Allie Garfinkle, Senior Finance Reporter, Fortune

Whatever stodgy image you have in your mind of the typical finance news reporter, I guarantee it isn't Allie Garfinkle. And yet still relatively early in her career, Allie has established herself as one of the best in that business with a resume that includes Forbes, The Deal, Yahoo Finance, and of course Fortune, where she serves as senior finance reporter, co-chair of Fortune Brainstorm Tech, the lead writer for Fortune Termsheet, their VC newsletter, and now the host of the Termsheet podcast, which debuted in July. 

Despite all that, Allie actually wanted to be in theater. She's an accomplished alto. She's also a scuba diver and a free diver who finds spirituality in the ocean. And we didn't even have time to discuss her love of magic and pipe organs. Allie joined us to discuss her Miami upbringing, which probably explains a lot, where venture capital is heading other than AI, and of course, to preview Fortune Brainstorm Tech, which takes place in Utah in early September. 

For this episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B tech. I'm Dave Reddy, head of Big Valley Marketing's media and influencers practice, and I'm your host. Through research and good old-fashioned relationship building, we've identified B2B tech's top 200 media and influencers, including Allie. Here's our chat with Allie. Enjoy.

Transcript

Dave Reddy: 0:00

Whatever stodgy image you have in your mind of the typical finance news reporter, I guarantee it isn't Allie Garfinkel. And yet still relatively early in her career, Allie has established herself as one of the best in that business with a resume that includes Forbes, The Deal, Yahoo Finance, and of course Fortune, where she serves as senior finance reporter, co-chair of Fortune Brainstorm Tech, the lead writer for Fortune Termsheet, their VC newsletter, and now the host of the Termsheet podcast, which debuted in July. Despite all that, Allie actually wanted to be in theater. She's an accomplished alto. She's also a scuba diver and a free diver who finds spirituality in the ocean. And we didn't even have time to discuss her love of magic and pipe organs. Allie joined us to discuss her Miami upbringing, which probably explains a lot, where venture capital is heading other than AI, and of course, to preview Fortune Brainstorm Tech, which takes place in Utah in early September. For this episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B tech. I'm Dave Reddy, head of Big Valley Marketing's media and influencers practice, and I'm your host. Through research and good old-fashioned relationship building, we've identified B2B tech's top 200 media and influencers, including Allie. Here's our chat with Allie. Enjoy.

Music: 1:23

Music

Dave Reddy: 1:31

Allie, thanks so much for being on the podcast. Really appreciate you joining us.

Allie Garfinkle: 1:34

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Long time listener, first time caller.

Dave Reddy: 1:39

That's nice to hear. So now we have 10 listeners. So you've got a great background and it all started, as great backgrounds often do, in the party land of Miami, Florida. So what was it like growing up at the bottom of Florida?

Allie Garfinkle: 1:55

At the bottom of Florida. No, it's funny. Do all great resumes start in party country? Probably. Maybe. Yeah, mind up. Well, I appreciate that. So I grew up in Miami. I grew up in North Miami Beach, which is not the South Beach of everyone's imaginary, though I've spent a lot of time there. You took your

Dave Reddy: 2:15

talents to North Beach, not South Beach.

Allie Garfinkle: 2:18

I took my talents to North Beach and then eventually I took my talents, took quite a bit out of South Beach and quite a bit out of North Miami Beach too. But yeah, I mean, look, Miami was a really interesting place to grow up in the 2000s. You know, got hit really hard by the Great Recession. My dad is a real estate investor, commercial real estate. So I actually watched sort of how that affected our family. I watched him try to make a business work sort of in an incredibly difficult faltering environment to say the least. So it's an interesting place from an economic perspective. It's an interesting place from a demographic perspective. I grew up around a lot of diversity of all kinds. It's funny, in the political climate we're in, a lot of people don't know people who politically disagree with them, and I certainly do. It's also a place, though, with just a lot of very underrated, strange history. And I definitely think I... A lot of people are very surprised that I'm from Miami, but I think in certain ways it... It really actually informs who I am and informs kind of the diversity of things I'm interested in. It kind of, I think, began my penchant for sort of some of the stranger corners of storytelling. I love a weird story and I don't think that's unrelated to being from Miami.

Dave Reddy: 3:39

Well, it is a weird town. It's a very weird town. Very weird town. Are you familiar with the very deep cut U2 song called Miami?

Music: 3:46

Yes.

Allie Garfinkle: 3:46

There is a deep cut U2 song called Miami. I don't know

Dave Reddy: 3:50

if I believe you. We might have to use that as the intro music.

Allie Garfinkle: 3:54

Is it a good song? I actually am quite a U2 fan. But wait, so is it a good song? I like it.

Dave Reddy: 4:02

It's on, wow, the listeners are like, what are you guys doing? I like it. It's on Pop, that mid-90s album that everybody else hates.

Allie Garfinkle: 4:13

Oh, that's why I've never heard it.

Dave Reddy: 4:15

Yeah, right. But I like it. The drums are really cool. At any rate, go give it a listen. One reviewer called it their most naive song ever. So at any rate, that's what happens when Irish people write about Miami. So moving on, there's no segue from that. So your dad was in commercial real estate or is in commercial real estate. What did mom do?

Allie Garfinkle: 4:35

My mom's a homemaker, but she actually used to work in theater. before she sort of quit to kind of get married and raise us. I have two siblings, both younger, Maddie and Heshy. And my mom actually, my mom took, my mom, my, we don't, nobody thinks of Miami as a theater town necessarily, but I actually do tie a lot of my love for storytelling probably to my dad's love for narrative history and my mom's love for theater.

