Harvard in Tech Spotlight: Alex Konrad, Senior Editor at Forbes
I spoke with Alex Konrad, senior editor at Forbes, where he covers tech with a focus on venture capital, cloud, and enterprise software. He is the editor of the Midas List, Midas List Europe, Cloud 100 List, and 30 Under 30 for Venture Capital and has written more than a dozen cover stories on subjects including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Canva CEO Melanie Perkins and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son.
Alex was a member of Quincy House and graduated from Harvard in 2011. He was always interested in writing but given the liberal arts nature of Harvard’s curriculum, he was able to pursue journalistic writing through extracurricular publications like the Harvard Crimson while pursuing his other interests through courses, particularly in his concentration areas of history and archaeology.
After interning at WNYC Radio, New York’s local NPR affiliate, he started his reporting career as a summer intern at Fortune Magazine through the Institute of Politics, and became the first college intern in that magazine’s history to publish a print article. After a year at Fortune post graduation, Alex worked briefly for Bloomberg as a freelance reporter and then joined Forbes as a homepage editor in 2012. In the afternoons, after setting the homepage each day, Alex would report and publish articles in his extra time. Within a few months, he built up enough of a portfolio that he was given the opportunity to cover tech for Forbes full-time. Eight years later, he’s now a senior editor overseeing much of Forbes’ tech journalism as a leader in its newsroom.
Alex shared his advice for effective writing, his tips for interviewing people, and what he has learned from his career at Forbes.
Just get started. Writing is much like going to the gym: dragging yourself there is difficult (at least for me!), but once you get started, you quickly realize the workout was not nearly as daunting as you had imagined. Similarly, with writing, getting the words flowing on the page is the hardest part. Don’t get hung up over the quality of your first draft. Your first draft doesn’t need to be polished; it’s a process to get your mind in the right space. Editing comes later. Just start writing first.
Be economical. With writing, less is more. Writers can instinctively feel attached to everything they write because they want to showcase the time they put into a piece. But in reality, a shorter piece better reflects deeper understanding and higher quality research. Take the time to carefully pick your words, quotes, and points. Go through more iterations of self editing than you think you need. The most powerful pieces are often among the shortest.
Balance projects and chores. Expensify CEO’s once shared with Alex how he broke down work at his company into two categories: projects and chores. Chores are the day-to-day action items that must be taken care of, like outages or annual reports; projects are nice-to-haves and longer term efforts, such as new feature releases. In Alex’s role, the annual lists he covers are need-to-haves. He allocates time to these predictable launches, ensuring they are completed on time and well. The rest of the time, he spends on projects. With projects, he prioritizes quality over speed. For example, Alex covered an incredible story about the founders of Paradigm, a new crypto investment firm co-led by one of the cofounders of Coinbase. He first met the founders in summer 2019 but did not publish the article until fall 2020. Taking that extra time allowed him to conduct deep research and truly get to know the founders, the firm, and the industry. The story was well worth the wait.
Do your homework. When interviewing anyone, particularly senior people and company and industry leaders, aim to study their history and points of view in advance. When you show you have done your research well, people trust you more, take you more seriously, and open up more.
Treat people like humans. Understand what makes people tick. Even the most seemingly powerful people are just people: they are sports fans, dog lovers, and amateur artists. Find a way to connect with them on a topic that is not work related. For example, when interviewing the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, Alex asked about his experience being a father of a special needs child and how he is taking these learnings to lead Microsoft to build more inclusive products. Similarly, when speaking with Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom, Alex asked him about his love of basketball and how he goes to every single one of his son’s basketball games. Through this conversation, Alex learned that Eric has often had to take business meetings from the gym, which in part led to the creation of Zoom’s now widely-used virtual backgrounds.
Do not be starstruck. When interviewees recognize that the interviewer is overly impressed, they may close up. When people see you as an overeager fan or as someone who desperately needs something from them, an undesirable power dynamic is created. Instead, act like you have no awareness that they are famous. For example, when Alex recently interviewed Ashton Kutcher, instead of seeing Ashton as a movie star, Alex addressed him as a normal person, a fellow fan of the Chicago Bears (to their mutual disappointment) and technology lover. Respect and deference are not the same thing: you can be respectful of everyone you speak to without being overly deferential. Carry yourself as if you bring equal value to the interaction. Doing so creates a balanced foundation and a stronger conversation and relationship.
Get to yes. When I asked Alex for his favorite pieces of wisdom from people he has interviewed, Alex recalled a conversation he had on a camping trip with Domo CEO Josh James. Josh underscored the importance of always trying to think of a scenario where you can get a yes from someone’s offer or ask. Even if their first response is no, think about possible counter offers you can make. Never be afraid to ask for something ambitious and stick up for yourself. Alex has carried this advice to his work in journalism and particularly to getting high profile targets to agree to interviews.
Be a full person. From interviewing so many business leaders, Alex notes a common theme: the most successful usually hold values that go beyond their work and their company. People want to follow them and help them build their visions because of who they are holistically and what they care about outside of the office, too.
Embrace what you do not know. Looking back on his time at Harvard, Alex appreciates the many extracurricular activities he did from rugby to the Harvard Crimson, but in hindsight, he would have been even more aggressive in pursuing opportunities outside of his wheelhouse. This could include meeting more of his classmates or taking classes in disciplines outside of his comfort zone. Success and life are about constantly learning about new spaces and areas outside of the familiar, so getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is crucial.
Know what you bring to the table. Looking back on his early days in journalism, Alex would have collaborated even more and invested earlier in building genuine relationships with colleagues and peers at other publications. It is natural to be scared of falling behind and feel the pressure of the need to perform and excel, but this narrow-minded focus can deter a team-first mindset. Instead of being driven by competition with others, compete against one’s self, have a stable sense of self worth and celebrate other people’s wins. Know what you bring to the table and use that to lift everyone up around you.
