Alex Konrad

My TikTok book is out in stores today!

Why should you read it? Because 1 in 5 Americans now get their news from this thing. We should all understand how it works.

It was inevitable that strongmen would seek to control a tool this powerful. The book is the story of what happened when they did.

Tech Reporter Alex Konrad on Going Independent with Upstarts, What Drives Subscribers (vs Just Views) and How He Uses AI in His Content Creation Got to know Alex while he was at Forbes, a tenure which basically made him one of, if not *the*, go-to reporters for exclusives launches and fund announcements. As a result of our friendship, I kne…

Tech Reporter @alexrkonrad.bsky.social on Going Independent with Upstarts, What Drives Subscribers (vs Just Views) and How He Uses AI in His Content Creation

hunterwalk.com/2025/09/17/t...

Tech Reporter Alex Konrad on Going Independent with Upstarts, What Drives Subscribers (vs Just Views) and How He Uses AI in His Content Creation Got to know Alex while he was at Forbes, a tenure which basically made him one of, if not *the*, go-to reporters for exclusives launches and fund announcements. As a result of our friendship, I kne…

Really enjoyed this chat with the great @hunterwalk.com about what we're building at @upstarts.bsky.social as we approach our 6 month mark.

Feedback includes:

"You are SUCH a nerd my god" 🤓
and
"You really nailed the balance of promo + substance here!" 😂

Congrats, Alex!! Excited to subscribe

Console founders Andrei Serban and Neal Chandra

When I still worked at Forbes, I'd annoy our IT helpdesk by filing tickets to update Signal and WhatsApp seemingly every week.

One-year-old startup Console, which just raised $23M, uses AI agents to automate away basic IT requests like that.

www.upstartsmedia.com/p/console-ai...

Margot the dog

When Margot was a puppy, she tried to say hi to a skunk and got sprayed pretty bad. Years later, she still freaks out when she sees black and white dogs.

Which raises an important question: does she think the dogs are skunks, or that skunks are just a spooky kind of dog 🤔

— Scene: outside a fancy new Brooklyn high rise, 1pm —

Broker [suit, clipboard in hand]: sir, do you have an appointment?

Me [gym clothes, stomping on 50 spotted lanternflies]: no, just getting my steps in!

Upstarts editor Alex Konrad with Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski

Chatted with Klarna's CEO from NYSE during their IPO week.

We talked about what he learned from IKEA and Walmart, Klarna's evolving mission, his stance on crypto, personally vibe coding fixes for bad customer text messages, handling CEO pressure and much more.

www.upstartsmedia.com/p/klarna-ceo...

Esri Founder Jack Dangermond's 'Secrets' To Building A Legendary Business The 80-year-old software billionaire shares startup and life lessons that have kept him "all in" while running a high-impact global business for 50+ years.

Tech legend Jack Dangermond founded Esri in 1969. Now 80 years young and with a net worth of $10B+, he's still "all in" on his company and global mission.

@upstarts.bsky.social spent an hour with Jack this week for one of our best interviews yet, full of lessons on startup-building and life.

Intel Worked With Chinese Firms Sanctioned For Enabling Human Rights Abuses As the U.S. government takes a 10% stake in Intel, Forbes has learned the tech company partnered with sanctioned Chinese surveillance firms Uniview, Hikvision and Cloudwalk.

Intel has been touting partnerships with sanctioned Chinese surveillance firms as Trump announces that the USG is taking a stake in the company:

www.forbes.com/sites/emilyb...

Meta exec Alexandr Wang confirmed today's Upstarts scoop about Meta and Midjourney holding partnership talks in a short thread on X this afternoon 👀

Subject to Alexandr Wang’s approval

Scoop: Meta Held Talks With Midjourney As Part Of Video AI Talent Search Meta has talked deals with Midjourney and video AI startups including HeyGen and Krea as part of its researcher talent hunt, sources tell Upstarts, while Midjourney has pursued other partnerships.

Scoop: Meta has held talks with Midjourney about a partnership including a potential acquisition, among several previously-unreported AI video startups it's met recently, sources tell me at @upstarts.bsky.social.

Midjourney's been busy, too, pitching an API.

www.upstartsmedia.com/p/meta-talks...

