Upstarts is the flagship newsletter of media company Upstarts Media, founded in February 2025 by veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad.
A new independent voice for the startup ecosystem, Upstarts is founded upon the belief that startups are at their best when they challenge the status quo to create lasting impact.
While traditional media focuses attention and resources on Big Tech, politics and a handful of buzzy private players, Upstarts will spotlight emerging startups before they’re household names.
Upstarts will tell those stories – and deliver thoughtful reporting and analysis about the wider startup ecosystem, from the venture capitalists who fund them to the tech trends they catalyze – across a twice-weekly newsletter and live video series.
Upstarts will also launch a weekly podcast in upcoming months and is committed to co-host and host a number of high-touch events later in 2025.
Work With Us
If you’d like to learn more about supporting our paywall-free weekly edition as a sponsor, or how to collaborate with Upstarts on a future event, please reach out to: partnerships@upstartsmedia.com.
To pitch exclusives, share story tips or other reader feedback, please respond to this or future newsletter editions, or reach out to: tips@upstartsmedia.com.
For more on Upstarts editorial guidelines and priorities, please see our FAQ.
About Alex Konrad
Alex cut his teeth reporting at Fortune in 2010, writing about local New York startups such as ZocDoc and General Assembly. After joining Forbes in 2012, he kept covering the scene, writing some of the first in-depth stories about Blue Apron, Peloton and WeWork.
For ten years, Alex managed the Midas List franchise of top venture capitalists, expanding the franchise to Europe and writing profiles about the likes of Chris Sacca, the All Raise community, a16z, Benchmark and Sequoia. As co-creator and editor of the Cloud 100 list, he camped in the Utah foothills with Silicon Slopes software billionaires, sang karaoke with Salesforce’s Marc Benioff in Tokyo and traveled to Sydney to tell the world about Melanie Perkins and Canva.
Alex’s 15-plus Forbes cover stories also include profiles of Asana’s Dustin Moskovitz, Snowflake’s Frank Slootman, Flexport’s Ryan Petersen, Stripe’s Collison brothers and Wiz’s Assaf Rappaport. He’s also profiled Figma, Plaid and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, among many others.
For his reporting on the Silicon Valley Bank crisis and the generative AI boom, including the brief hiring and refiring of Sam Altman at OpenAI, Alex received SABEW’s Honorable Mention award for ‘Body Of Work’ for 2023. He served as lead reporter for Forbes on the Emmy-award winning documentary ‘WeWork: Or The Making And Breaking Of A $47 Billion Unicorn.’
