Alex Konrad
@alexrkonrad
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Building something new 🔨. Previously @Forbes senior editor covering startups and VC. Email: [email protected]
The Arena
Joined March 2009
Personal news: today is my last day at @Forbes! I'm leaving to build something new 🔨. I've been lucky to call this place home for the past 12 years, working with the best team and getting to know so many of you. From the Midas List to 18 cover stories, it's never been boring!
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My aunt sent a gif of Steve Harvey clapping to the whole fam and my grandma went to the Verizon store to make it stop
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I couldn’t help but wonder… had everyone seen the aurora except me?
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Whoever rebranded “skipping breakfast” as “intermittent fasting” is a goddamn genius.
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It’s up to 20 degrees outside so of course there’s an impromptu dance party happening in the Union Square subway station 🔥 #iloveNY
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lord give me the confidence of young VCs submitting to 30 Under 30 after joining a firm six months ago from a banking job.
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It's a tragedy that 'Silicon Valley' didn't stay on the air long enough to do a Founder Mode episode.
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if the CEO of Microsoft still pulls all-nighters, so can you 🫡
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Of all the ways to publicly address your senior colleagues leaving OpenAI, this was certainly one of them
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Always a crushing blow when you get served a second CAPTCHA test.
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petition for OpenAI to fire and re-hire its CEO today as a calming distraction.
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lol this entire Taylor Swift / Travis Kelce thing is a stunt by Ryan Reynolds' marketing agency, perfect 🙃
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What's your favorite strategy for catching up on email? Mine is to open Twitter, then reddit, then Twitter again.
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Best part of Mailchimp’s $12 billion sale: the company was bootstrapped, so zero “proud early investor” tweets.
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Big VC news: Sequoia is splitting into three firms. Sequoia China is now HongShan. Sequoia India is now Peak XV Partners. And Sequoia’s U.S. and Europe business continues as Sequoia Capital. I spoke to the leaders of all 3 firms exclusively for @Forbes:.
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Scoop: OpenAI investors were caught by surprise by Friday’s board ouster of CEO Sam Altman. Key firms like Khosla Ventures, Sequoia and Thrive Capital got no advance warning of the board’s shock plan, sources told @Forbes. By me and @kenrickcai:.
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Twitter committed about $20M to back Black, Latinx and women VC fund managers after the murder of George Floyd. Under Elon Musk, it's now trying to quietly sell those stakes -- while not wiring the leftover millions it promised. My story in @forbes:.
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pro tip: if you name your startup after a fresh word from Lord Of The Rings you can still raise 20M without a deck, no cap.
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Zapier reached a $5 billion valuation without an office and barely raising any venture capital dollars. CEO @wadefoster explains how his startup reached $140M ARR working with mom and pop shops -- and why he's avoided the VC "hamster wheel."
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congrats to Sam Altman for being named new head of R+D for Microsoft 👏👏👏
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Zoom's IPO wowed Wall Street yesterday. Behind the $16B market cap bonanza: new billionaire Eric Yuan, the immigrant founder whose video conference app just works better. Here's my exclusive deep dive into how he did it, in the next issue of @Forbes.
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cooking at home 3x a day creates just a truly stunning amount of dirty dishes.
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When you agree to a chat and they send a calendar invite for 1 full hour 😱.
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In a work from home world, Zoom is seemingly everywhere. I spoke to CEO @ericsyuan about coping with high demand and his newest commitment to battling coronavirus: Zoom is now giving away its video tools to any affected K-12 school for free.
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tech influencers on X are like “no one achieves greatness working just 5 days a week” and on Instagram stories they’ve been in Capri and Fiji for the past 6 weeks.
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Exclusive: Patrick and John Collison built Stripe into one of the world’s biggest startups. But they're facing new challenges as they look to “grow the GDP of the internet.”. I flew to Dublin to learn more first-hand for my newest @Forbes cover story.
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I, too, had a chance to invest early in Uber and passed. I remember it well, just like it was earlier today.
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Scoop: Elon Musk's X has begun selling defunct usernames for as much as $50,000, per emails obtained by @Forbes. A dedicated "@ handle" team is overseeing the new marketplace, which was rumored to be in the works for months.
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PR person: please just reply, even a no is so helpful.Me: ok fine no.PR person: while i have you, wait here are 3 more things to check out.Me: no.PR person: ok lets just get coffee.Me: . .
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did salad write this.
People who ate french fries or hash browns 2 to 3 times a week were more likely to die early, according to one study.
