Silicon Valley's in-flight magazine Colossus gives moguls coverage they crave

Colossus is a glossy quarterly magazine and website launched in 2024 by investor and podcast entrepreneur Patrick O’Shaughnessy. It publishes long, carefully photographed profiles of technology founders and financiers who often avoid mainstream media, including Mark Zuckerberg, Joshua Kushner and investors Neil Mehta and Sarah Guo. Its subjects and their peers praise the work, while veteran journalists argue that its access depends on a flattering, lightly skeptical approach. The dispute is whether Colossus offers a meaningful alternative to hostile or superficial coverage - or packages public relations as journalism. Editor Jeremy Stern says the magazine aims to resist subjects’ prewritten narratives and uses independent fact-checkers, but critics note that its profiles rarely confront the figures’ unpopularity or the less flattering parts of their histories.

The magazine echoes earlier efforts by tech companies and investors to build their own media, but stands out for imitating the craft and appearance of upscale literary magazines. Its annual subscription costs $299, yet its value may lie less in sales than in the connections and influence it creates for O’Shaughnessy’s venture firm, Positive Sum. The profiles often cast wealthy founders in familiar stories of perseverance and achievement, while giving limited attention to inherited advantage; examples include the treatment of Kushner’s family history and Zuckerberg’s elite education. Critics compare the project to sophisticated content marketing and warn that sympathetic portrayals may not persuade a broader public. Colossus’s appeal is clearest among the wealthy technology figures who want access, recognition and control over how their careers are told.