A Brief History of Our Time

In the early 1990s, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber were editors at Harvard Business Review. They had traveled different paths--Webber in government and academia, and Taylor in advocacy work with Ralph Nader. But they came to share an interpretation of the rapid changes in work, the economy, and society--a view that eventually found voice in Fast Company. Here's the story of the magazine's birth, in the words of Taylor, Webber, and others who were there.

Bill Taylor, founding editor: I spent a lot of time in the 1980s and early 1990s in Silicon Valley. It was very much the era when the semiconductor and personal computing were transforming not just the technology landscape but the competitive landscape. The logic of the technology itself, which was speeding everything up, decentralizing how computing worked, and putting processing power lower and lower in the organization, was reshaping both competition and leadership.

Alan Webber, founding editor: The seminal event for me was a trip to Japan in 1989, at the peak of the bubble there. I had gotten this fellowship with the idea of meeting the next generation of leaders there--in business, government, bureaucracy, and journalism. What I came back with were very clearly formulated ideas about these themes I thought were transforming business.

The first was globalization. In 1989, people were still in denial about opening up borders. But there really were no boundaries in terms of the movement of money, ideas, and talent. The future was going to be all about global competition and cooperation. The corollary to that was a generational shift of bright young leaders. We were seeing the baby boomers become leaders. My hypothesis was that this generation was different from the one that came before. They had different attitudes and aspirations. They were interested in finding meaning through work.

Taylor: So Alan and I had something we were desperate to say--a set of ideas not just about where the world was going but about where it could and should go, a collection of best practices and a cast of really compelling characters who represented a better, more rewarding way to do business. We imagined a magazine that took the power of ideas very seriously, but we wanted to lend to that a performance that had a generational impact and also a sense of fun and wit that made it friendly and accessible in a way that businesses were but other business magazines were not.

Webber: We raised $550,000 from 11 individuals in 1993 to do the prototype. It took nine months to do that, simply because it's hard to ask for money and it's hard for people to say yes.

George Stalk, senior vice president at Boston Consulting Group and an early investor: In my gut, I thought I'd never see the money again.

Webber: We sent the prototype to influential people, put a feedback sheet in the middle, then used that in our second-round business plan.

Mark Fuller, chairman of Monitor Group and an investor: They made a statement that summed up to a view that we live in a world where all these 19th-century collective views of the workforce--where you're categorized in cohorts and treated like digits, where you sacrifice your individuality and become a company man--that era was over.

Stalk: It was a really weird magazine. A guy senior to me said, "You've lost your money, George. It's gone."

Webber: Now it was time to make a deal to launch the magazine. That's when things got seriously nitty-gritty problematic, because we were talking about $10 million. We approached virtually every publishing company in America.

Taylor: We spent an awful lot of hours in a lot of meetings. For a while, we thought that represented progress. The reaction was very respectful, very enthusiastic. But ultimately, they weren't interested in doing business.

Tom Peters, consultant/guru and an early investor: It took them so long to get money. The coolest thing about the Webber-Taylor saga is that they didn't give up. I kept saying, "Hang in there," and it's a miracle that they did.

Taylor and Webber eventually scored an introduction to Fred Drasner and Mort Zuckerman, who owned U.S. News & World Report.

Taylor: It took exactly one meeting for them to realize they should be doing business with us.

Mort Zuckerman: Their basic idea somehow or another just struck a chord. It just seemed the right time for this sort of magazine to deal not with the technology of this new era but the culture.

Webber: They had one magazine and excess people and energy. So they figured if they had another magazine, there would be more to pump through the pipes. We were a solution to a problem.