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In 2020, ex-WeWork CEO Adam Neumann invested in a women-led startup called Alfred. Less than two years later, his new company Flow – backed by $350 million – sounds strikingly similar. @_IainMartin and I spoke to 8 sources to investigate for @Forbes:.
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Someday I’d like to open a Japanese restaurant on Wall Street and name it Ponzu Scheme.
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A number of OpenAI employees are already quote tweeting Sam Altman to express support, almost at once. My serious read: this is a public rallying cry / show of strength that staff are behind Sam to the board. Also not something you’d maybe do if close to an agreement.
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If you’re a VC and you aren’t spending your Saturday dunking on one bad tweet by an investor you’ve never heard of, are you even pro-founder.
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Visa is acquiring startup Plaid for a whopping $5.3 billion. Wondering what Plaid does? I profiled the fintech unicorn in the April 2018 issue of @Forbes: .
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thought people in SF wanted more liquidity.
Raining so hard in SF that people started screaming.
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A secretive firm called Newlands has amassed nearly $10B in tech stocks and is now quietly building a startup portfolio. Led by an ex-Sequoia partner, Newlands is mostly bankrolled by one person: WhatsApp billionaire Jan Koum. My latest for @forbes:.
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Figma gets $1 bil from Adobe for 15 months of limbo, and is now back on its own. A huge VC exit, un-exited. Last valuation: $10 bil (2021).Valuation at sale: $20 bil (2022). If Figma were to raise again now, what kind of valuation could it command on the private market?.
After an intense 15 months of review, today Adobe and Figma have decided to end our pending merger, as we no longer see a path toward regulatory approval of the deal.
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The most successful CEOs I know:. —peak in their 40s.—wake up at 5:30am.—go to bed by 8:30pm.—shun caffeine, tomatoes and nightshades.—sleep in special bioceramic underwear.—work out and play brain exercises daily.—have won 7 Super Bowls.—are literally just Tom Brady.
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nothing to see here, just an AI chip startup raising $640 million at a valuation of 800x last year revenue.
Scoop: AI chip startup Groq just raised $640 million at a valuation of $2.8 billion, higher than previously reported. It’s a huge round compared to Groq’s financials: 2023 sales were as low as $3.4M, net loss was $88.3M, according to docs viewed by Forbes
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is it acceptable to cut one groomsman from the wedding because he's making the group chat green y/n.
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Australian startup founder Melanie Perkins faced long odds and VC doubts. She built Canva into a profitable $3.2 billion global design software leader anyway. I went to Sydney in June to find out how she did it for my newest cover story for @Forbes:.
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@mcwm this is one of the big weaknesses with the MCU. it's like all these stories are happening concurrently but walled off. an Egyptian moon god blocked out the sun? a god killer is about to kill all gods in the universe? meh, seems like a one-hero job.
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how some VCs think journalism works *cries a single tear*
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When Matt Huang and Fred Ehrsam raised $400M for their new fund Paradigm in 2018, they did something bold: put it all into Bitcoin. The trade is already up 3x. But the ex-Sequoia partner and Coinbase cofounder have a bigger goal: bring crypto mainstream.
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Scoop: Twilio has agreed to acquire fellow cloud company Segment for $3.2 billion, sources tell @forbes. The startup was last valued at $1.5 billion in 2019.
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Immigrants Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson faced skepticism when they launched their debut VC fund in 2013. One of their first five investments: DoorDash. Here's the story of how the Pear VC founders turned $1.9 million into a $440 million windfall.
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Currently making the rounds of VC firms in SF and I’m beyond inspired by how many partners are already working hard from Tahoe or Europe this week. Grind doesn’t quit 🫡.
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Buying Slack would make a lot of sense. But if Salesforce really wants to own where people spend their workdays it should try buying Twitter again.
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the biggest mystery two weeks from now will be what Brian’s role was in tweeting this.
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shoutout to that person who joked that the NYT would buy wordle a few days ago, you are now their head of biz dev.
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🚨startups🚨. my dad just sent me this pic from the San Francisco harbor, you are saved
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do you ever wake up and remember how Game Of Thrones ended and think, that was still some bullshit.
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Yes, I had a great Fourth of July weekend. No, your email doesn't find me well.
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Personal news: today is my 10 year anniversary starting at @Forbes 🎉. I honestly can’t believe it’s been a decade covering tech here with so many amazing colleagues over the years.
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My new cover story for the next @Forbes issue is live! . Valued at $8 billion, Flexport is Silicon Valley's answer for global supply chain woes, and CEO Ryan Petersen has emerged as the public face of solutions. So why do insiders hope his startup sinks?.