Clouds over the World Trade Center

it’s a beautiful San Francisco day in NYC

need burning man to start already so I can finally catch up on email

The Startup Bringing AI Voice To Medicare Y Combinator alum careCycle thinks its AI calls are better for Medicare policy sellers and senior citizens alike. Now it's raised $2 million to build a Medicare-focused CRM.

The status quo in Medicare is grim: call center brokers spamming senior citizens to change plans, in hopes of a commission.

YC alumni startup careCycle and founders Alex Doonanco and Evan Roubekas think they have a win-win solution: voice AI. They've raised $2M to build it. But questions remain.

Sequoia not even cracking the top 350 (!) VC firms on TIME's new Midas list knockoff is a wild troll and instantly invalidating

The New Startup Using AI To Solve Growth Marketer 'Chaos' Roadway, led by Webflow and Notion veteran Tim Dalrymple, is launching with $3.2 million in funding and customers like Clay and Decagon.

Exclusive: Startups in the AI race are throwing money at growth. But the result is often "chaos."

Roadway, a new startup by veteran Webflow and Notion growth marketer Tim Dalrymple, has launched today with $3.2M in funding and customers like Clay and Decagon to use AI tools of its own to help.

Exclusive Interview: Wiz's Co-Founder On AI, Security And Google CTO Ami Luttwak dishes on how AI has changed cybersecurity and Wiz's product roadmap -- plus life since Wiz's announced $32 billion acquisition by Google.

AI is sparking a moment of big change in cybersecurity.

I sat down with Wiz co-founder Ami Luttwak to talk in depth about how his security startup is thinking about AI - as well as the latest on its $32B acquisition by Google, his take on CyberArk's big deal, and his advice for founders today.

Can a financial market for GPU compute improve access for startups, and help finance big datacenter projects better?

Today's @upstarts.bsky.social post talks to Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Milgrom about his newest project to create such a market, a partnership with startup OneChronos.

Best thing about flying Delta is the chance to watch Delta CEO Ed Bastian’s 2025 CES Keynote over and over again

Startup AIUC Launches New Certificate For Safer AI Led by an early Anthropic staffer, AIUC has raised $15 million from Nat Friedman, Emergence and others to sell a certificate of safety for AI tools, called AIUC-1, and develop an insurance market.

Can insurance underwriting and a new SOC 2-like certificate help AI startups grow faster? Or will it just create a new "racket" for them to pay?

I spoke with the founder behind the idea, AIUC CEO Rune Kvist, as well as with a bunch of other AI startup leaders, to dive in 👇

16. The Article was published in The Wall Street Journal as an exclusive.' However, since publication, Defendants have widely disseminated it to hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

WSJ claimed the Trump–Epstein article was an “exclusive.” But what if I told you they fully intended to show it to people? storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

they’re good dogs

Transcript saying "good girl" repeatedly

Sometimes I forget to turn off my recorder and it catches me talking to my dog

Inside The Stealthy European Defense Tech Startup Raising $100 Million Defense tech startup Cambridge Aerospace has quietly raised multiple funding rounds to build products including the Skyhammer and Starhammer missiles. Upstarts has the first look at its funding histor...

I've written about startups for a decade-plus. For today's scoop on Cambridge Aerospace, a stealthy defense tech startup based in the U.K. that's raising big VC $, I turned to a career-first source:

An investor presentation posted publicly... on Vimeo.

www.upstartsmedia.com/p/inside-ste...

Yeah it's interesting, Unify is betting against fully automated SDRs and AI managing everything. Will maybe appeal to different kinds of customers...

Unify, A Startup Boosting Sales At Cursor And Perplexity, Raises $40 Million Unify's funding round values it at $260 million as revenue grows 17% month over month. But is a clash with GTM darling Clay coming up?

AI companies like Cursor and Perplexity are increasingly turning to tools from a smaller startup, Unify, to automate their outbound emails to potentially interested customers.

Unify's part of a new GTM software tech stack with Clay. Now it's raised $40M. I wrote about in @upstarts.bsky.social.

Cheering alone in the theater at Superman when the reporters bravely publish their story directly from the CMS

Awesome to hear it!