Michael

I've been trying to summarize for myself in one sentence, what a global investor or you think today about Israeli founders?

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Alex Konrad

Scrappy, efficient, well-networked, highly technical.

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Michael 

All right, Alex Konrad, I am putting you on the other side of the proverbial microphone today. Why don't you introduce yourself instead of me introducing you?

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Alex Konrad 

Absolutely. Great to be here. I'm Alex Konrad, a senior editor at Forbes. I've been at Forbes for 11 years, which is insane. And I cover venture capital startups and high-growth technology companies.

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Michael 

Amazing. By the way, I don't remember. How do we know each other?

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Alex Konrad 

We met, I believe, when I wrote the first magazine story about WeWork almost 10 years ago, when it was a plucky New York City startup with an Israeli founder.

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Michael 

Wow, that's kind of full circle a decade later, right now.

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Alex Konrad

Yeah, yeah. 2014, when we wrote the story, they were still getting inquiries from seed investors trying to get into the first round. They were already valued at $1.5 billion. You guys were in there and it was a really exciting, you know, local startup. And that was my focus at the time, New York City startups.

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Michael 

Those were the days, $1.5 billion startups. It feels like a long time ago right now. So, Alex is also the editor of the Midas list, the 30 under 30 for VCs and other things, and a variety of other lists that have made Forbes so famous and Alex so well known in the venture capital world. But I actually wanna start somewhere else. Some time ago, I can't remember exactly when it was, you told me a story about your grandfather coming to Haifa.

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Do I remember that right? We were kind of going to do research on him. So what was that story about?

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Alex Konrad

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My great grandfather was, I want to write a book about him someday. My great grandfather lives an incredible life. He grew up in Minnesota, volunteered for World War I, fought for Canada before the war had started for the US. He stayed in Europe in the 20s. He was a researcher, an academic. He met Freud, he met Ataturk, volunteered to drive an ambulance. 

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And he was a professor and 40 at the start of World War II and took the field test for the OSS, the precursor of the CIA, with some of his peers. Unlike them, he did so well on the test that they sent him into the field, and he ended up leading the Allied resistance, the fighters on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean. 

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And his resupply port, when he needed a break, he needed new supplies, was Haifa. And what makes that more poignant is that we didn't find out until after his death that he was actually Jewish and the son of Ukrainian immigrants, born Moses Silberman. So my middle name is actually Royce, but Morton Royce was a name he assumed so that he could have more opportunities, go to the Ivy League when it was still limiting Jewish students. 

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And he actually had lived this entire, kind of, second life, but can only imagine what he was thinking, leading the resistance fighters, going back to Haifa, all with this Jewish identity that he was not able to talk about. Pretty crazy.

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Michael

What an incredible story. I didn't realize that you were also named for him and the name that he took. I didn't realize that part of the story. That's incredible. You know, the other thing, by the way, you mentioned full circle - we talked about full circle in relation to WeWork - on some level, what you described right now about your great grandfather and the inability to get in as someone Jewish into the Ivy Leagues and having to change his name, that's a little full circle right now also with the anti-Semitism going on campuses. I'm curious what you think about that, especially given the family heritage and history.

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Alex Konrad

Yeah, I mean, obviously I can only speak for myself. I can't speak for my company or for a lot of people. I think as a Harvard graduate, a lot of my peers are feeling a lot of concern for anti-Semitism rising in the US. It feels like something that our grandparents definitely fought against and to see it coming back in any forms is super disturbing.

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And I think, for me as a journalist as well, I'm always trying to get all the perspectives. And this is a really scary time where I feel like I have friends I love from all sorts of backgrounds, from Muslim backgrounds or Palestinian backgrounds as well who are hurting, and it feels like there is not a lot of constructive dialogue, or at least empathy, from my perspective. 

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And so, we just had Thanksgiving here in the US and you know, it was one of those things where I almost felt like maybe I should just keep my mouth shut, because this is not a time to kind of have those really empathetic conversations. So what I've seen at universities feels tone deaf, and not constructive, and really disturbing and sad to me.

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Michael

Why do you think it's kind of started to happen again at this moment? I mean, I live abroad now, although I have cousins at Columbia and NYU and places like that. How did we get to this moment that this is now erupted again on college campuses?

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Alex Konrad

Yeah, I studied archaeology and history, so I kind of think more in the past than maybe, like, current trends, so I could only speculate. But I think social media is a major contributing factor to people having quick reactions to things, wanting to participate in the discourse at the moment, feeling like maybe it's, everyone wants to weigh in on everything, everyone wants to participate, and maybe they're not fully educated on the subject. 

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So I think you can have well-meaning or earnest young people finding themselves in positions that they will regret or they would repudiate later on. And I think, honestly, it's not just, and the anti-Semitic side really does resonate with me personally, but it's not just one group of people here. I think I've seen a lack of empathy elsewhere too on other subjects, completely different from this. 

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It just feels like we're not in a moment of a lot of open minds. We just saw an athlete here in the US delete his social media accounts because he couldn't play in a football game, because he's trying to be healthy, and Fantasy Football people came after him with death threats until he deleted his social media. That is not a normal situation.

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Michael

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm trying to get at. Like, you're a journalist who investigates trends, mostly technology, which we’ll come to soon. But it's like, the point you made about the athlete, the lack of, of empathy, I think is, is a good word, that has exploded. This feels like a moment in time, where, you know, a lot of forces, maybe it's pent up frustration from the pandemic, maybe it's social media as you describe, but you see it also at arguing some of the mainstream media too. So it's not just social media, the impact of social media on mainstream media. How do you think we got to this moment and how would you say we get out of it, particularly in these combustible areas?

