Fast Company 25th Anniversary

Little known connection to Winthrop

As it celebrates its 25th anniversary, Fast Company magazine continues to cast bright light on what too often are non-traditional business topics, just as its founders, Alan Webber and Bill Taylor, did in 1995.  Many know that some of Fast Company’s roots grew in the soil of Webber’s experience in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard Business Review where he eventually became Editorial Director.  What very few do know is that Fast Company also has a Winthrop Group connection. 

This part of the story traces to 1981, when Webber, then the former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Transportation in the Carter Administration, met and later worked and wrote at HBR with Winthrop co-founder Dave Dyer.  When the latter left HBR and took his writing and automotive industry expertise to a fulltime position at Winthrop in 1987, Webber started working his way up to position of HBR’s Editorial Director.  Soon he and a young colleague, Bill Taylor, began thinking about starting a new magazine, one that would cover the fast-changing business landscape in a reader-friendly package with attitude, one they described it as “cross between HBR and Rolling Stone.”  Weber and Taylor left HBR, raised some seed capital, and looked for a place to work where they could develop a prototype issue and prepare for a formal launch. Winthrop offered some of its Main Office and History Services Division space at 1100 Massachusetts Avenue just off Harvard Square and soon Webber and Taylor’s first Fast Company was circulating.  

Fast Company got off to a fast start and found its voice in the dot-com era of the late 1990s. By then, it had moved to its own quarters in nearby Watertown. Publisher Mort Zuckerman, whose properties included what then was The Atlantic Monthly (now The Atlantic) and The New Republic, acquired controlling interest in Fast Company and in 2000 brokered a sale to a unit of Bertelsmann, the European publishing powerhouse.  Webber and Taylor stayed on for a short time as the magazine entered a new era of its history.

As it observes the 25th anniversary of the November 1995 issue, Fast Company occupies a distinctive place in today's business media. Winthrop Group sends warm congratulations to the publisher, editorial staff, and employees of the magazine on its birthday … but don't forget where it all began. 

                                                                              

                                                                                                25th Anniversary cover, Nov 2020