Dave Reddy: 5:04

And you followed originally in your mom's footsteps. You told me that you were in undergrad at, I presume, in Chicago. You were a theater and performance studies major. and that you were also an alto, and I had to look that up.

Allie Garfinkle: 5:19

So you're not into music. No, I love

Dave Reddy: 5:21

music, and I had a sense of it. Actually, two of my kids did musical theater, and they always had Abby sing soprano, but she's really an alto. But at any rate,

Allie Garfinkle: 5:29

I had to look it up. Yes, that is a real problem. That is

Dave Reddy: 5:32

actually a real problem. So you know what I'm talking about. Exactly what you're talking about. So I don't know if you would call these people– they were all over the spectrum, I thought, but it was like everybody from Annie Lettix to Adele– to Stevie Nicks, who I always thought was a contralto, if that's the word. I love Stevie Nicks.

Allie Garfinkle: 5:49

I love Stevie Nicks. I actually, most of, I actually, after a very, very long hiatus, I actually took, I actually started taking voice lessons again, I think, to feel something. Oh, cool. Yeah. And we mostly sing Stevie Nicks.

Dave Reddy: 6:03

All right. That's your ring. I got

Allie Garfinkle: 6:05

it. Yeah. Yeah. We mostly sing Stevie Nicks. I'm not going to do it on the podcast. No,

Dave Reddy: 6:10

I wasn't even going to ask. I know that's not cool.

Allie Garfinkle: 6:12

You're not even going to ask. I mean, no, there's like a version where I would be, because again, much like being a journalist, if you are going to ask the questions, if you're going to ask questions, you better be able to answer them. If you're going to tell people you sing, you better be willing to sing.

Dave Reddy: 6:25

I hear you.

Allie Garfinkle: 6:26

I do believe

Dave Reddy: 6:27

that. And actually, I think it would probably increase my ratings, but I'm not going to ask you to do it. So I did have Don Clark play one of his instruments, but that's a whole different story that people can go back on. So in addition, you have the Miami things make so much more sense now that I know that. So in addition to theater, you're a singer. Certified scuba diver, that's two in a row now. We had Julie Bord on last month, also a certified scuba diver. A free diver. Now, are those those crazy people who go like 50 miles down with no oxygen? Are you one of those people?

Allie Garfinkle: 7:03

I definitely don't go 50 miles down. Can't stress that enough. But yeah, it is breath hold diving. I really like scuba and I slowly am, I want to spend more and more time with it because there's a lot you can do in scuba that you can't do with free diving. I mean, free diving is breath hold diving. I can go about 25 meters pretty reliably. Sometimes if I'm lucky, I can get to 30. You've got to equalize. You actually, I actually spent, it took me almost a year to get my original certification, Dave, because I was struggling with equalizing. It was actually a very funny corner of my life. At the time, I was working at Yahoo. It was the dead of COVID. And I would like wake up and do, I would wake up and I would write earnings reports, like do a hit on a TV show. And then in the afternoon, sometimes I would go free diving in Redondo to try to figure out how to equalize. Oh, by the way, for anyone listening to this, no one goes free diving alone. Never go free diving alone. There's actually Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. Disclaimer. Don't try that at home, at least not alone. But yeah, no, it's a, it's breath hole diving. It's a, the thing I think I really love about it is that you can't white knuckle it. I am a person who definitely will white knuckle things.

Dave Reddy: 8:14

Hmm.

Allie Garfinkle: 8:15

If I'm having a terrible time or if I don't know how to do something, I will try to run through the wall instead of look for a door. And with freediving, you actually can't because if your throat constricts enough, you actually won't be able to equalize to get down past a couple of meters.

Dave Reddy: 8:30

Yeah. Yeah. Death is definitely a consideration for how you want to handle something like that. Yeah.

Allie Garfinkle: 8:36

For what it's worth, freediving actually is pretty darn safe as long as you're with people and as long as you're not doing anything truly crazy. Right. The documentaries you've probably seen are the most extreme situations and the most talented freedivers. I am not the most talented freediver. I'm just trying to have a nice time. The thing that is best about it is once you get down past 15... sometimes 10-ish, you go into what's called bradycardia, where your heart rate slows down a lot. If you're a nervous person, it's actually a great activity in that way. I mean, I recognize I'm like, I'm trying to slow freediving here.

Dave Reddy: 9:13

I'm the most anxious guy I know. I might try freediving. I'll probably kill myself, though. What is that?

Allie Garfinkle: 9:18

It's actually a great thing to do that I promise is not as scary or impressive as it sounds, at least not in the incarnation I do it. There are certainly people who do it in much more scary, impressive incarnations.

Dave Reddy: 9:30

All I can think of is, and I'm sure you saw the movie, I cannot remember it, took place in Santa Cruz in Monterey. It was about some famous surfer who had a massive wipeout at Mavericks and survived. And then the last scene after he survives at Mavericks is they shoot for it. And he's died freediving. It's like, well, I'm glad he lived through that, but I guess... Come on, man.

Allie Garfinkle: 9:55

The thing is, it's a... I mean, the ocean is very important to me. I'm not important to the ocean. And that's what I like about it, actually. No matter how big your problems are, no matter how important you may feel in a given moment, no matter how unimportant you may feel in a given moment, the ocean truly doesn't care. It's actually kind of... No matter how talented of a surfer someone is, no matter how talented of a free diver somebody is, it is a way of, I think, reckoning with mortality, maybe, but also just sort of reckoning with how small we really are. And some people don't like that, but I do. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to go straight to go to existentialism.

