I saw a stat the other day that 30 under 30 alums have accounted for something like 2x the amount of fraud $ charges as VC $ raised which I thought was fitting... the list is a magnet for charlatans

It makes sense too. I see being on that list as a negative signal. You’re spending time jumping through the right hoops and social circles to get nominated instead of building.

You can actually nominate yourself for a lot of those. Naturally, that is very attractive to self-aggrandizing bastards with very little to offer to the world.

Costs $30k I believe

What actually happens is the VC firms have a relationship with Forbes and push their most favored start-ups on them. A big chunk of people don’t do anything to get on the list, except write their own bios and of course getting funded by said VCs.

That being said, yes, there’s quite a lot of vain people in there.

The comparison is apples to oranges though. It's like comparing a CEO's claims of future great success to actual shipped units.

To raise funds someone has to actually give up money. When it comes to government prosecution and lawsuits the government and aggrieved parties are more or less free to use motivated reasoning, mental gymnastics and other sorts of faulty logic to make whatever fanciful claims they want so long as there's some shred of a reason for the claim. There's no check being cut, no skin in the game so the numbers aren't ever as grounded in reality as fundraising numbers. These "reality inspired" numbers then gets haggled down to a numbers that are supported by evidence over the course of court proceedings. And then the internet peanut gallery compares the fanciful initial headline to the settlement that is supported by hard evidence and gets their jimmies rustled.

That said I'm sure that list is full of shysters and slime balls.

You forgot Adam Neumann :). Though I don't remember if he was on one of these lists or just the cover page.

It's not that hard to get on the "30 under 30" list assuming you have the right comms advisor. If you've created a startup with decent revenue and raised a decent Series A, it's definetly doable. In fact, I've seen mid-careerish professionals make the list as well because they had the right network.

There are 20 categories, and each category selects around 30 people a year.

Like everything else, if you attended the right colleges (Ivies, Ivy Adjacent Privates, Public Ivies), built a strong enough network there, and worked your butt off initially you're in a good position to join that list in your late 20s.

Yeah, it's actually a "600 under 30" list, every single year.

Yep. In some categories like Music, Entertainment, and Nonprofits the competition is insane, but anything tech related has a magnitude less competition.

Their expertise extends beyond ranking individuals. Witness the accolades they heaped upon SVB shortly before its sudden demise.

Forbes is not at all what it used to be. It's a zombie brand.

Malcolm Forbes must be rolling in his grave.

It used to be one of the big-three US business magazines and IMO had the most character of them. Then post-Malcolm online it started catering to a lot of outside contributors, often with various conflicts of interest, and generally sold its soul for clicks.

I think the outside contributors get paid for views. So you either write baity stuff to make it worth your while, or yeah, you have other interests that make it viable beyond the pay.

Kinda like underpaying engineers and ending up with “great ones that work for cheap” that end up being spies/doing espionage.

And some of it at least was paid placement as well that was theoretically vendor-neutral and reviewed editorially but pretty superficially.

Analysts, consultants, and so forth have long been willing to write for trade pubs for the visibility and maybe a few bucks. But the conflicts of interest have always been a bit problematic if only in them choosing what topics not to dive into. I did a fairly long-time blog for another pub and over time they decided their blog network had gotten too uncomfortable for them.

I remember about 9 years ago the going rate was allegedly $10,000-25,000 to get on the list.

Confirm my hypothesis that "everything is fake".

Just like Guinness World Records, you actually pay to get in the book.