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Alex Konrad

Well, one thing is, if people are upset about the media coverage that they see, and I know there's been a lot of intense feelings there, obviously the media is a really heterogeneous situation. And so when people complain to me about the New York Times, I'm like, great, you know, the New York Times isn't promoting my work or really going out of its way to help Alex. So I don't know how you expect me. 

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Michael

Yeah, go down the block.

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Alex Konrad 

Yeah. I don't know how you expect me to put in a word at the New York Times. They wouldn't even let me inside the lobby.

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But that said, one thing I would say is that the attention that gets rewarded in social media, whether it's a creator payout on X, or it's people paying for a subscription in media, it often is rewarding that salacious, clickbaity stuff. And it's not that a journalist gets out of bed in the morning and says, “Hey, I want to create clickbait.”

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But they do want to keep a job, right? And they do want to get a promotion or a raise. You know, they're just like anybody else. And so, if that's what is getting rewarded financially, it's very hard for the media outlet to say, “No, we want to make less money. We don't want to give our, you know, we don't want to create a product that our customer wants. So let's create a product that our customer should want.” That's really tough. And so I would encourage people to reward good journalism, invest in it, support it, and kind of give the positive reinforcement there too - not just the negative of, “oh, I'm canceling my subscription to whatever paper.”

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Michael

So I mean, one of the things you hit on now is that incentives matter. And so I just asked the obvious question on that, like should journalism or media be not for profit because of that?

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Alex Konrad

I mean, great question. I think that some journalism should be non-for-profit. I would love to see a non-for-profit backstop with accountability, where quality is all that matters. I think that would be great. And I would love to see more media be that way. It could just be nostalgia, but I think back to, kind of, the BBC of decades ago, or NPR, where we didn't have to really worry about trusting them. You could just kind of, at least growing up in New York City for me in the 90s, my family just could trust NPR. And I think that would be great to bring back. 

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I do think that capitalistic media will always be a thing. And I would love to see it make more money than it does, because it's not always a great investment today. But that said, I do think that foundation-based, nonprofit-based journalism is very important. And I'd love to see a lot more of it than we do right now, which is not very much.

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Michael 

The BBC has certainly lost the plot, I think is fair to say. I don't listen to NPR as much as I used to, so I don't know what's going on there. It's hard to stomach what I think has gone on at the BBC. It feels like they've lost the plot. I can tell you, in Israel, by the way, we have a semi-government-appointed or owned broadcasting station, which is free from any government's influence on editorial decisions, but it's not for profit. The product, as my kids often remind me - by the way, one of the heads of Facebook told me it's the best media product out there, it’s one of the best in the world, from a media product perspective, but - 

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Alex Konrad

Which, what's the name of the publication? Just for ignorant Americans? 

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Michael

It's called KAN 11, K-A-N 11. 

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Alex Konrad 

Okay.

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Michael 

And the content is incredible. And they've really kind of diffused it out to the producers in the field to make credible. By the way, the producer of this podcast used to work there, Sofi. And that having been said, it's a challenge, because how do you, kind of, criticize the government without them feeling that you're going after them? And the government pays the bills. And so it's, it's complicated. 

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I don't think there's, there's one great answer. We'll probably muddle our way through it, but that actually brings me to a slightly different point that I want to come talk about: Forbes. So one of the great - what’s the right way to say this - one of the great intrigues about Forbes is the Midas list that you publish every year. And I have heard from people that there's actually lobbying efforts on the part of venture guys to get themselves on the list. 

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And I often wonder about the incentives in the list, not for Forbes, but like, you know, it's a wonderful thing, but does it matter that much that I should lobby Alex Konrad about it? Tell us about some of the politics behind the scene that goes on the Forbes Midas list, which, for full disclosure, I've been on, but I've never lobbied Alex.

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Alex Konrad

Yeah, Michael does well on the Midas list without lobbyings. There you go. He's my example. So I think the first thing I would say is that with any list, and this is especially true at Forbes, but it's true across the board - there is gonna be a survivor bias where people see someone make one of these lists and they try to reverse engineer how they made it. And so maybe they did send me an email, but that doesn't mean that the email actually affected their chances of making the list. 

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And so I think one thing that I've seen with the 30 under 30 list, where I've done our VC list for a long time, or with the Midas list, or with the Cloud 100 list that I also helped co-create for cloud companies - people who don't make these lists are always like, oh, I wasn't connected enough. I wasn't kissing up to Alex enough. There was no baksheesh. And it's like, that is not really what's going on here.

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What's going on here is that, you know, if someone emails me and says, ‘Hey, Alex, you know, can you do me a solid with the Midas list?’ Like, I'm going to be polite. That's my job. You know, I'm kind of in a services game the same way that the BBC is. And so I'm going to say, ‘Oh, thank you so much for the note. You know, we are going to give you a long look,’ or something like that. But they're going to get the exact same look that anybody else is. And in fact, when people are pinging me a lot or kind of, like, harassing me to make a list, it's a negative signal. Like I'm not stupid. You know, I know that someone who had their entire Stanford graduate school class ping me about 30 Under 30 is probably trying too hard. So that's one point I want to make clear.

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Michael 

Yeah, but the Midas list is very quantitative, at least in theory it’s quantitative. And there's other parts to it. Like if I asked you, of the hundred people who make the Midas list in the international or the US one every year, how many of them actually reach out to you, you know, to try to - 

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Alex Konrad

Not many, not many.