Dave Reddy: 10:38

I'm cool with depth. And actually, it's funny you say that. So, you know, as... The other nine listeners know I grew up in Cape Cod. And so I grew up in the ocean too. And I'm a swimmer, but I wouldn't free dive. I never got into scuba or anything like that. And I think both because I grew up there and don't live there anymore. And also just around the same sort of thing you just said, at the risk of getting super deep, the most spiritual I feel is when I step into an ocean. There's something about that. Because at the end of the day, it is, I know we break them up. stupid humans into five different oceans, but it's all one big giant body of water. And that's a pretty spooky idea. And if you don't have respect for the ocean, you will be dead. Yeah. So

Allie Garfinkle: 11:26

very, very, uh, if, if on an unlucky day, it can be really quick. And I think, so I agree. I, I actually do find, I do find the ocean to be a fundamentally spiritual entity as a person who struggles with spirituality, right? I think a lot of people in media struggle maybe struggle with spirituality.

Dave Reddy: 11:45

That's fact, not faith-based.

Allie Garfinkle: 11:47

Well, see, I think that the thing about it, to your point, every body of water is the same body of water, actually, in the end, if it's connected to the ocean. They're all

Dave Reddy: 11:55

that, except for the lakes,

Allie Garfinkle: 11:57

right? Yeah, exactly. They're all that, except for the lakes. But there is a sense of something ancient and continuous. Like there are a lot of creatures in the ocean that have existed long before humans did and will exist long after. And I

Dave Reddy: 12:11

hope I never meet them.

Allie Garfinkle: 12:12

And you're like, I would like to see none of them. See, I'm the weirdo, Dave, who's like, I kind of would actually like to see them. Oh my gosh, what is it called? I believe the book is called The Deepest Map. It is about the sort of quest to map the deepest points in the ocean. And spoiler alert, It's insane. It's an insane process.

Dave Reddy: 12:36

I read a different book about this. Sorry, you finish your thought.

Allie Garfinkle: 12:39

There are actually a couple. It's also possible I've gotten the name wrong. And if I did, I am so sorry because I read it a couple of years ago. That writer did a fabulous job.

Dave Reddy: 12:49

It was a woman sports writer. The one I read. Oh

Allie Garfinkle: 12:53

my God.

Dave Reddy: 12:53

We'll tell you at the end in the outro.

Allie Garfinkle: 12:58

I forget what her name was, but it published in like 2013. And it was, it was, and I read it in like a weekend. Right. She

Dave Reddy: 13:07

hooked up with a couple of guys who do this for like fun and basically went to every deepest point in every ocean. Yes.

Allie Garfinkle: 13:17

Yeah. Yes. It was awesome. And it's, and I'm, and part of me is like, God, she has, she's onto something. Maybe I should, maybe this whole tech and finance thing, maybe I've got this all wrong. Yeah.

Dave Reddy: 13:26

I don't know though. And you know, then you, then you think about the dudes who went looking for the Titanic and, uh, At least they didn't suffer. So, well, this has been definitely the most interesting first 10 minutes of the show I've ever had. I almost don't want to move on to the other stuff, but I think we have to.

Allie Garfinkle: 13:42

This is now a podcast about you two deep cuts in the

Dave Reddy: 13:48

ocean. I'm going to skip your love of magic and pipe organs just because we do need to get into your career. But I just, I do want to list that out. Theater, scuba, freediving, magic, and pipe organs and a talented alto singer. That is, you know, as we say in Passover, Dayenu. That would have been enough.

Allie Garfinkle: 14:15

I just gave you, did I give you too much information?

Dave Reddy: 14:20

No, this is awesome. So after all that. After basically writing stories of your own and your childhood, what got you, and you mentioned it a little bit before, but what did get you interested in storytelling? Were you doing journalism while you were doing theater or was that something you picked up later?

Allie Garfinkle: 14:36

So I was the managing editor of my high school newspaper and thought I would never go into journalism is the honest to God truth. I'd always been interested in storytelling. I've always loved documentaries. I'm a big Errol Morris fan. I've also always loved nonfiction writing. The first nonfiction I ever remember really loving, and I know this is going to sound insane, is Robert K. Massey's Peter the Great. Okay. Have you ever read this? It is now on

Dave Reddy: 15:07

my list. I love reading nonfiction histories to that and put it on my list.

Allie Garfinkle: 15:11

It is an incredibly colorful portrait. of Peter the Great, who was an incredibly colorful guy. And I read it probably when I was 12. It was a book my dad just had around the house. And it was this kind of incredible resurrection of a person who's been dead for hundreds of years. And I thought that was, I remember being entranced by that in a way I couldn't explain. And as I got older, I had a creative writing teacher who introduced me to David Sedaris' work pretty early. And I really became interested in essay writing. Oh yeah, that's okay. Really?

Dave Reddy: 16:03

Sort

Allie Garfinkle: 16:04

of like journalism. Yeah, journalism actually has paid my bills for quite a while. I'm not nothing to brag about, but it's a living, you know? That's what's great when you start at the absolute bottom of the barrel. But no, the truth is, it was 2016. I was sort of puttering about in Chicago. I was actually working on a production of Death of the Salesman at the time. You know, Trump had been elected pretty recently at that point. And I was looking at sort of I did a very honest assessment of my life like one does when they are 23, 22. And I sort of decided that theater wasn't going to have the kind of impact I really wanted. I was doing some documentary theater work at the time, too. And I realized the thing I loved the most was interviewing people. So I messed around with that for a while. I spent some time volunteering at a military museum in Chicago doing interviews. I actually learned to interview people and realized I really liked it from the perspective of oral history and documentary theater. Yeah. I know that the deadline's passed, but I would love to start a conversation for next year. If it's possible to apply this year, I still would love to. He got on a call and he let me apply, and that actually started my career. Economic stories are stories about people, often some of the most high-stakes stories. Sure. And that was, I think, that was sort of the case I made, basically, in saying, look, I know how to tell stories. I know I'm a weirdo, but... I think I could maybe do this. And he said, sure. And they gave me a scholarship. To this day, I know there's a lot of controversy over whether journalism school is a good idea for people. I can't speak to anyone else, but I can say it was for me. I don't have a career without NYU's business and economic reporting program. I don't, full stop. They really took a chance on me in a way that it's hard to articulate just how insane I realize that is now. What a decade later almost.

