 | |
 Winter 2023 cover, featuring Marques Brownlee | |
| Editor | Brendan Vaughan |
|---|---|
| Categories | Business magazine |
| Frequency | Quarterly |
| Publisher | Fast Company, Inc. |
| Total circulation (June 2012) | 757,858 [1] |
| First issue | November 1995 |
| Company | Mansueto Ventures |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Website | www |
| ISSN | 1085-9241 |
Fast Company is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year.
Fast Company was launched in November 1995 [2] [3] by Alan Webber and Bill Taylor, two former Harvard Business Review editors, and publisher Mortimer Zuckerman. [4] [5] The publication's early competitors included Red Herring , Business 2.0 and The Industry Standard . [6]
In 1997, Fast Company created an online social network, the "Company of Friends" which spawned a number of groups that began meeting. [7] At one point the Company of Friends had over 40,000 members in 120 cities, although by 2003 that number had declined to 8,000. [8]
In 2000, Zuckerman sold Fast Company to Gruner + Jahr, majority owned by media giant Bertelsmann, for $550 million. [9] Just as the sale was completed, the dot-com bubble burst, leading to significant losses and a decline in circulation. Webber and Taylor left the magazine two years later in 2002, and John A. Byrne, previously a senior writer and former management editor with BusinessWeek , was brought in as the new editor. Under Byrne, the magazine won its first Gerald Loeb Award, the most prestigious honor in business journalism. [10] But the magazine could not reverse its financial decline in the wake of the dot-com bust. Although the magazine was not specifically about Internet commerce, advertising pages continued to drop until they were one-third the 2000 numbers. [8]
In 2005, Gruner + Jahr put the magazine, as well as Inc. magazine, up for sale. Byrne contacted entrepreneur Joe Mansueto and helped guide him through the sale. A bidding war ultimately ensued, pitting The Economist against Mansueto's company Mansueto Ventures. Mansueto, the only bidder who promised to keep Fast Company alive, ultimately won the contest, buying both magazine titles for $35 million. [11]
Under former editor-in-chief Robert Safian, [12] Fast Company was named by the American Society of Magazine Editors as the magazine of the year in 2014. [13]
Stephanie Mehta was named editor-in-chief in February 2018, [14] having previously worked at Vanity Fair , Bloomberg , Fortune , and The Wall Street Journal . Fast Company is owned by Mansueto Ventures and is headquartered in Manhattan.
In September 2022 the Fast Company website, fastcompany.com, fell victim to an attack and racist messages were sent. [15] The site was compromised and access to the site was used to send push notifications that the company identified as "obscene and racist." The site was taken offline for eight days as a result. [16] [17]
In 2024 the company won The Society Of Publication Designers (SPD) silver medal for its “World Changing Ideas” and six gold medals for its projects, including “Selena Gomez and the Meteoric Rise of Rare Beauty”, “YouTube’s Game Day”, “Brands That Matter”, “The Recommender Gift Guide”. It also won gold in the Best Of Science/Business/Technology category, and for the redesign of the magazine, which launched with the Eva Longoria issue. [18]
Launched in 1995, [19] FastCompany.com covers leadership and innovation in business, environmental and social issues, entertainment and marketing, and, through its Co.Design site, the intersection of business and design, from architecture to electronics, consumer products to fashion. Fast Company also previously operated sites called Co.Labs, Co.Exist, and Co.Create. Co.Exist and Co.Create were rebranded as Ideas and Entertainment sections in 2017. [20] [21] Co.Labs was shut down in early 2015. [22]
Fast Company operates several franchises, such as "Most Innovative Companies", "World Changing Ideas", "Innovation By Design", and "Most Creative People". For its Most Innovative Companies feature, Fast Company assesses thousands of businesses to create a list of 50 companies it considers the most innovative. [23] The Most Creative People in Business is a list of 100 people from different industries. [24]
The Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, commonly known as Bertelsmann, is a German private multinational conglomerate corporation based in Gütersloh, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is one of the world's largest media conglomerates and is also active in the service sector and education.
Evenimentul Zilei is a formerly physical and now exclusively online newspaper in Romania. Its name means "The event of the day".
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Inc. is an American business magazine founded in 1979 and based in New York City. The magazine publishes six issues per year, along with surrounding online and social media content. The magazine also produces several live and virtual events yearly.
Gruner + Jahr GmbH is a publishing house headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. The company was founded in 1965 by Richard Gruner, John Jahr, and Gerd Bucerius. From 1969 to 1973, Bertelsmann acquired a majority share in the company and gradually increased it over time. After 2014, the company was a fully owned subsidiary of the Gütersloh-based media and services group. Under the leadership and innovation strategy of Julia Jäkel, Gruner + Jahr evolved into a publishing house producing cross-channel media products for the digital society.
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Prima is a monthly women's magazine published in Paris, France. The magazine has been in circulation since 1982. It has editions in Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
Impulse is one of the business magazines published in Germany. The magazine appears on a monthly basis in Hamburg.
Thomas Rabe is a German business executive. In 2006, he was appointed to the Bertelsmann executive board, of which he has been chairman and chief executive officer since 2012. Under his leadership, the group has become more international, more digital and more diversified. In particular, he has advanced the business with music rights and the educational division. Additionally, Rabe was appointed chief executive officer of RTL Group in 2019.
RTL Deutschland is a German media company based in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia. It was founded in 2007 as a holding company for the German television, broadcasting and content production businesses of the RTL Group, which is majority-owned by Bertelsmann.
Julia Jäkel is a German business executive and publisher. She serves as non-executive director of several companies. From 2012 to 2021, Jäkel was Chief Executive Officer of Gruner + Jahr and a member of the Bertelsmann Group Management Committee. She also chaired the Bertelsmann Content Alliance. Jäkel is a widely known promoter of diverse leadership.
Alex Kipman is a Brazilian engineer and inventor who is the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Analog AI. Previously, he was the lead developer of the Microsoft HoloLens smartglasses and helped develop the Xbox Kinect.
Evercast is a privately held software as a service company that makes collaborative software primarily for the film, television, and other creative industry sectors. Its platform allows remotely located creative teams to collaborate in real-time on video production tasks, such as reviewing dailies, editing footage, sound mixing, animation, visual effects, and other components simultaneously. Its primary users are directors, editors, VFX artists, animators, and sound teams in the film, television, advertising, and video gaming industries.