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Michael

How many people who don't make the list reach out and lobby?

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Alex Konrad 

Way more. We get hundreds of submissions for the international list of 100, and the best people often don't submit. But one nice thing about the Midas list is we've run it for over 20 years now at Forbes. And then I co-created the Europe and Israel list a few years ago, about five years ago now. And what you get is you get institutional data. So even if a firm doesn't submit in a certain year, we might have their past data or we have what their co-investors gave for a company. So, we were talking about WeWork–when that was a driver of the list, when it was still a really big company, one WeWork investor might not want to submit, but other investors did submit. And so if we know that they invested in the Series A or some early stage alongside the other investors, we know, roughly speaking, what kind of gains they're looking at.

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And so the nice thing about getting, sort of, a critical mass of data, and one thing that's made the Midas list so hard for others to copycat is that you get that kind of critical mass of data that, that gives you really a lot more clarity at that zoomed out view into what's real and what's not. And because let's face it, sometimes investors misremembered to be generous when they invested in a company or what their role was in a company once it's successful.

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Michael

I was in a meeting yesterday with people who are, with someone who's an expert in history. And he told me a story last night about a bullet that had gone through somebody's neck and came out, and it ticked the eyelid, and somehow pinned it against the wall from the outside. I know it sounds gory or whatever.

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And when they interviewed people afterwards, I think he said 32 people said they were the ones who removed the eyelid from the wall and put it in a matchbox. There could only be one.

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Alex Konrad

Yeah, witnesses are known to be spotty, right? And so especially when it's a VC talking up their own book.

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Michael

Alex, what are you saying about VCs?

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Alex Konrad

I'm saying that they gotta build a brand, Michael. They're told to build their brand. 

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Michael

There you go.

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So let's talk about that for a second, which is, you cover individuals and cover firms. Is the individual brand more important or is the firm brand more important for a venture capitalist?

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Alex Konrad 

I think it really depends on the stage of their career and the fund. So, this morning I actually just published an investigation into a new firm that is kind of a crossover fund, and has at least $10 billion in assets, and they are ghosts. Like, the investors don't have photos on LinkedIn, their website has nothing on it. They did not want to participate in the article we wrote about them. It's called Newlands, and it's an investment fund bankrolled by Jan Koum, the WhatsApp billionaire. 

And so sometimes you get these ghosts and they just want the results to speak for themselves. 

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I would say that for most investors today, especially earlier stage and earlier stage career investors, it can be a limiting factor or make things harder to have no brand. In this world where people are increasingly online, you want more people to know you and to find you.

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And if you're only relying on those personal referrals or networks, that can be tough. Like obviously we both know Gili at Cyberstarts in Israel, and like, Gili will always find security startups, you know, and make them drive up from Tel Aviv. And he can do that. But if you were the 25-year-old Gilly, you would probably want to be on social media.

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Michael

Yeah, or on the 30 Under 30 list or on the Midas list, right? And you see, this is actually, I wonder if you've done the work on this. Is there any correlation between people who have been on the 30 Under 30 list and later performance in venture capital?

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Alex Konrad

I haven't done that correlation, but I can tell you that a lot of the Under 30 VCs at least have gone on to be extremely successful. Some have left the industry, like Sam Altman or Shivon Zillis, and are big names in the tech world now outside of it. Others are leading their VC firms. So there's actually, like, a very good hit rate of those investors actually working out.

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I think the most interesting correlation that we actually saw is a PR firm last Midas list, called Milltown, did an analysis of social media usage of the main international Midas list, and found that most Midas list investors never post to Twitter/X–never post to social media. And I think the question is, were they successful before those things took off? Or is it a flex that when you get successful enough, you don't need to do this stuff? Like people would think you're crazy that you're a Midas Lister and running a podcast.

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Michael

I think that was a barb.

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Alex Konrad 

It was a compliment, that you are in that cadre of investors and actually out there talking to people like me. I think a lot of investors might see that as–what was the Chamath thing–”below their line?” So I'd be below the line of a lot of folks.

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Michael 

Yeah. No, no, you're a friend more than anything. And I don't have people who are below my line anywhere on the planet. Although I did feel a little below the line–I met Elon today, Musk, in Israel. Boy is that guy incredibly smart, and talented, and–

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Alex Konrad 

What's the scoop? Is he recruiting for his AI company? Why is he seeing you? 

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Michael

You can ask him.

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Alex Konrad

All right.

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Michael

But just an incredible experience, to be honest. So I want to pivot for a second, because we actually scheduled this long before this, what’s going on in Israel broke out. But you wrote three super interesting stories about what's going on here. I actually want to start with, I think the last one you wrote, on civilian efforts, technology efforts in Israel to supply nonprofits. Why don't I let you tell the story quickly that you covered. Um, and then I actually want to ask you a question about it.

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Alex Konrad

Yeah, absolutely. So we were interested in how the tech community in Israel and also abroad responded really fast to what was happening after the attacks. And one of the things that was interesting to us was how technology was going to be used. So I've written in the past about really successful Israeli tech companies, like Monday.com. 

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And talking to a bunch of founders and others in the industry, you know, I was hearing about Monday.com being used a ton to organize volunteer efforts. But then, you know, when you, when you start talking to people, you hear more. 

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And so, a founder told me that they were volunteering with Hatzala, and  doing, using this kind of Uber-like app to be a first responder. And I thought, wow, that is so interesting. I had no idea that this giant network of first responders in Israel and they have satellite offices, you know, in places like here in New York too is using this very sophisticated, location-based app to send people to an emergency as fast as possible, including on October 7th. 

