Fortune is for companies that are rich and super-rich, Forbes for people who are rich or want to be richer and BusinessWeek for people who rely on stocks to boost their wealth. Condé Nast Portfolio glorifies the rich and powerful and The Economist is for those who know it all. This is the pool in which Inc. and Fast Company swim along with Entrepreneur and Success magazines.
Under Mansueto Ventures, Fast Company is engineering a recovery from a painful past of cheering for dot-com excesses in the late ’90s. The target for this publication is people who are engaged in business and creative industries.
“Fast Company is trying to take a more long-term perspective and encourage businesses to take risks and to think creatively about their challenges,” said Bob Safian, editor and managing director.
Inc., which shares a 15 percent subscriber duplication with Fast Company, is focused at small to midsize businesses and company builders.
“Our magazine should be able to teach CEOs and owners of small companies on how to grow,” said John Tebeau, publisher of Inc. “It’s really written by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs.” Inc. is fortunate that Mansueto Ventures owner Joe Mansueto agreed to increase the number of editorial pages from an average of mid-’60s to the mid-’70s, regardless of the ads that are sold, Mr. Tebeau said. Some of the extra pages are now devoted to global issues like financing in an inter-connected world.
“For our readers,” said Inc. editor Jane Berentson, “what they essentially want to read about is how people have succeeded and how people have failed – people like them.”
