How Forbes looks for the next Mark Zuckerberg

Meredith Klein of Meredith & the Media spoke with Zoya Hasan, a reporter on the Under 30 team at Forbes, about her job.

Here is an excerpt:

How do you decide who makes it on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list?

• There’s no one formula to make it on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list—we look at a lot of different factors. It also varies industry by industry.
• I’ll use AI as an example. On the AI list, we’re looking at thousands of candidates—and every company is an AI company these days—so we’re looking at who actually is an AI company? We start there, and then we get into: 1) How much money have you brought in? 2) Is the money from investors? If so, how credible are your investors? We look at that and we give that a lot of weight.
• If you’re bootstrapped, we’re looking at revenue—we’re looking at how much money you’re making, and if you’re not making that much right now, what is your potential scale? That really matters, and that’s where investors really play a big role. Because when you have credible investors, we know that they trust you, and we trust them. So we do really look at the potential to scale, and we try a few different metrics to assess that.
• On the AI example, if they’re making the list, they are someone who is making big waves. They have big investors, big customers, and they are making money.
• Forbes is all about the money. We are a business magazine, and we are looking for the next billionaires. We’re looking for the next Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg.

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