Dave Reddy: 18:35

Well, you know, they obviously knew what they were doing. So you've worked at Forbes, you've worked at The Deal, you've worked at FT, you've worked at Yahoo Finance, and of course, now you're at Fortune. You were working at Forbes as an intern during your time at NYU, I believe, and then writing for The Deal before you finished your master's. Was that part of getting the master's or was getting a master's just too boring for you?

Music: 19:01

Yeah.

Allie Garfinkle: 19:02

Oh, Dave, I got so lucky. I got so, so lucky. So part of the master's is that you have to have an internship. Of course. Forbes, give him a lot of credit. I was an intern on the billionaire's team. I took a test, basically. And they were like, she did good on the test. She has no clips. Let's let her hang out for three months. So that was helpful. And then the Dow Jones News Fund matched me with The Street, which at the time owned The Deal. And the editor at The Deal is a guy named Mike Brown, who, other than Steve Solomon, is the other person who I completely give credit for starting my career with. Mike Mike basically looked at the pile of interns and said, that one's mine. And I was I was that. And he he offered me a job after after a couple of months. So I basically at the very sort of at the very end of grad school, I I was I was I already had a job, which was yeah, which was, you know. the dream scenario like I can't it wasn't nothing's perfect ever but my god I that doesn't happen it's actually I have a lot of feelings about this I think because it's a really hard time to start in journalism and I I was so lucky and I didn't even realize how lucky I was at the time So that's how it all got started. You

Dave Reddy: 20:32

never do it.

Allie Garfinkle: 20:33

Yeah. No, you never do. You're just kind of hanging out saying, oh, this seems kind of interesting. Right. Someone did something exceptional for you and you only realize like a decade later that it was actually a life-changing thing they did for you.

Dave Reddy: 20:46

Right. The forks in the road that don't look like forks at the moment. So you took the path– to continue the fork analogy, you took the path into financial journalism. You mentioned before that you see– economics, story about economics, story about money, stories about people. So explain that a little bit more. I mean, because obviously you've hit a niche and you've kept going with it, although you branched a little bit into tech. So what is it that fascinates you about that money and people?

Allie Garfinkle: 21:17

Well, everyone's fascinated with money, aren't they? Right? I am.

Dave Reddy: 21:22

I'd like to have more.

Allie Garfinkle: 21:24

Well, let's say everybody... I remember I knew I did the right thing deciding to do economic journalism as far back as being an intern at Forbes, actually, when I would be in these conversations. I did a lot of the shipping billionaires that year on the billionaires list. When I realized I was having conversations with people about how much they are worth, and I realized nobody wanted it to be accurate. They wanted it to seem like they either had more than they had or less than they had. And I was like, this is so interesting. And I mean, it's a sort of, I mean, if you think about sort of just pieces of just, you know, just great stories in history, right? A lot of them are stories that are implicitly about money. A lot of them are implicitly about power, right? Shakespeare, right? What is the merchant of Venice about, ladies and gentlemen? Or if you think about something like King Lear, yes, we're talking about power politically, but we're also talking about financial resources. That is where so much tension is just created. I also just do think that, particularly in M&A, where I've sort of funneled, weaved in and out of throughout my whole career, You know, it's a fault line. That kind of exchange is a fault line. No company acquires another company, pays $100 million for it, let's say, unless there's something they really need. So it's important to figure out what that is. No company raises more capital unless that's something they really need or unless it's something they've convinced themselves that they need, which are two separate things. And sort of in the middle of the AI boom, you know, There's something I think really interesting happening where, you know, I mean, the Overton window has shifted so far that we're now seeing, you know, $2 billion seed rounds like for Thinking Machines Lab, right? But that would have been unheard of five years ago. like five years ago, not that long ago, right? So I think it's, and I think that is indicative of something. It's indicative of not only just the level of capital flowing through the system, but the ways in which the narrative has changed about opportunity. And I think there's, and I think the ways in which capital flows tells stories, tells narrative stories, we just don't always pay attention to what those are. Because a lot of reporting, and no shade on this at all, I've done these scoops too, is X company pays X million dollars for this company, right? Like there's nothing wrong with that, but actually a lot of the time there is a very good reason why that has happened. And sometimes there's some really colorful characters at the center of it. So if you're someone like me who is interested in why people make an ambition, is interested in high stakes decisions, is interested in what it actually means to build a truly excellent business, it is a very interesting corner in which to live your life. I mean, money also just has like a very, if you want to talk about history, right? Money has an interesting history too, right? It actually has come to mean a lot of different things. And we're actually in, if you look at what's happened with crypto, if you look at sort of how payments have evolved over the last few years, especially, what money actually means also changes over time in ways that are, I think, interesting to track. I recognize it's a long answer, but it's something I do think about a lot.

