This profile has not been claimed and data may not be accurate.
14th percentile
Emmy-winning WSJ tech journalist turned founder building thenewthings.com
Credibility
GTM / Distribution · 39th percentile
- Current founder of a new consumer-tech media company, thenewthings.com, launched after leaving The Wall Street Journal in early 2026.
Relationship Matrix
Founder score
- 95%Probability of being accurate (95%)Wikipedia page exists for Joanna Stern, confirming her public notability as a technology journalist and media founder.
- 90%Probability of being accurate (90%)Current founder of a new consumer-tech media company, thenewthings.com, launched after leaving The Wall Street Journal in early 2026.
What you likely need
You're a newly minted solo founder with serious brand equity and a ticking clock on audience attention, so your most valuable Festival moments will be high-trust rooms with independent media operators who've already solved the revenue and distribution puzzles you're staring down. You also need warm access to media-focused angels and pre-seed investors who understand editorial businesses, and a peer cohort of fellow institution-to-founder converts who can help you navigate the identity shift without losing momentum.
Would you attend these IRL Festival events?
We will tune and customize your Founder Festival experience to make sure you get invited to the events that would be most valuable to you.
- positioningA dinner with founders of The Information, Puck, and Defector to pressure-test whether thenewthings.com should lead with subscription, sponsorship, or a hybrid model before you lock in your pitch narrative
- fundraisingA roundtable with media-focused angels and pre-seed investors who've backed Substack, Puck, and The Ankler to explore what a compelling thenewthings.com raise looks like given your Emmy credential and 21,000+ LinkedIn following
- introsA happy hour with Substack alumni operators and Puck early employees for warm introductions to the investors and business-development leads who funded and scaled those independent editorial ventures
- tacticalA tactical dinner with newsletter and YouTube-first media founders — including Stratechery and Morning Brew alumni — focused specifically on converting a legacy institutional audience into owned-channel subscribers before the WSJ halo fades
- hiringAn office-hours session with founders who've made early hires at independent media companies to identify and vet candidates with video production or business-development backgrounds who can reduce your single-founder operational risk at thenewthings.com
- positioningA lunch with founders who've successfully used mainstream broadcast or podcast platforms — including CNBC contributors and NPR alumni who've launched independent ventures — to map out how your NBC News Chief Technology Analyst platform can systematically funnel audiences to thenewthings.com
- wellbeingA peer support dinner for journalists and editors who've left top-tier institutions — WSJ, NYT, Bloomberg — to found independent media companies, focused on the identity and operational challenges of going solo for the first time