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Investor Lee Fixel turned bets on Flipkart and Peloton into billions for Tiger Global. Now with his own $1.3 billion fund Addition, the low-profile VC is looking to do it again.
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Three years ago, UiPath was an unknown little Romanian startup. Today, it's a $7 billion global leader in a red-hot new area of tech called RPA. Beyond excited to share my latest @Forbes cover story on UiPath CEO Daniel Dines, the first bot billionaire.
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after all these years on twitter, looks like it’s finally time to say goodbye . so farewell, and see you all here tomorrow.
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tech CEO: I’m stepping down .twitter: amazing! congrats! . CEO: …and I’m becoming a VC.twitter: more amazing, more congrats!. CEO: …actually, I’m coming back.twitter: omg EVEN MORE CONGRATS.
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Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover has raised a $10 million second fund to invest in more early-stage founders -- and help others tinkerers take the plunge into entrepreneurship.
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Pro tip: if you're asking to meet someone for their free advice, you don't get to set the location.
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VCs in person: omg did you read that story about the VC “homeless date” in SF. VCs on Twitter: to attack venture capital is to attack the very fiber of society and what makes us human. VCs on LinkedIn: I’d like to join your professional network on LinkedIn.
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some personal pizza news. .
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it’s happening
Please welcome Caladan, our latest investment. @Caladan_bio is a biotech platform changing synthetic biology and biomanufacturing by equipping synbio companies with the hard- and software they need to increase experimentation and enhance data aggregation.
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Crazy to think how much we all cared about custom ringers a few years ago. now your phone not being on mute is a good sign you're over 45.
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Just walked into the Rosewood lounge and loudly said the words “blockchain” and “scooter” to confirm every person here is a VC.
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I appreciate @alexisohanian doing this and fear his Times Square billboard will end up in the background of a lot of tightly-packed tourist group pics
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Exclusive: Amazon’s consumer chief Dave Clark is joining supply chain unicorn Flexport as co-CEO. Founder Ryan Petersen will move to an executive chairman role next year. @Forbes spoke to both logistics leaders about the surprise move.
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Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh's life was outsized -- and so was his impact on a generation of startup founders, investors and online business owners. Here, I did my best to explain what made Hsieh special, in the words of tech leaders who knew him best.
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my current answer to invitations to moderate all-male panels at your conference
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GitLab, a DevOps leader with no office, just raised $268 million at a $2.75 billion valuation, more than double its valuation at its last funding one year ago.
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I appreciate Freestyle Love Supreme making you lock away your phone because the internet could not handle @Lin_Manuel rapping about Baby Yoda just now 🤩.
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today I met with a CEO for coffee and instead of oatmilk, the restaurant brought him a big bowl of oatmeal. his own PR person couldn’t stop laughing for the rest of the meeting. that is all.
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“NYC is back!” — every returning VC who has expensed one (1) cocktail party in SoHo and taken an hourlong Uber to meet a crypto person in Williamsburg.
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i miss overpriced work lunches so bad i just made a shrimp caesar salad and charged myself 25 bucks.
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NYC subway is now at the “act normal but glare angrily when someone coughs” virus fear phase.
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Taking off on a cross-country flight in a middle seat and the married couple on either side of me do not want to switch seats 💀.
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Contacting ScarJo twice for permission to use her voice, not getting it and doing it anyway, then swiftly taking it down… not a good look for OpenAI if true 🤨.
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Scoop: investors are scrambling to restore Sam Altman to OpenAI in a shocking return. They lack direct power, but leverage could be used before Altman committed to a new startup, sources tell @Forbes, with Microsoft a key player. By me and @DavidJeans2:.
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fellow Crash Landing On You fans plz identify yourselves so we can talk about that 2 hour finale 😭.
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News: a group of ad execs privately lobbied Linda Yaccarino to resign as CEO of X following Elon’s recent activity. Big scoop by @JohnPaczkowski and @DavidJeans2 and the @forbes tech team:
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News: more than 200 venture capital firms have signed a public statement in support of Israel and its tech ecosystem. I spoke to Harry Valner, the U.S.-based startup investor who led the effort since Monday night.
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they say your engagement pics set the wedding vibe, and we took that personally. 📸: @sammblake
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congrats to tom brady on quitting his job to go all in on web3.
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Love when VCs request a call and then hand off the thread to their assistants who are like, "X is next available never. Does never work?".
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