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So that was fascinating to me. And then as you talk to more people, you hear more stories. And it almost became a question of, what can we include? And so I also found it interesting, this startup called Guesty that is for multi-tenant homes or vacation properties, like on the beach,

that are going to get listed on a Vrbo or Airbnb, etc. And so they opened up their platform for people who had unused properties, to make them available to people who had been displaced by the attacks. 

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And I thought that was just really interesting. And so we kind of tried to round up some of these examples into this article that looked at, sort of, how the technology tools were being used. 

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But the reality is, I also just, as you know, heard about dozens of WhatsApp groups and much more sort of ad-hoc efforts that were also sort of technology and also really inspiring.

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Michael

So the question that brings me to is the following. What you described is what I would call ‘civic resilience,’ and particularly in a tech-centric country like Israel with a high density of technology talent, this ability, one, to organize quickly, but two, to bring advanced solutions to solve real-world problems where, candidly I think it's fair to say the government left a vacuum. 

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And, question - you know, you're starting to see companies like Anduril, right, which is a startup company - not anymore, but a startup company using Silicon Valley or startup methodologies to attack something that was, no pun intended, that was previously the purview of governments, and big prime contractors, and semi-governmental agencies. 

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And the thing that's been occupying my headspace since I've been at ground zero of this civic organizing effort, but I'm just in the outsider's perspective, is–I'm wondering if this is a watershed moment from your perspective in, call it tech, Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv tech, where civilians begin to step in the shoes of government, bring 21st century to solutions to what has been, I'd like to call it, you know, a previous century's operating system, which is the government. And now we can kind of use orchestration of civilian efforts, you know, to solve real societal problems. 

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Does it feel to you like a moment like that? How would you think about this on a broader scale in the US?

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Alex Konrad

So I think Israel is unique on some levels, because–your audience will probably know this better than me–but I was in Tel Aviv in June. Sorry, I was shadowing the CEO of Wiz, which is the only reason, for everyone, that I did not go say ‘hi’ to Michael in person. But it was really interesting to hear, kind of, how a lot of the tech leaders of that moment were using these tech tools to help mobilize the community to sort of protest or influence the government around the judicial reforms that a lot of tech leaders were not fans of, to put it mildly. 

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And then you see the same rails, the same kind of WhatsApp groups or other organizing groups being deployed immediately for volunteer efforts after the terrorist attacks. And it's really interesting to see, like, what happens to those rails after this, is one way to think about it.

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Does it go back to protests? Does it go back to other civic engagement? I hope so. I hope that the muscle that the community in Israel has flexed is used for good, whatever that would be. I think in the US, we don't have quite the same density of people, of organization. So you're gonna see more ad-hoc efforts, but I do think companies like Anduril are starting to be more and more respected and key to our infrastructure from a government and defense standpoint. 

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I think SpaceX has to be the leading example there though. I mean, SpaceX is literally putting our government astronauts into space. Starlink is mapping a lot of our, you know, critical satellite infrastructure today. SpaceX is, if it's not a government agency, it is now codependent in interesting ways with the US government. And I think that's totally, you know, totally good for innovation.

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Michael

It's the most important company for US supremacy, I think is, you know, is clearly SpaceX in my view. And, you know, just to leap forward. But again, you know, the question I'm trying to get at is, is this a harbinger? Is it only in–call it defense technology in case of, you know, SpaceX–so is transportation, by the way, electrification, you know, under Elon Musk. What you see in Israel is what I would call this kind of–can we create a new operating system for the country? 

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I've called this already going back two years ago, the government needs to move from management to orchestration, right? For managing all these things, you know, to orchestrate. Like FEMA in the U.S., right, the emergency management agencies–not exactly working terribly well. And it makes me wonder, given what's going on here, whether civilian efforts properly funded and orchestrated by the government and kind of led by, quote unquote, Silicon Valley or Tel Aviv, is maybe a new trend and maybe a new trend to invest in.

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Michael

But I'm living it. You're the outsider and you wrote about it. So I'm more interested in your perspective.

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Alex Konrad

I think Israel can be maybe the proving ground for larger populations there. Because I think, again, smaller country where tech is very clearly the driver of GDP growth. And I think maybe it's not as controversial as maybe Silicon Valley can be with some politicians in the US on both sides of the aisle.

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I think in the US it's going to be three steps forward, two steps back, where you see kind of more co-dependence on these tech tools. But in terms of, like, an operating system replacing the US government? The US government has lots of arcane and bizarre and sometimes mind-numbing pieces in place that would resist a software update.

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Michael

You know, one of the jokes I've been making, or it's pretty serious actually, is you know, since they called up all these reservists to 8,200 and, you know, I've been there, there's like mattresses all around. This is like the, you know, the biggest and most impressive hackathon I think ever created. You have all these brilliant guys who've turned up at 8,200 with mattresses sleeping there for six weeks. The amount of ideas and innovation that will come out of there over the next couple of years is mind-boggling. 

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And there's this, because of the failure of October 7th, I think the mindset over here has shifted to people wanting to apply their innovation and technology skills to public service. You've got to solve these problems. And I think it's fascinating.

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Alex Konrad

That's amazing. That's awesome because so many of those smart 8,200 and 81 grads, we see them creating cybersecurity companies that are, I think, good for the world usually, not always, but usually, but maybe incrementally better than what came before because it's like the safe, smart thing to do or they join a company. Obviously, I've written a cover story about Wiz this year and I've talked to a bunch of these folks.

