Fast Company was founded in November 1995 by
Alan Webber and
Bill Taylor, both former
Harvard Business Review editors, and publisher
Mortimer Zuckerman. Early competitors included
Red Herring,
Business 2.0 and
The Industry Standard. In 1997,
Fast Company created an online social network called the "Company of Friends", which led to the formation of numerous meeting groups. At its peak,
Company of Friends comprised over 40,000 members across 120 cities, though membership declined to 8,000 by 2003. In 2000, Zuckerman sold
Fast Company to
Gruner + Jahr, majority-owned by media giant
Bertelsmann, for $550 million. The sale coincided with the
dot-com bubble burst, resulting in substantial losses and a drop in circulation. Webber and Taylor departed in 2002, and John A. Byrne, formerly a senior writer and management editor at
BusinessWeek, became the new editor. Under Byrne, the magazine received its first
Gerald Loeb Award. However, the magazine couldn't overcome its financial decline following the dot-com bust. Despite not focusing specifically on Internet commerce, advertising pages decreased to one-third of their 2000 levels. As of March 2025, advertising sales make up 55 percent of the company's revenue. Under former editor-in-chief Robert Safian,
Fast Company was recognized by the
American Society of Magazine Editors with the
magazine of the year in 2014. Stephanie Mehta was appointed editor-in-chief in February 2018, after having worked at
Vanity Fair,
Bloomberg,
Fortune, and
The Wall Street Journal.
Fast Company is owned by
Mansueto Ventures and has its headquarters in
Manhattan. In September 2022, the Fast Company website, fastcompany.com, was compromised in an attack, and racist messages were sent to
Apple iPhones. The site was accessed to send push notifications that the company identified as "obscene and racist". Consequently, the site was taken offline for eight days. In March 2025,
Fast Company and
Inc. tightened their paywalls to grow consumer revenue amid traffic volatility, with four daily stories being reserved only for paying subscribers. Mehta said that "traffic is really fickle, and we have to find more ways to build a direct connection with our audiences." She also predicted Mansueto's consumer business (one-third of the company's overall annual revenue) to see double-digit growth in 2025. In June 2025, Mansueto Ventures laid off 13 employees, including numerous editors and reporters at
Fast Company and
Inc. ==Website==