Dave Reddy: 24:55

I mean, it's fundamental to what you do. Now, I want to go back to the AI boom in a second, but first, you did make a switch to tech. Was that an accident? Were you thinking, all right, the money's going into tech? What was the reason for first Yahoo Finance and now focusing on tech for

Allie Garfinkle: 25:10

the most part? I love how you assign so much logic to what I've done. No, I... Okay, I'm going to say something that might be slightly controversial. I think most people who go into business journalism want to cover tech at some point. They're the biggest businesses in the world. They are often so mired in controversy if they get big enough for long enough. The people who run them are all fascinating in ways that are good and bad. And I think tech also, the thing I always found really intriguing about tech is it's like the sector where everything escalates so quickly. It's like, remember that escalated quickly bit from Anchorman or whatever it is? That's tech. It starts with, oh, this is kind of cool. It can kill us all. And that's fascinating. I'm sure there are people who would fight me on this, but I actually think anyone who is interested in being a financial journalist at some point has the idea they'd want to cover tech. The way Yahoo Finance happened is, I'll be honest, the first time I remember thinking vividly that I was interested in covering tech was when Amazon acquired Whole Foods. That's such a weird memory to have, but I remember thinking, that's fascinating and an effort towards a kind of ubiquity that is, I find, sort of scary, but is maybe also brilliant.

Dave Reddy: 26:34

It's important to remind people that Amazon started out as an online bookseller. I don't know how many people actually remember that.

Allie Garfinkle: 26:42

I think about that all the time, Dave. All the time. Because there's a lot of... I mean, NVIDIA started as a gaming chip company, right? And I think about that all the time with these startups that come to me where someone will say, oh, it's just this right now. And I say, well, okay, but what could it be? What are we actually talking about here? Especially if you are VCs. And one of the things that's great about VCs is they're very good at articulating this sometimes a little too good for their own good, where I think they can convince themselves of things that maybe are a little bit of a stretch, but also a lot of things like this become a stretch, right? So all of this, I mean, all of this to say, I do, the way Yahoo happened, you know, I'd always kind of wanted to cover tech and they, you know, you know, for whatever reason, I was covering a lot of insure tech at the time. So for whatever reason, I somehow convinced them that they should let me cover Amazon. Of

Dave Reddy: 27:39

course.

Allie Garfinkle: 27:40

Right. Like I actually like, again, like one of those steps. Makes total sense. Yeah. One of those steps in a person's life where I look at it and I go, wait, really? Like they bought that story. I actually, I've had conversations with some of the folks who've hired me since, who hired me over there since. A lot of them have left Amazon. But they basically sort of said, look, we thought you'd be good on camera. You didn't seem scared. And you really, really, really, really wanted to do it. And I was like, I did really, really, really want to do it. So that's how that transition happened. I tech, I don't see sort of the tech and finance angles as being at odds. Like I am, as it stands at Fortune, I am the senior finance reporter on the tech desk. And that is how I like it. I think I will never, I think it's important to know your, know your your skill set, I know I'm never going to be the most technical reporter out there. And it's not what I aspire to. I aspire to know just enough that I'm dangerous. But what I want to know is how the money is flowing, why the thing works, if the thing works, which is very important and underrated, and what this all could be and what it all could actually mean. Because tech is very existential, right? And that's what I like about it.

Dave Reddy: 28:49

It's, you know, when you read history, it's hard to imagine what life was like before the Industrial Revolution. And now I can imagine what life was like before the internet. Most people can't. Well, I should say most people, but people younger than me can't. But it is amazing. And it bears repeating that the internet, the public internet, I was 23 years old, 22 years old when that came online in 1993. And it's hard to imagine what the hell we did. How did I go to college without the-

Allie Garfinkle: 29:15

Yeah, what did you do? Well, it's funny. I was talking to someone who's quite a bit younger than I am. Who has no conception of the world before social media?

Dave Reddy: 29:26

Oh, I so wish we hadn't invented that. But at any rate, that's another podcast

Allie Garfinkle: 29:31

altogether. I mean, my dad has a joke that there are no good old days before indoor plumbing. There were good old days before social media, but actually there are so many little things when I think about sort of a post-internet existence that I actually don't know how to do. I know how to read a map. Depending on the map, but it would take me a lot longer than looking it up on my phone. You know, it's technology does change our world in ways that are unassailably true. You

Dave Reddy: 30:01

know, just, I mean, who walks through a city that they don't know anymore without their phone out going, okay, I need to go here. I need to go there. Right. I mean, you know, back in the day, you just walked around until you found where you were going or ask for directions. Oh my God. We had to talk to people. So you also write the term sheet. And you mentioned before that we're all seeing the obvious patterns with AI, the big rounds and so forth. What other patterns are you seeing as you write that newsletter on the regular? What are other things that are popping or not popping as tech evolves this year?

Allie Garfinkle: 30:37

So I get a lot of incoming, as you can imagine.

Dave Reddy: 30:40

Oh, I can imagine. I send something.