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And some of them even go into, like, ad-tech, right? Which is not exactly world-inspiring. And so if maybe those ad-tech entrepreneurs and some of those security folks are getting into civic tech and other areas, I think that's only good for the world.

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Michael 

I wonder if you’d make the Midas List investing in that stuff.

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Alex Konrad

You know, I wrote about a new fund manager here in New York who has a fund just focused on things like disinformation, user privacy, you know, people having real ownership of their digital assets, some of this edge stuff. It's a brand new fund, so she's many years from making the Midas List, but I'd love to see more funds like that and more investment theses that are taking a different approach than, ‘hey, see if Gili and anyone else who's in on the 8200 alumni network can cut me into the next security deal.’

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Michael

I love Gili, but what's the name of the person who's running the fund and the fund name?

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Alex Konrad

Oh, I'm talking about Gili Raanan from Cyber Starts with…

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Michael

No, no, I know. I mean, the New York fund. The New York fund focused on–

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Alex Konrad

Oh, Zoe Weinberg, ex/ante. I just wrote about it. It's a 30 million plus first-time fund. She's an impressive woman here in Brooklyn.

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Michael

Good for her. Good for her. 

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So I want to switch gears for a second to another piece you just wrote, about, about Gazen tech. So, you know, full disclosure, I have a company, we employ a hundred people in, Ramallah, or so, maybe, yeah, close to a hundred people in Ramallah. So, and I’ve been involved with, I hosted the Gaza Sky Geeks at my office some number of years ago and, and a bunch of other initiatives.

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I'd love to hear, like, firsthand, what you heard when you interviewed the Gazan tech people.

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Alex Konrad

Yeah, so this was something that was important to us to think about and cover too, because when I went to Israel with Forbes about a year or so before COVID, we did a hackathon in Jerusalem at the JVP offices or in their yard, and it was Israeli founders, but it was also Palestinian founders. They were from the West Bank, not from Gaza, but founders from a very different background. 

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And to see these entrepreneurs rubbing shoulders and joking around, they had some of the similar technical problems, that felt very hopeful to me. And it was a real kind of heartwarming feeling, even if it was just for a moment. And so it was obviously something that we thought about as we were talking to all these Israeli entrepreneurs, was also like, hey, what about those founders who had kind of talked about economic progress and sort of technology as a way to maybe lift up their own people in places like Ramallah? 

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And so we tried to talk to folks, and it was definitely somber. It was a tough conversation for very different reasons. I think some of these folks were just trying to say to me, ‘hey Alex,’ and my colleague Sarah Emerson, they were saying, ‘it's hard to think about the future of my startup when I'm not going to have stable internet access, when my employees who are in Gaza can't get back to me in Ramallah, I can't reach them by phone, I have no idea if they're alive or dead, and that could be weeks.’ 

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And I think it was just a very visceral sense where their startups like, weren't going to have internet access, let alone worry about people getting called up or something like that. And that is, it's very hard to compare these situations. I don't think it's fair to compare them. And I think Israeli startups have just shown incredible resilience. I just think separately also, it was something we wanted to look at was these founders in the West Bank, especially, which is where most of the tech innovation is such as it is because I do think they were seen as a bastion of hope, as a sense of innovation. 

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And let's be real, if you went through Gaza Sky Geeks, if you learned how to code, if you were trying to get a remote job with Google or something, you're probably the kind of person who it would be easier for someone like you to talk to than a random other person. These are people who wanted to engage in the global economy, and believed in the power of entrepreneurship. And that's something that I do think is international.

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Michael

Yeah. And I think it's fair to say that it's very tough for them under Hamas as well, people who want to be part of the global economy. And let's just say those aren't 21st century methods of Hamas. You know, one of the previous guests that I had on the podcast, I guess like three guests ago, was Eyal Waldman, who, as you know, was founder and CEO of Mellanox, which was sold to NVIDIA, and his daughter was killed in the October 7th massacre. He was perhaps the largest employer of technology talent, Palestinian technology talent, both in Gaza and in the West Bank. He's always a hopeful person, an incredible leader. But that's a tough element right now, I think. 

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Alex Konrad

And Michael, one other thing that just makes me think of is, you know, I do think that Palestinian tech founders were largely scared to talk to us, because they didn't really see a way that it would help them or improve their lives, because they could face backlash from international community or they could face backlash from Hamas, and people in their own backyard who don't like that they are talking to Americans, don't like that they are trying to use technology in this way. 

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And for them, it was sort of like, what is the upside in sticking my neck out and talking to you and facing repercussions? And that is a very tough thing as a journalist to hear. Because there isn't really a good answer for that, right? Like, why should you risk your life to talk to me? It's just a Forbes story. I'm just trying to shine a light, but you have to protect yourself.

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Michael

That's a tough thing for anybody to hear, I think, not just a journalist. 

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You know, I'll throw an idea back at you, when Hamas hopefully is gone, it would be great to have a Forbes hackathon, similar to the one you did, or you were at at JVP, where we can get the SkyGeeks from Gaza and people from Israel and other places, maybe from international countries, the Gulf, etc. together, in a big hackathon to solve problems for humanity. I think that'd be a big thing Forbes can do. You can write a full 100 list of all the people who participate in that.

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Alex Konrad 

It would make me extremely happy to come back and do something like that. So, let's hope that that is something that you and I can give an update to the audience about down the road.

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Michael

So tell me something else. The third story you wrote was about Israeli resilience. And maybe because I'm a little biased, so I may be biased, but it almost felt when you wrote the story that you were amazed that these people were continuing to deliver with so many people called up. And then I almost felt, I don't know what the right word is, that you were a little split on some of these smaller companies that were struggling to make it–inspired by the fact that they saw a higher calling to serve the country, but, you know, kind of wistful to sad that the companies would likely not make it because they couldn't focus on fundraising. 

