"We're excited about our partnership with MecklerWeb," said William Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company, "and we're committed to facilitating the most intriguing and valuable discussions about the future of business you'll find anywhere. Like the magazine itself, our domain will include provocative insights from business experts, lessons from leading companies, personal stories that will help people navigate the New Economy, tough-minded evaluations of books, conferences, videos, and software."
Fast Company was eager to partner with MecklerWeb because of the shared worldview of the two projects. "At the core of our magazine is the idea of community," said co-founder Alan Webber. "A community of innovators who want to learn from each other about new ways to work, compete, lead their companies, manage their careers. A magazine is a tool to help create that community. MecklerWeb allows the community to interact every day.
"We are living through a business revolution," Webber added. "The people and companies leading this revolution play by different rules, speak a different language, hold different values. They want to merge economic growth with social justice, democratic participation with tough-minded execution, explosive technological innovation with old-fashioned individual commitment. A business-oriented forum in an electronic community like MecklerWeb provides a real service to this community of innovators."
Fast Company published its premiere issue to much acclaim in November 1993. Its founders, Alan M. Webber and William Taylor, were, respectively, editorial director and associate editor of the Harvard Business Review, until they left to create the new magazine. Fast Company's charter investors are based in the U.S., Canada and Japan, and include Silicon Valley marketer Regis McKenna, management guru Tom Peters, and venture-capitalist John Doerr. It plans to begin regular publication later this year.