Allie Garfinkle: 30:43

Yes. Yeah, please send it my way. Because I actually know, and it's the sort of thing I apologize to people all the time because I cannot answer every single thing, but I like to see as much as possible. Sure. You know, the amount of money being funneled into AI is absolutely staggering. I sometimes will look at something and I'll say, Really? Like how many times how many times a week, Dave, I sit there and look at a 15 to 35 million series A that is AI for X. It happens. It happens. It is essentially a constant stream. And it's the sort of thing, like sometimes I've sat there and I've wondered, I was like, how many, how many of these could I stack up? How could I stack up into billions of dollars? And I'm just like, no, no, no, let's not, let's not even try. But it's, it's truly staggering and it's happening. And the ones we talk about are the $2 billion seed rounds, like thinking machines, which of course we're talking about because it just happened this week. But, you know, it's happening across the ecosystem, right? You know, there's a, I was talking, I saw a 50 million seed round last a couple of days ago, $50 million for a seed round. Seed. Which, yeah, that is more money than Google ever raised, I believe. It's the sort of thing that it's kind of unfathomable. And the thing I think about all the time is, look, this is like sea turtles. Not everyone's going to make it to the shore here, people. Back to the ocean. Yeah, back to the ocean, full circle. So the thing that I'm... I think I'm going to keep seeing that trend for a while where I just keep seeing these series A's, these like large seeds and series A's sort of just piling on up in sort of AI for X territory. Other things that I think are intriguing, fintech had a rough couple of years and I'm now seeing some really good fintech deals. in the mix, right? In part, that's aided because crypto is so back, but that's not all it is. I think there is definitely, despite a couple of serious controversies and some very difficult regulatory problems, people really want to be investing in fintech. Stripe may or may not go public someday, who knows? But Stripe's existence on its own sort of proves that to their point, the GDP of the internet is massive, right? And that there actually are better financial services opportunities out there. You know, you see that with success of like, like Stripe competitor, Adyen, right? So I think there's, I think FinTech is, FinTech is in a good spot right now. Exits are really interesting because on one hand, we have more, we've seen, We've got much better news than we've had in a while. We have a couple of IPOs that have actually gone out or are heading out. Figma is the next one that's sort of set as we're talking right now. I don't know if by the time this is out, Figma will be out in the world. But you could argue the public. I know one CEO who is now a public market CEO. He argues the public markets are always open for great companies. And I think that is both true and untrue. I think there are better times than others. So it's the sort of thing that in terms of exits, I think it's not a bad time. I don't think it's a good time either. And I guess the last thing I would say is that there is actually a lot of really interesting stuff happening that's not expressly AI. There's stuff that might use AI. Like I've been covering some ag tech recently and it's great. That's actually a really important time for people to be building technology for farmers in the United States. And that's been really edifying because a lot of those companies are just ripping. Right. I mean, defense tech obviously has its own has its own corner of the universe. You know, I live in L.A. El Segundo is right there and is also ripping. But I think with fewer proof points about how this is all going to play out over time. And I think I think there are some smaller niche area. I'll just say what I'm getting at, I guess, is that I think there's some smaller niche areas that are doing really well with some startups that are doing some really interesting work that are we're going to wake up in a couple of years and they're going to be giants. And they won't expressly be AI. And actually, that's for the best.

Dave Reddy: 35:24

Let's talk about the show. And by the show, I mean, well, first of all,

Allie Garfinkle: 35:27

congratulations.

Dave Reddy: 35:28

Congratulations. You're about to launch, as of this taping, and you'll probably have a few done by then, you're about to launch the Term Sheet podcast, which we're all looking forward to. Yes. It's going to be great. But I wanted to talk about Brainstorm, which you, of course, are a co-chair of Fortune Brainstorm Tech, which is happening in September. in Utah, correct?

Allie Garfinkle: 35:51

Yes, sir.

Dave Reddy: 35:52

Absolutely. Right.

Allie Garfinkle: 35:53

It's a, it's so pretty. It's a lovely place. I can't believe I get to go hang out there.

Dave Reddy: 35:59

So what, what do you, as you are developing the show in conjunction with Andrew Nuska, our past guest, what he mentioned to me that you were focused more on round tables this year than one off interviews. Why the shift?

Allie Garfinkle: 36:15

So to be clear, we're still doing one-off interviews. There's going to be quite a few of them. But yeah, we definitely decided we wanted to extend our roundtable program because the rule at Brainstorm is that everybody who's in the audience can be on stage. And we decided we wanted to give a lot of those folks more speaking opportunities, more chances to sort of not only for us as journalists to be able to cover some of the things they say, but to sort of give them the chance to really have a conversation and sort of facilitate that conversation. Like we're starting this process. We're starting this event, you know, so within Brainstorm, this event called an Insight Exchange. And when Insight Exchanges is, it's going to be kind of town hall-y. There's going to be, you know, eight to 10 speakers, which is going to be a task for moderators like me, of course, but is going to be a chance to kind of have a rollicking, wide-ranging conversation. And we want to have as many of those as possible because, you know, Andrew Nuska, shout out, we love that guy. He's the greatest. We do not have enough time for me to say all of the nice things about Andrew Nuska, but he is somebody who's been... a wonderful mentor and teacher to me, but also I think is really doing a good job of saying, okay, why actually do people go to brainstorm? Because, you know, I mean, after the pandemic, it was a question worth asking, right? If all events kind of had to change, had to sort of change or die. And Andrew really has done a good job of articulating to me, why bother? Which is, you know, people go to brainstorm to brainstorm. The goal is to be in a room with as many high profile people Thank you so much. That's what you want it to be. You want it to be like the best discussion section ever from like your social sciences class in college. And it is, and you know, it has in my, as we've been doing it, really, really been that. So I'll just say, why do we do roundtables? So we can have more literal brainstorms is the short answer.

Dave Reddy: 38:34

Great. Well, as PR people, we like it. That means we have more opportunities to get speakers on.

Music: 38:38

Yeah.

Dave Reddy: 38:39

Another question I know you guys are constantly asking yourselves these days is you've got Fortune Brainstorm AI around the world, but in the United States, it'll be in December here in San Francisco, and you've got Brainstorm Tech. There must be some serious thinking to make sure that Brainstorm Tech these days in particular just isn't a preview or a larger version of Brainstorm AI. How do you pull that off?