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And I have two questions in that regard. One is, is that an accurate reflection of how you think about the story, kind of amazement on the ability to continue to deliver some of the companies, and then this kind of dichotomy on the younger companies? And then the second question I would ask you is, you cover the global tech world, and companies are going out of business everywhere, smaller companies right now. And I kind of wonder in your own head, how much you attribute to what's going on here, geopolitically, locally, and how much you say is, oh no, that's just the general, we've hit the end of 2023 going to 2024, money’s starting to run out, and this is happening everywhere.

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Alex Konrad 

Yeah, it's a really good question that takes, like, a deeper look into the story than I think many readers did. So kudos to you. I would say that the biggest thing that we were really trying to reinforce with the size point was that realistically larger companies could absorb people leaving more easily. If you're Monday.com or you're a cybersecurity unicorn, and some of your folks got called up by 8,200, that was something you could plan for. You have great investors like Aleph and others, who are already lined up to help you get through it. If you're a three-person startup and your CTO gets called up by 8,200, you maybe don't have that support system in place. 

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And even if you could have someone step in to try to help out, and we wrote about these volunteer efforts, like there was a signup group that I believe still exists where people could say, hey, I wanna chip in and help a startup that had people get called up on a volunteer basis. And that's great, but I think we both know that sometimes with a small business or a three-person startup, training someone up or having someone step in who doesn't have the context is as much work as just doing it yourself. And losing, you know, your technical co-founder as a tiny startup is just going to be pretty disruptive. And I think that was something we wanted to just make really clear was that people were pretty open-eyed, understanding the consequences of doing this. 

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And we were pretty blown away by just how matter-of-fact they were about it, how eager they were to still get called up, you know, people flying back from the US or trying to organize donations on their way at the airport to get back, because this was just something they had to do. I don't think there is the same sense of civic duty in the US in any industry, but including among entrepreneurs, you know, where I think entrepreneurs would be like, no, you know, I got to protect my startup. Were those startups struggling anyway? Maybe.

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It is true that startups are failing all over and that is natural and it is just part of the game. And it's a tough time in general for startups globally to fundraise if they don't have revenue or some clear metrics. I don't think that was really like the point of the story though. I think that is just a backdrop and sort of context here that I think makes it either more poignant or you can be cynical and say, hey, best way to wind down a startup is to just go volunteer and then come back and start something new with those three people at 8200 that you slept next to as you were saying. Like I have a better idea.

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Michael

It's funny, you may be right about that. I actually came up with a different perspective, which is, I think, not covered, but hinted to in your story, which is, it made me wonder whether this resilience will mean that the failure rate of Israeli tech companies is going to be lower than everywhere else in the world in the bad funding environment, because the kind of grittiness needed to kind of get through this will enable some people to survive on fumes in a way that few others would in a normal place.

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Alex Konrad

So I think that's possible, but I also think that, again, speaking as a New Yorker who's just visited, I think my sense of the founders in the Tel Aviv and wider Israeli startup ecosystem is also that people are just very pragmatic and practical. And so I think that could they be cockroaches that you can't kill and just kind of persevere?

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Michael

Ouch.

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Alex Konrad

Well, no, I know that's a term that is often a good thing in startups, at least here in the US. Startups say they want to be a cockroach because, to explain to anyone who doesn't get that, means it's impossible to kill you. You know, you can step on, you flush, you whatever, you survive, and I think in a lean funding environment. 

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Michael

I grew up in Manhattan, I know what it means, but I'm not sure most people would. 

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Alex Konrad

Yeah. Fair enough. Well, it's, there's even a company now, a unicorn here in the US called Cockroach Labs for the same idea. So I want to make clear that that is not meant in any pejorative way.

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But the point was that these companies could survive even in a leaner situation. But I think that the founders might be practical enough that they would pivot fast or go to something else if they see a bigger opportunity, much like the Wiz founders did in the profile I wrote about them, rather than just kind of get caught in the messy middle for five years. Because I do think that a founder's biggest asset is their time.

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And spending five years on an idea that's not going to be very big is not always the best way you could use your time.

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Michael

Do you think, you know, you cover investors globally, venture, do you think this war has changed investor attitudes on Israel in any meaningful way, to any direction?

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Alex Konrad

I think investors who were interested in investing in Israel are as interested and more interested in investing. And I think investors who were not looking to invest in Israel, it's probably because the sectors, you know, they're not security minded or enterprise SaaS. And I think, you know, traditionally, most of the global venture investments have been kind of more on the B2B side with a couple, you know, big consumer exceptions.

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I think that what you were talking about with civic technology, maybe new areas, I think it would be great to see global investors be looking to Israel for more types of companies. But I think if you were already kind of having Israel on your radar, you double down and you like, want to invest more than ever. I'm curious if that's your sense too.

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Michael

It is. It is. One of the things I've been trying to figure out for myself, and I'm interested in what you think is, I've been trying to summarize for myself in one sentence, what a global investor or you think today about Israeli founders? Like, how would you summarize what differentiates them in one sentence?

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Alex Konrad

Scrappy, efficient, well-networked, highly technical.

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Michael

Interesting. The word that keeps coming to my head, but I can't put it into use properly, is focused and resilient. Those are the two words that keep coming to me. But I feel like I need a better sentence and I haven't been able to come up with it yet. But let me change gears entirely for a second. 

