bet in that area years before or a company is, to make the list, you’re usually valued in the hundreds of millions at least, and that’s usually a bit late for a firm like Bessemer, so we don’t feel any worry about conflict. But if companies do have an issue, they can submit partial info and we can triangulate it elsewhere. But we’re basically looking at, you know, companies growth rate, its size, its sales pipeline over the previous couple years to see if it is going to be one of those breakout companies that might graduate to a public company eventually.
CB: That’s great to know. So what advice would you give to vendors trying to get on the list, aside from, you know, of course, growing, increasing size, pipeline, all that stuff.
AK: Yeah, it is. It is a mostly numbers driven list. But there are a couple things you know. One is, we do have one a percentage of a score for a company is, it’s an opinion among dozens of public company leaders. So if you are a graduate like Eric at Zoom, or you know someone else who’s no longer eligible for the list, you’re eligible to be one of our sort of industry judges who come up with sort of a buzz or reputation score. So if a company is not well known, if it’s not out there, if it’s not beloved by partners or other vendors, it probably won’t do as well in that score. On your numbers, you just have to be doing well as a business and let us know about it. If it’s a secret that you’re growing really fast, and you don’t want to tell us, we respect that. But unfortunately, it’s hard for us to know what we don’t know.
CB: Exactly. And then what goes into, I know there’s selection panels, like you said, what goes into getting those people involved in the panels? Are they other reporters? VC people?
AK: For Cloud 100, the panelists have to be CEOs or C-suite at like, if a CEO can’t do it, and a C suite person from their company is nominated, we’ll consider them, but you have to be a leader of a public cloud company. That’s what that score is for. It’s a way to keep our graduates, like a Zoom or an Asana or some others involved. And it’s also, we think, a meaningful point of criteria. It’s really the only qualitative factor of Cloud 100. For another list, like a 30 under 30, we have usually four industry judges for each category every year. People are welcome to throw their hat in the ring if they want. But, you know, we’re usually looking at pretty elite people in whatever field it is to be those judges, and we only disclose them after the fact when they can’t be, you know, lobbied or bombarded.
CB: Correct. Yeah then that makes sense. And then how does the AI 50 list, is that similar or different? What’s the approach to that one?
AK: Yeah, AI 50 is pretty similar to Cloud 100 in the sense that we have a couple data partners. So we work with a couple other venture capital firms there, Sequoia and Meritech, and they help us with data collection. There’s an open submission process in the spring, and we are looking for a few metrics of sort of, how you stand out. You know, obviously the funding, the revenue is is important. But we’re also looking for leadership in the field in other, you know, ways that you could, you could say, whether it’s a bunch of papers or a popular app or whatever it is, you know. If you look at the list, of course, it’s kind of across the gamut of AI, you know, there’s like Anduril, which is sort of in the defense tech world, and then there’s also the the research labs doing the large language models. So not everything is perfectly apples to apples, but we are trying to kind of reward, you know, excellence across the AI landscape there.
CB: Very cool. That makes sense. So ultimately, be growing. Tell you about it. You know, have the, have the proof and and all that to get on those lists. So that’s all really.
AK: I think, I think, you know, communicating early in the process with all these lists is really important. I think, you know, we always get companies asking us after a list has come out, or in the very last minute, you know, what can we do? But when in doubt, you know, be asking the team at Forbes early on the best way to submit. We won’t play favorites, but we will make sure that you have the information you need to get a fair look.
CB: Perfect. Yeah, I know that’s important, and definitely something that has a lot of good reputation in the industry. I think you’ve done a great job creating the list and have fostered that growth and recognition.
AK: I appreciate that.
CB: And we’ll watch for our invite to the 10 year party.
AK: Yeah, let’s, let’s make it, let’s make it a Dreamforce size, huge event, you know, we just need a, we just need a Dreamforce style sponsor that’s all.
CB: Yep.
MF: Awesome. So kind of transitioning outside of, you know, the AI 50, Cloud 100 list, and outside of awards, on that big picture perspective. We know that you cover a lot of innovative new companies. How do you determine which companies you’re going to cover and what advice would you have for startup companies who are looking to cut through the noise and really grab your attention?