Allie Garfinkle: 39:04

You know, it's interesting you say that because I actually have... In some ways, it is easier than you would expect because when you're doing Brainstorm AI, it's a slightly different audience. It's a lot, there's a lot of overlap, but it is, you know, especially like Brainstorm AI San Francisco, for example, will attract a very specific audience that is very, very San Francisco, very like CTO, very, very, very focused on sort of research in some cases too. Whereas like Brainstorm, Brainstorm tech is broader. You know, there are, Like, for example, a lot of fintech. doesn't fall into the category of what you would talk about it, what you would talk about a brainstorm AI or, and a lot of crypto for that matter. You know, EVs, for example, are something that, you know, we're going to be touching on a brainstorm tech this year. And like, could you do that a brainstorm AI? Yeah, absolutely. But it would have to be through kind of a very specific lens. So I think there's brainstorm tech is kind of really the flagship where everything that we wouldn't necessarily talk about an AI happens there. It's also this Yeah. To me, brainstorm tech is also an opportunity, as much as it is to talk about AI, to have a conversation about where venture capital as a whole is headed right now. Because actually, independent of AI, venture capital is in the midst of a sea change. And as a maturing asset class kind of needs to figure out what it wants to be, or rather firms need to figure out who they want to be and kind of place their bets as it were. So I think what I would say is that There are some folks who are like, oh, this is brainstorm AI all the way. And there are some folks who are like, oh, this is a brainstorm tech thing. And then there's a lot, to your point, there are a lot of things in the middle because everything it does feel like is AI right now. That being said, I think there's just so much, there really is just so much opportunity when you expand beyond AI too. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Dave Reddy: 41:16

Talk to me about, we mentioned earlier about chaos and so forth. A question I've been asking everybody this year is, second Trump presidency, he seems to do well in chaos, not making a political statement that he just does.

Allie Garfinkle: 41:30

I would say that's a statement of fact.

Dave Reddy: 41:33

Yep. And you mentioned earlier that chaos for the markets, as he himself has seen, as we have all seen, is not necessarily a good thing, at least for a couple of days and then Maybe it goes away, maybe it doesn't. You guys are covering technology, which I think Washington is more involved with now more than ever, particularly under his presidency. The Musk-Trump romance has ended, but there was that whole thing going on.

Allie Garfinkle: 41:57

It was a doomed romance from the beginning. Yes. A tragic love story.

Dave Reddy: 42:01

Yeah. No, that was definitely not going to work. But at any rate, how do you folks address a topic like that at Brainstorm without turning it into Brainstorm Trump?

Allie Garfinkle: 42:15

Ooh, brainstorm Trump. What an event that would

Dave Reddy: 42:20

be. I want a royalty.

Allie Garfinkle: 42:23

Hey, Andrew, I have a great idea. We're going to do brainstorm Trump. Yeah, no, I mean, to your point, there are a few figures, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, anything they do seems to overshadow absolutely anything else going on at that moment. The answer is thoughtfully. Right. You know, we are there's only so much I can disclose as we're talking here because there are some conversations that are still happening. But we've definitely been talking about what it means to have a political presence at Brainstorm and what it actually means to sort of treat that with the correct amount of journalistic skepticism and also sort of actually. talk about what's newsworthy. Because the thing about anything with covering this administration is the puck is going to move so fast somewhere else, you don't even know what's newsworthy anymore sometimes. Did this just make headlines, or should we actually be talking about this as a sustainable change? So all of this to say, the answer is carefully. The answer is with an eye towards facts, an eye towards Actual policy and not just rhetoric. And particularly, I would say, as pertains to tech, yes, it's this, you know, my colleague Leo, who writes Termsheet on Mondays, and we call this the A16Z White House, venture capital in particular, has never been more effective. present in an administration in a lot of ways. Now, I'm sure there are arguments you could make, but it's particularly hard to ignore. And I would say that we approach it at Brainstorm, at least from an editorial programming perspective, the way I approach it as a journalist, which is hear everybody out, have the thoughtful conversation, ask the hard questions, always respectfully, and you do the story. And the thing about live journalism that is great is in a lot of ways, it's the same process. You sit there, you look at a situation, you say, okay, what does an audience really need to know about this? What questions do I need to hold this person to account to answer? And that is a thing I do really appreciate. I think about when I started doing interviews on the Fortune Media side, they were very supportive. I was like, okay, I've got to go in on this. And they were like, go do whatever you need to do. They get mad at you. Oh, well, we can blame the journalist. I'm like, great, perfect. I would love to be blamed. So I think that it's the sort of thing too, where it's also the last thing I would say about it too, is it's important to know what's important to your audience. And I will say that is something that I think about a lot. And the answer depends. Like I'm working on a defense tech session, for example. What does a brainstorm audience really want to know about the state of defense tech? I have some theories, but The thing that I will actually do before I get on that stage with those folks is I will actually ask a couple of Brainstorm members what they want me to ask. And I would say that that is true of anything like this. And I'll insert all of this to apply to stuff around Elon, too. I mean, just put them all in that generalized, very large vicinity.

Dave Reddy: 45:26

This may not be as applicable a question to someone who's doing mostly live journalism, but how are you using AI at Fortune?