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So you Tweeted–I can't remember whether it was yesterday or the day before–by the way, we have to keep saying ‘Tweeted’ because you can't say you ‘Xed’ it. That doesn't make any sense. But like, you're finally picking your head up.

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Alex Konrad

Yeah, you should have mentioned that to Elon, Michael. You had your shot today. I can't believe you didn't ask him about that.

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Michael

Yeah. So you Tweeted that, you know, it's finally the first day you're not writing about OpenAI and what went on there. What's your take? Like what happened?

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Alex Konrad

Mm-hmm. What's my take? The trillion dollar question, right? I think that the narrative that we've seen to start to emerge where there was a technological breakthrough in model training that freaked some people out and excited other people, that does seem credible to me. It is what my sources were kind of signaling. At first people saw the shock announcement and they were like, for a board to fire a CEO so abruptly, the CEO must have done something really bad. And it went to–people immediately thought, is it financial misconduct, or personal misconduct, or something like that?

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But that always seems shocking to me and surprising. Also that kind of investigation would usually involve the person. And I was at an AI conference two days before he got fired in San Francisco, and he stopped by the speaker dinner, and I had a nice little chat with Sam. And he did not look like someone who was about to be fired. And so, I was just like, wow, that doesn't seem like the right narrative. And so this technology angle feels credible, but it's also, also incredible because it's like, really, this is really why you would fire Sam Altman and immolate your own board and cause all this craziness, over a model improvement? At the least, I think the board of directors of OpenAI just did a masterclass in bad communications.

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Michael

I hear that. It's, speaking of bad communications, it’s a good segue. Like you're a journalist, you're at a media company, you guys run conferences. And over the last six or seven weeks, Paddy Cosgrave self-immolated also, apropos self-immolation. You know, he's resigned. Web Summit was a disaster and imploded, you know, he had been co-opted so to speak, already, by the Qataris for the next one. You know, how do you think about that self-immolation?

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How do you explain, kind of, ruining your media franchise that way?

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Alex Konrad

Yeah, well, I haven't studied that so much specifically in terms of how Web Summit went or anything. And so I don't want to necessarily speak out of turn there, but I think what, having just gone to the event in past years pre-COVID and seeing what was happening with Paddy's initial Tweets, I think this is a moment where there is the intent of your words, and then there's the public perception that you should realistically expect. So there are things that you might say in a certain context and have them spark legitimate debate or conversation. But then there's also the read-the-room factor, where in a certain room, you should not say that. And in a certain time, it is inappropriate to say that. 

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And I think what happened here was a real refusal to read the room and a really major consequence that affected a ton of other people–employees of the conference business, contractors, people who were going to speak, and it was going to be good for their company.

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And so I was just like, what a waste, what a horrible shame that the room was not read here in a way that's gonna have this, like, very negative consequence. You know, I wasn't gonna attend the conference either way–

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Michael

Me neither.

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Alex Konrad 

But it was just really sad for me to see like, why is this, it just, you know, I don't know if own goal is a term there, but you know, it felt like an own goal.

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Michael

I come back a lot of it to what you said at the beginning of the conversation. And maybe I would phrase it that lack of empathy, maybe, has real costs to people. And that's part of reading the room and, you know, being empathetic as to understanding the room. And turns out that it has real costs. And, so I want to finish with two quick questions if I can, which is, how do you decide what to cover? 

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Like, everybody wants to talk to you. They either want to pitch on why they should be on the Midas List or the 30 under the 30 list, or please cover my company–they know you've got a big audience. How do you decide what to cover?

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Alex Konrad

Well, part of it is that I always feel short on time, and I have to really defend my time. And so I kind of every morning think from an impact standpoint, am I spending this day well? Is this the highest impact way I could spend my day? And unfortunately, a lot of the time I don't give myself a great grade there. I'm like, I could be doing better. Maybe I should not have agreed to this meeting, or maybe this article is not the highest impact one I could have.

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But I at least try to be writing things that I think are going to drive conversation and have meaningful impact and contribute to a healthier tech ecosystem. Because I do think shining a light as a reporter, being annoying sometimes to people, but fair–I do think overall it's good for the ecosystem. And so if I'm writing a story that is not, it isn't fun, the technology isn't interesting to me and I don't think it's high impact, that's where I'm like, what am I doing here? 

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More often than not, you know, there's at least one of those components that gets me really interested. Like this morning's article about this secret new fund, I'm like, hey, if there's a $10 billion fund out there and nobody knows who it is and it’s starting to invest in startups, I think founders should know who these guys are. And so I can be the person to kind of pull back the curtain a little bit and be like, here's who they are. So the next time they pitch you or something, you know that this is Jan Kuom's money, or, you know, that this is a new $10 billion fund in Texas.

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That's a unique situation, of course, but similarly, I might say, oh, this technology is really important and that's what's going to focus my story. And I need to check off at least one of those boxes, ideally all of them. Does that make sense?

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Michael

It does. So, the next question, the last question I want to ask you is the following. All right. Maybe it's a high-bridge question. You were very public on your own Twitter/X or whatever it was. You got engaged and it was posted there. You got married, and I'm interested in how has married life changed you as a journalist and someone covering tech. And then the followup to that is, you know, single journalist, now married, covering this. You talked a lot about your great-grandfather at the beginning of the conversation and what an extraordinary person you think he was. And I want to ask you when you're a great grandfather, how do you want to be remembered?

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Alex Konrad

These are some deep, deep questions. Well, I would say

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Michael 

It's afternoon for me! It's early in the morning for you.