AK: I think it’s really you know, it’s really hard to give a formula for why we cover a company because the reality is, there are more worthy companies to write about than we can possibly get to. So sort of like it has to resonate on a couple different touch points at once. I think one of the biggest questions is, why now? Why is this the time to write about an interesting company versus last year or next year? And I think it’s not really a compelling case to be like, “Well, we’re here in front of you now, and we want you to write about us now. So this is a good time for you to write about us.” There has to be a good reason why that’s the case, you know. And it could be for a really buzzy company, because if you don’t write about us, someone else will, and you’ll have FOMO. But for a lot of companies, it’s that’s not that clear. You know, not everyone is OpenAI, or whoever could maybe, you know, play that game. And so I think usually there has to be a compelling reason why this is an interesting inflection point or moment for the company, or it can share, you know, jaw dropping numbers or products or whatever that are new and people don’t know to create a surprise factor.
And I think you have to be willing to share numbers and substantiate whatever claims you’re making. You know, we’re not really interested in, you know, generic cloud company X saying that it’s going to be the next Salesforce, or whatever it is. We want you to prove it in some way, or at least give evidence.
And then I think lastly, it needs to tap into a bigger trend that makes it interesting beyond just the company. One thing I ask founders or executives at a company is, if this story were about your competitor and not you, would you read it? And if they were like, “No, no, that would just be a silly little profile about a company that we are better than,” I would say, “Well, that’s what all your competitors might say about this article.” So why would they feel the need to read it? Like why is this so interesting or so provocative that, you know, your own haters are going to reluctantly read this article? And if you can’t get the haters, you know, you’re probably going to get apathy and apathy in this attention economy where, you know, we’re all really scattershot with our focus, like your story is just going to die on the vine, and it’s not going to feel good for anybody.
CB: I like that. That’s a really good way to put it and to to differentiate from other companies, you know. So as you’re focusing on AI, promote that business perspective, I know other companies are looking, or other publications are looking at AI technology-wise, and you’re really looking at it from that that business lens. How do you sort of plan to navigate and manage the AI coverage moving forward?
AK: I think one thing that we’re trying to do is meet with a bunch of potential players in different focus areas, such as, let’s say, you know, GPU marketplace, or, you know, vertical applications, like in law, like with a Harvey AI or something like that, you know. And I think we try to come up with our own little market map, you know, internally, of of how we see an area of AI playing out. And then we can look for, sort of, what are the compelling breakout companies or leaders in that. You know, like we did a big profile this summer on Notion’s push into AI because we thought that was really interesting. But a lot of, you know, software companies, work software companies, are adding AI tools.
And, you know, we have to kind of pick which one do we think in that moment tells our audience something. But I think, you know, another tip for coverage would just be, you know, is a company willing to punch above its weight. If it’s willing to take a stand and say, “You know what, Amazon missed the boat on AI, and we’re gonna make up the difference.” Or, you know, “All these model companies are losing a ton of money, and here’s why we’re different.” You know, then, then it’s not just a referendum on should we care about a company that we in our audience may not know very well. It could be also a referendum on, do they care about Amazon, or do they care about Google, or do they care about OpenAI, you know? And so I think the more a company is willing to kind of participate in the broader discourse, the easier it is to kind of make us feel comfortable covering it.
CB: That makes sense.
MF: Awesome. Well, this has been great just hearing hearing what goes into all of your coverage areas, Alex, and we actually have a few listener questions just about your journey and your work at Forbes. So one of the first ones we got was throughout your entire career, what has been one of your favorite or most memorable stories to cover? So whether that’s at Forbes or before Forbes, were there any you know standout people who you’ve talked to, or just the topic area was super interesting to you? Anything, anything that comes to mind first?
AK: Yeah, I would say, you know, I’ve been lucky enough to write a lot of cover stories at Forbes, and I’ve been there a while, but the one that kind of comes to my mind first usually is my story about Melanie Perkins, the co-founder and CEO of Canva. I wish that we had more women business leaders that were available to us to be covering, especially in my world of AI and software. Melanie is the real deal as an example of someone who is running a business valued in the 10s of billions. And with, you know, billion whatever in revenue. She’s she’s just really a sharp, inspiring person who has pledged most of her, you know, billions in net worth to her foundation already. And I think, you know, when we met Canva, it was much smaller. It was unproven. You know, she and her husband started in Western Australia, in Perth, and a lot of people were not taking them seriously.
And so to be able to write a story about her when the company was breaking out but maybe still not as much of a sure thing or established company, you know, we took a bit of a risk to put her on the cover of Forbes in 2019, and I took reputational risk to basically tell all the editors, trust me on this one. You only get a couple of those, maybe. And it worked out. And we got a lot of, we continue to get feedback from all kinds of people, but especially women in tech who who did read that story, who said that Melanie is, you know, a great inspiration for them. And so from an impact standpoint, that’s one of the stories that comes to mind first where just, we had a good feeling about Melanie, and so far we feel like we really bet right. And we, anyone who read that story and came along with us on the ride got to sort of feel like they were early to knowing about this company and its success.
