Celebrating Our Journalism
I was an admirer of Mansueto Ventures’ journalism long before I came to work at the company in March 2018. As a small-business reporter at The Wall Street Journal in the mid-1990s, my colleagues and I used to scour what used to be the Inc. 500 list—now the Inc. 5000—for trends and companies to profile. Much later in my career, as one of the editors charged with creating the Vanity Fair New Establishment list, I routinely turned to Fast Company for fresh ideas on tech and media up-and-comers who weren’t on my radar.
Inc. and Fast Company continue to deliver ambitious and timely stories that readers can’t find anywhere else. Standout stories published in the last month or so include Inc.’s Schoolhouse Rocked: How a Private Equity Playbook Bankrupted a Beloved Home Goods Brand, a juicy piece exploring how a beloved furniture brand suffered after being acquired by Food52; and Fast Company’s Brands vs. Bots: CMOs, Ad Agencies Tell All About What They’ve Learned Marketing to Our New AI Overlords, which brought a fresh angle to an essential and urgent topic in business today: getting noticed by the major AI models when consumers use it as a superpowered search.
Those stories are available only to subscribers, and their success underscores the role of quality editorial in fueling our subscription growth strategy. Strong reporting and writing, coupled with our growing catalog of exclusive, data-driven journalism, is inspiring growth-oriented readers to subscribe and engage with our titles.
We’re also producing noteworthy video journalism. It’s All in the Typeface, a Fast Company series, earlier this month won a Webby award in the How-To, Explainer & DIY category, and Your Next Move, Inc.’s series for founders, was a Webby finalist in the Business & Thought Leadership category.
And we’re expanding the ways we bring our journalism to live audiences. On the heels of a powerful showing at South by Southwest, Inc. Founders House made its Los Angeles debut with a one-day event at the Regent Santa Monica Beach sponsored by Capital One Business and IHG Hotels & Resorts. Hundreds of founders gathered to engage with speakers such as Tracee Ellis Ross of Pattern Beauty, Luana Lopes Lara of Kalshi, and Eva Longoria of Hyphenate Media.
While it feels good to score a Webby or marvel at the lines at Inc. Founders House, what’s especially powerful to me is that these wins—the new subscribers, the awards, the queues at our events—show how much our audiences value Fast Company and Inc. When our journalism is at its best, entrepreneurs and innovators win too.