Allie Garfinkle: 45:35

I mean, for what it's worth, I write a newsletter every day. You know, most days, right? You know, Fortune actually just started a program called Fortune Intelligence where they're sort of experimenting with AI-generated articles. I'm not involved with that. For me, personally... I've found that Fortune's done a really good job of giving us the tools to say, go try this out and see if it works for you. For instance, Allison, our editor-in-chief, has done a really good job with perplexity. And she's been like, look, we have a perplexity partnership. You all should go try using this, see if it works. I know there's quite a bit of controversy around perplexity, but I will say... As a product, it's really good. And it's actually really helpful for what I do where I'm on deadline and I have to sort of aggregate a bunch of information and say, wait, what do I actually need to know about this? It does a really good job. So I definitely do that. I have definitely used ChatGPT to check for typos at a panic. That definitely happens too. Though I will say, you know, the biggest, I actually, my theory is that I'm exactly the right age in certain ways. Because I actually remember, I remember the world before social media. And I remember the world doing journalism before auto-generated transcripts. And I

Dave Reddy: 46:49

have

Allie Garfinkle: 46:51

criticisms of Otter.ai. I don't I don't think their transcripts are necessarily very good. I think they could be better. That being said, do I pay for that no matter what compel or high water? Absolutely. It's the... It's the sort of thing where I think I think it's kind of hard to overstate how much easier a journalist's life gets when you're not doing your own transcription, at least not constantly. So the it's the sort of thing that I think about. Do you know those old movies, Dave, about journalists like a Billy Wilder movie where the journalist like runs to the payphone

Dave Reddy: 47:24

and

Allie Garfinkle: 47:29

like calls the editor? And it's, it's like, and it's the sort of thing, like sometimes I'll watch that. I'll be like, God, technology could not move as fast as journalists could at that time. But also at the time, like I do think about sort of my, my, my ancestors didn't have tools that I have either. My ancestors had to go roll back the tape and listen to things over and over again. So I think there's, there's all of this to say, like, I'm, I'm a big fan of the tools, keep the tools coming. I actually think there's, Someone somewhere in the world, I hope, is working on a great fact-checking machine for stories. Because I actually would love that the best case of AI be not that there is inaccurate slop and misinformation published online, but that actually stories are more accurate than ever.

Dave Reddy: 48:20

Hallucinations. We could do without those. They'll get... There, I think, I hope.

Allie Garfinkle: 48:27

The thing about hallucinations is I think I've talked to a lot of folks about this. Hallucinations are an inevitability and they will be different than the things a human would hallucinate. So it's the sort of thing that I think that part of it is taking the crickets with the straights. But also, I do really think that we could get to the place where that level of error exists. becomes negligible and maybe unfortunate sometimes, but at the average, like if the answer is, I think there is a tool to be created. I'm not the one to make it. I don't have the expertise, but I do feel, I don't know. I feel very, I feel very, I feel anxious and hopeful about you're scaring every

Dave Reddy: 49:05

professional copy editor out there.

Allie Garfinkle: 49:09

They're actually, we still need human copy editors. We actually still need more human copy editors is my personal opinion, but that's a separate conversation.

Dave Reddy: 49:16

By the way, I did look it up and I don't know if it's the book you read, but I was referring to Underworld by Susan Casey. Oh. We can go back to our deep sea diving conversation.

Allie Garfinkle: 49:29

Okay. I was referring to, hold on, we're going to look it up right now. The deepest- It's the David Alley Book

Dave Reddy: 49:35

Club.

Allie Garfinkle: 49:37

Yes, the David Alley Book Club. Books about the ocean. The deepest map, the high stakes race to chart the world's oceans by Laura Trethelewy? If I mispronounce her name, I am very sorry. But it's a fabulous

Dave Reddy: 49:51

book. All right. I'm going to order that. And you should too. Yes, I

Allie Garfinkle: 49:56

would go order

Dave Reddy: 49:56

Underworld. Yeah, and order Underworld. It was great. All right. So my last question is always a little fun. Actually, this was all fun, but let's have some real fun. So you have lived in four of the biggest cities, three of the biggest cities, and then one in the top 15 at least. Miami, Chicago, New York. or L.A.?

Allie Garfinkle: 50:16

I have a particular love for Los Angeles. I live here right now, so I don't want to insult my current love. Yeah, I try not to bite the hand that feeds me, especially because you want the traffic gods on your side in this town. But no, L.A. is funny because my husband and I moved here in 2020. I thought I would stay a year, and now I can't imagine leaving. I might someday, but L.A. is... LA is a place that's still got a little magic on it in a way that, and that's like nowhere I've ever been. It's crazy. Don't get me wrong. It's insane. But I like, as we've established here, I love crazy.

Dave Reddy: 50:53

Which seems like a perfect way to end this really fun

Allie Garfinkle: 51:00

interview. First five minutes of anywhere. It's like, okay. So she likes, she likes, she likes, she likes crazy from Miami. Makes all sense.

Dave Reddy: 51:08

That will be the headline.

Music: 51:10

Yeah.

Dave Reddy: 51:11

Allie, thanks so much for your time. That was a whole lot of fun. I really appreciate it. And good luck with the podcast and best of luck at the show in September.

Allie Garfinkle: 51:19

Thank you so much, Dave.

Dave Reddy: 51:21

I'd like to thank you all for listening today. And once again, a big thank you to our guest, Allie Garfinkel of Fortune. Join us again next month when we celebrate our third anniversary with a special episode, theme still to be determined. Surprise is coming. In the meantime... If you've got feedback on today's podcast, or if you'd like to learn more about Big Valley Marketing and how we identified the B2B Tech Top 200, be sure to drop me an email at dready at bigvalley.co. That's D-R-E-D-D-Y at bigvalley, all one word, .co. No M. You can also email the whole team at pressingmatters at bigvalley.co. Once again, thanks for listening. And as always, think big.