You cannot apply for Fortune’s 40 Under 40. There is no nomination portal, no entry fee, no essay prompt and no deadline to circle. Every year, founders and executives search for the form and come up empty, then assume they missed it. They did not miss anything. The list is built by Fortune’s editors, and the only way onto it is to be someone those editors already know about, or can find in about ten minutes of research.
That makes the question of how to get on Fortune 40 Under 40 different from most award lists. You are not writing an application. You are building a public record that a business reporter would find, trust and want to write about. This guide explains how the list works, who decides, and the specific steps that put you on an editor’s radar before the selection meetings start.
How Does Fortune Build the List?
Fortune first published 40 Under 40 in 2009 as a ranking of the most powerful young people in business. For years it was a single list of 40. In 2020 the magazine expanded it to 200 people, naming 40 in each of five fields: finance, technology, healthcare, government and politics, and media and entertainment. Later editions have changed format again, which tells you something important. The list is an editorial product, and editors reshape it to fit the story they want to tell that year.
The selection process is internal. Reporters and editors pitch candidates from their beats, debate them, check facts and cut the list down. The people they pitch tend to come from three places: companies and leaders Fortune has already covered, names that surface through trusted sources such as investors, executives and past honorees, and people who are visibly shaping a trend the magazine is writing about.
That last group is the one most outsiders overlook. Fortune likes lists that reflect the moment. In a year dominated by AI, the list leans toward people building and deploying it. In a year when public health is front of mind, healthcare leaders get more room. If your work sits at the center of a story Fortune is already telling, you start with an advantage.
Is There Any Way to Nominate Someone?
There is no official channel, but there are unofficial ones. Reporters at Fortune, as at any publication, take story tips. A credible person who emails a Fortune reporter about a rising executive, with specific results and links, is providing exactly the kind of tip that can land on a list discussion. What does not work is a mass pitch to the newsroom asking for consideration. That reads as a PR campaign, and editors are wary of lists that look bought.
The safest approach is indirect. Instead of pitching yourself for the list, pitch stories about your work to the reporters who cover your sector. Every useful story a reporter writes about you, or every time they quote you as a source, adds to their memory of who matters in that space. When list season comes, they already have a file in their head.
What Do the Editors Actually Reward?
Look at past lists and the pattern is consistent. Honorees tend to have power, scale or influence that is obvious to someone outside their company.
Power usually means a senior role at a large or fast-growing organization: a chief executive, a founder of a company valued in the billions, a top executive at a major brand, or an elected official. Scale means the work touches a lot of people or a lot of money. Influence means the person is shaping how others in the field think, through products, policy, public writing or deals.
Fortune is also a business magazine before it is anything else. A celebrated creative or activist may make a list elsewhere and not fit here. The magazine wants to explain who is moving markets and companies. If your story cannot be told in business terms, with revenue, valuation, customers, deals or policy outcomes, it is a harder fit.
Build the Editor Radar Map
At Instant Press we use a tool called the Editor Radar Map for lists that have no application. It is a one-page grid that tracks how visible a person is to the specific editors who will decide.
Down the left side, list the Fortune reporters and editors who cover your sector. You can find them by reading recent Fortune coverage of your industry and noting the bylines. Most beats have one to three people who matter. Across the top, put four columns: read (have they written about your company or competitors), quoted (have they quoted you), met (have you spoken to them, even briefly), and referred (has someone they trust mentioned you to them).
Fill it in honestly. Most people who want to be on the list have zero marks in every column. That is the real gap, and it is fixable. Your goal over twelve to eighteen months is to move each of those key reporters from blank to at least two marks. Two marks means your name will come up in the room. Four marks means someone is likely to argue for you.
Get Covered Before You Get Listed
The fastest way to move across the map is earned media in Fortune itself. Fortune runs daily newsletters and sector coverage that need sources constantly. Founders who offer a useful data point, a sharp take on a trend, or access to an interesting customer story can get quoted far sooner than they expect.
Start by studying what each reporter writes. Some focus on deals and funding, some on leadership and management, some on a specific industry. Pitch each person something that fits their beat, with a clear news hook. A funding round, a major customer win, a first-of-its-kind product, or proprietary data on your industry all qualify. A pitch that says “our CEO is a visionary” does not.
Timing matters too. Fortune’s list typically comes out in the second half of the year, and reporters build their candidate pools in the months before. A strong story in the first half of the year has time to register. A story that runs a week before publication usually does not.
Be patient with the relationship. Reporters remember sources who were helpful, accurate and easy to work with, and who did not ask for something in return every time. Answer their questions quickly, share data they can use even when it does not feature you, and point them to other good sources. That reputation builds slowly, but it is the kind that gets your name raised in a list meeting.
Coverage in other respected business outlets also counts. Fortune reporters read the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Business Insider, TechCrunch and the leading trade press in their sector. A strong profile or a well-placed quote in any of them is something they will see or find when they google you.
Make Your Public Record Easy to Verify
When an editor considers you, they will search your name. What they find in the first page of results shapes the decision.
Your company’s leadership page should state your role, your background and your key results in plain language. Your LinkedIn profile should match it, with dates that line up. If you have spoken at conferences, written articles or appeared on podcasts, list them somewhere a reporter can find quickly, such as a press page on your company site. If you have a Google knowledge panel, make sure it is accurate.
Give reporters something original to find. Proprietary data is one of the most reliable ways to get quoted in business coverage. If your company sees trends no one else can see, such as hiring patterns, pricing shifts, or customer behavior, publish a short annual report with the numbers. Reporters search for data, and the person behind a useful dataset becomes a regular source.
Consistency matters more than volume. A reporter who finds three different job titles, two founding dates and an outdated bio will not spend time sorting it out. They will move on to the next candidate. Treat your public record like a fact-checking packet and keep it current.
What If You Are Not the CEO?
Many past honorees were not chief executives. Fortune has named chief operating officers, heads of product, investors, policymakers, chief marketing officers and leaders of major divisions inside large companies. If you hold one of those roles, the path is the same, but the record needs to show your individual impact rather than the company’s.
That is harder inside a big organization, because the company’s communications team usually controls who speaks to the press. Work with them, not around them. Offer to be a spokesperson on the topics where you lead. Volunteer for analyst calls, industry panels and media briefings. Ask to be quoted in announcements about the work you drive. Over time, reporters learn that you are the person to call on a specific subject.
Outside the company, build a public voice that complements your role. Speak at the conferences your sector’s reporters attend. Publish thoughtful articles or posts on the topic you own. Serve on a board or advisory council that gets press. Each of these gives reporters a way to see you as an individual, not just a title on an org chart.
If you are an investor, the record is your portfolio and your public thinking. Fortune’s reporters notice investors who back companies that later become big stories, and who explain their thesis clearly in public. A track record of early bets that paid off, plus a visible point of view, is the investor version of a breakout company.
Pick a Lane and Own It
The people who make lists like this are usually known for one thing. They are the founder who rebuilt pharmacy logistics, the executive who turned around a legacy retail brand, or the policymaker who shaped AI rules in their state. They are not known as general innovators or serial entrepreneurs.
Choose the one story you want to be known for and repeat it everywhere: in pitches, on stage, in your bio, in the articles you write. Over time, reporters connect your name to that story without being told. When Fortune decides which people best represent a theme that year, you want to be the obvious answer.
Fortune’s own 2020 expansion shows why this matters. When the magazine went from 40 names to 200 across five fields, its editors needed far more candidates in a single cycle, and a list built without applications can only draw on people its reporters can see. The candidates who had spent years becoming visible to those reporters were ready for that moment. The ones still looking for an application form were not.