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Alex Konrad

Yeah, I'm like, man, I needed more than one coffee. First off, my wife's VC firm, they haven't given me any juicy stories. So married life hasn't helped my career in terms of inside tips, despite now being married to a consumer investor. So that's–

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Michael

Wait, is she lobbying you to get on the Midas List or the 30 under 30? Just to be clear. She has an unfair advantage.

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Alex Konrad 

She's 30, she's not gonna bug me, thank God. Maybe the Midas list in 10 years, no. But I think married life has grounded me in the sense of, it does help you just remember that life is more than just quick job wins or getting caught in the rat race, and that we are really a partnership who are playing a long game here and trying to not just build our careers, but kind of build a family together. 

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And I think that marriage has just been great in kind of giving me that sanity check or kind of deep breath because I'm the kind of person who is type A crazed. Like I had to delete the chess app off my phone because I would just play for hours trying to get my rating up on that kind of competitive person. And so to have that grounding has been really important for me. And then in terms of, you know, how I'd want to be remembered–it's hard, you know, Michael, I think when I was younger, when I was in college, and I was big in history–and I still care about history–but I really studied a lot of these kind of great leaders. And I thought, oh, life is all about having the biggest possible impact in very noticeable ways, you know, whether it's, you're a head of state, or you had a massive new invention, or you created a new economic theory.

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You know, the key in life–like winners will be remembered forever for doing something really big. And I do think that as I'm, you know, I'm about to turn 35, I'm married now. I am thinking about kind of the, the next phase of my life and career. I want to be driving conversation and leaving the ecosystem here in a better place than I started. I want people to enjoy my stories, but I am starting to kind of accept that maybe I won't be remembered 30 years from now, maybe it will just be my great-grandson who remembers me, and no book I write will stand the test of time or something, and that's okay. 

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And so I've definitely started to think about impact in a much more local, personal way and less that kind of be a great man of history. I'm curious to your thoughts there, because you are one of the leaders in your field and you have a huge family. So how has your thought changed there over time?

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Michael

Aren't I doing the questioning on this podcast?

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Alex Konrad

Oh come on, I can't give you that answer and not get a little bit back. That was way too good a question.

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Michael

I think of the world as a relay race, that we need to leave this earth a better place for our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And one of the things that changes you, when I became a grandfather, I thought it at maybe 60% when I was a dad (I still am a dad). But when you become a grandfather, it becomes even more so, more prominent is, how do we leave this world a better world for our generations that follow us? And that has, that occupies my mind. 

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And it's, how do you leave a family like that? How do you leave a country like that? And how do you leave a world that is better for that? And grandparenthood has made that far more prominent in my thought and in my behavior. My kids would probably tell you, not too much of my demeanor. But I think that's, I think the big one.

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I think we're in a tricky decade. I just finished writing something, or almost finished writing something, that kind of looks at the world from 2008 till 2030, which I think is a, yeah, it's like a 22-year period of real dissonance. We had the great financial crisis, then ZIRP, which created this–COVID, Russia, Ukraine, you know, Israel, Hamas, radical Jihad rearing its ugly head around the world, China, US in the middle. I mean, it's, we got a lot going on. And so, you know, how do we leave this a better world for our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, you know, matters. And I'm actually eager because when you write the book about your great-grandfather did maybe, think about the question, about how did he leave the world a better place for you and then how you can do it for your great grandchildren.

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Alex Konrad

Yeah, and you know, I've thought a lot about that too, because my grandmother is 90 now, his daughter, and I want so badly to be able to show some progress to her so that even if the book isn't ready in a time that she can appreciate it, she can see how much it means to me. But it also got me thinking about her impact and her effect on our family too. I'm so proud of my sister and my cousins, her grandkids.

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And even though my great-grandfather met all these famous people in history, you know, and lived this crazy life. He did it for his daughter, my grandmother, and she had a massive impact in her own way as a nurse practitioner and as a volunteer, and doing a lot of other stuff. So, you know, he would be the one who rubbed shoulders with the famous people in history, but, you know, this is also for my grandmother too. And I think that reflection has been really healthy for me.

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Michael

By the way, I can go–hold on.

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So these over here in the corner of my office is a box. On Saturday night, I went to pick up–my grandmother passed away this year at 99, and they finally cleaned out all of her affects, including 10 cartons of old pictures. I have their wedding album in the box over here. But this, apropos technology, these are DVDs. You can see this one, it says on it, 1960s old films. They had old negative films, real, real films that I guess my grandmother had digitized onto DVDs. 

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I actually, I have four boxes of the old films and we're now going to digitize them and get to look at them and see what was there. And you can kind of come, you know, reach back and reach forward. And one of the things about the world, the technology world, digital world is you can reach back and reach forward. And, you know, I'm excited to see what's on these over here.

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Alex Konrad

Amazing. Well, you're gonna have to share it in a blog post or something so I can learn a little bit from it too. And I promise to share my story with you as well.

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Michael

Deal. Feel free to send a picture of your great grandfather. So Alex Konrad, thank you for joining us. You can learn more about Alex on Twitter or X, @Alexkonrad. That's spelled A-L-E-X-K-O-N-R-A-D. And please, please don't bug him about the next Midas List or Tweet at him with that, or DM him. But Alex, thank you for coming and chatting, and just super appreciate you and your thoughtfulness and how you think about things globally. And you've been a good friend, so thank you.

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Alex Konrad

Thank you for nine years of great conversation and a really thoughtful chat today. Thanks, Michael.

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Michael

Yeah, thanks Alex. 

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