MF: That’s amazing. And I also love that example of just going with your gut when, you know, sometimes even if, you know, all the pieces to the puzzle aren’t there yet, you know the direction it’s going in. So love hearing about that and just the success that you saw beyond beyond, just Forbes, but everyone who’s reading the story as well. That’s amazing.
AK: Yeah, you know, we don’t get up in the morning wanting to write a story that nobody reads, or that doesn’t have any impact. Whether it’s a good or bad story, you know. And I think one thing for the audience is, you know, we all are a lot more similar, you know, than I think it can sometimes feel. And journalists the same way. And so if someone says, you know, a story helped them in some way, that is, like, the best thing we can possibly hear.
MF: Yes, of course. And speaking of, you know, no one wants to read a bad story. I’m so curious, you must receive a million pitches. So as as PR professionals ourselves, we would love to know your take on kind of what, what the best and worst pitch style is for you. And if there’s any, you know, most memorable PR pitches that you’ve received throughout your career, whether that’s for good or for bad, we’d love to get your take on that.
AK: I like working the most with PR professionals who can kind of guess my thinking, or at least play the empathy game and put themselves in my shoes and have a pretty good sense of the way I would respond to something, and then they can kind of be a conduit to match their clients with me when the time could be right, is about to be right, is plausibly right. You know, of course, we won’t always agree, but if they make that effort and they’re like, you know, here’s why I think this is now the right time for an Alex story, I’ll, of course, really respect that, and I’ll engage with that.
I think, you know, the most frustrating thing, and this is probably true for everyone, is when I feel like we’re playing a numbers game. You know, I’m married, but I hear my single friends on dating apps complain about the numbers game there. And sometimes, as a journalist, you can feel like you’re, you’re the victim of the numbers game with pitches where I get, you know, just dozens of pitches a week that have nothing to do with my beat. You know, I get pitched people that I’ve already covered and written a profile of as if I’ve never met them before, you know, just basic stuff where I feel like, you know, a Google search, or a good Google search would have told the person that I have a different history with that person, you know. Or it just tells me that they copy pasted, or did some automated flow where I was one of 200 people to get the email. That is not going to impress me. I have done this for over 10 years, and I’m really good at kind of smelling that stuff out.
And so those are kind of the extremes for me. Is the like, very informal, I’m just like an email and a flow, versus, “Hey, Alex, like this reminded me of your story about Flexport or whatever. Maybe we’re not there yet, but would love your feedback because I think in the next six to 12 months, we will be there, and so I want to lay the groundwork now.” I’m like, great. This is collaborative. This is someone who is thinking how I think I can work with that.
CB: Really good advice and insight. I love that. And last question for you. What are you interested in outside of work, outside of your coverage and forms and everything?
AK: My wife and I have gotten more into the arts again, or at least recently, going to a lot of shows. So anyone in the audience who has the opportunity to be in New York like go see “Oh, Mary” which is this hysterical show by this great artist, Cole Escola, one of the shows that blew us away this year. But we have been consciously trying to read more fiction, go to the arts. She’s a VC, so she’s also in the tech world, I want to make that clear, and we have no work life balance. But perhaps because of that, we really are trying to, like, embrace other parts of our brains when when we’re not around. So for me, cultivating that, actually finishing novels and stuff, has been really important just to reset my brain, because Doom scrolling on Twitter before bed about more tech memes is not going to make me feel refreshed.
CB: Yeah, I like that contrast. And, you know, looking at more art-focused activities that sounds fun. We’ll definitely have to check out that show.
AK: Yeah.
CB: Well, it has been really great having you on the podcast. We learned a lot about your coverage area, the lists more and everything. So we really appreciate your time and all the insight that you gave us today.
AK: Thanks for having me, and if people want to ask more questions, I’m on LinkedIn, X, et cetera when I’m not catching my breath, and I’m always happy to engage there.
CB: Great. Thank you, and thank you for everyone who listened to this episode of Inside the Media Minds.
CB: Thank you for joining us in today’s episode of Inside the Media Minds. To learn more about our podcast and hear all of our episodes, please visit us at w2comm.com/podcast, and follow us on Twitter @MediaMindsShow, and you can subscribe anywhere podcasts are found.