Upstarts Turns 1! Here's What's Next (With Your Help)
Reflections on a wild first year -- and our promise to you as a subscriber in Year Two.
As we near our first birthday at Upstarts tomorrow, I wanted to take a minute to thank you for your continued support, and share some thoughts on where we’re going in Year Two.
This time last year, I was nervously putting together the final touches for our introduction of Upstarts Media to the world. The pitch: a new-look media publication focused on the startup ecosystem, from inception through IPO.
I promised original reporting on founders and builders I felt weren’t getting enough of the spotlight, as well as in-depth storytelling and analysis that could hopefully inform and inspire.
One year in, I am proud of the work we’ve accomplished at Upstarts to start to realize that promise.
We’ve published more than 100 originally-reported articles, aired six episodes of our Upstarts Podcast, and produced live videos and a recent illustration collab.
Toward our goal of building a community, we’ve hosted more than a dozen events from London to Los Angeles, and met with many of you in places in between.
I get asked how things are going at Upstarts often, and I’ve learned first-hand how founders filter such questions. The simplest answer is that we’re here, we’re growing, and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat — or even sooner.
At the same time, I’ll be honest that building a new media brand, and continuing to work on high-quality journalism while growing a business, has been the most challenging, stressful and rewarding experience of my career so far.
A big reason for that: I’m still a one-man band. I know I’m lucky to be able to do this, and I put pressure on myself to re-earn your faith every day, with every post.
In Year Two, you’ll see Upstarts try to professionalize our operations and your experience as a reader. That means doubling down on what’s working, investing in more team support, and pursuing collaborations and partnerships with other freelancers, creators and media platforms to widen our reach.
My New Year’s Resolution was to write more bangers and have more fun, but the big unlock for doing that will be consistency. That’s my promise to you.
A big thanks to our Day One subscribers, and the many friends, family, colleagues and sources who have stepped up to help Upstarts in some way or another over this first year. It’s really taken a global, startup-curious village. No one deserves thanks more than my tireless spouse, adviser and number one supporter, Natalie Sportelli. (Honorable mention to Margot the dog.)
I also want to sincerely thank our premium subscribers who support our work. You are the foundation of our entire operation, and I couldn’t do it without you.
To celebrate our first birthday at Upstarts, we are running our best special offer ever for a limited time: 25% off a new annual subscription to Upstarts.
Note: this should apply to upgrades from a monthly sub, too. If you recently re-upped your annual subscription and want the offer, respond to this note and we’ll comp you a couple of extra months, free.
We’ve published countless startup launch stories and exclusives over the past year fully free, and we have another great one for you tomorrow.
But as a reminder of what you get as a premium subscriber, here’s a look back at some of our favorite paid posts of the past year:
Upstarts Premium Content Highlights
Our first Upstarts Profile, a magazine-style exclusive look at what Plaid co-founder William Hockey is building at Column.
Exclusive interviews with the leaders of Canva, Cohere, Eight Sleep, Hebbia, Klarna, Lyft, Motive, poolside, Snowflake, Wiz and many more, including our personal favorite: a rare interview with Esri billionaire and software legend Jack Dangermond.
Investigative scoops like one on Anthropic hiring a chemical weapons expert that was picked up by the NYT’s Dealbook and re-reported by the BBC — two months later; and one on a stealthy European defense tech unicorn, Cambridge Aerospace, picked up by The Guardian.
Funding and deal scoops like Stripe paying $1B for Metronome; Meta holding talks with video startups like Midjourney; Applied Compute leaving OpenAI; Datadog buying Eppo; and VCs leaving prominent firms.
Deep dives like our trend stories on VC firms using AI; the crazy salaries of AI’s talent wars; and the unicorn battle royale in AI customer support.
All of our podcast startup summaries, such as Ryan Petersen’s memorable lesson for founders: “Nobody cares about your startup.”
Exclusive coverage from our Upstarts events, like this one with Linear, Decagon and Browserbase; or this one with Granola.
And we’re still just getting started.
If you have suggestions for how Upstarts can improve in Year Two — or deliver more valuable reporting and events for you and your peers — please respond to this message, or contact Alex at akonrad.212 on Signal.
Thank you for being a part of the Upstarts community, and see you soon!
–Alex Konrad, founder and editor
congrats!