A Brief History of Our Time

Taylor: We signed the deal in April 1995. Fred Drasner insisted we sign the papers on April 1. It was terrifying and wonderful at the same time. Honest to goodness, we had no idea how much we didn't know about putting out a magazine.

Webber: Both Bill and I came away from HBR thinking that the most important thing in the world was the people you worked with and the environment in which you worked. We were going to be working 14-hour days, so we wanted to spend time with people we wanted to spend time with.

Taylor: We wanted to fill the place with people who didn't want to be working anywhere else.

Polly LaBarre, senior editor: I was at a magazine called IndustryWeek. I saw the first [FC] issue on a newsstand, coming home from dinner with a friend. It was the last copy, and we both looked at it and literally had a tug-of-war. I paid him $20 for it and took it home and read it cover to cover. I said, "Here's something I can engage with, something I can see fighting for." I emailed Tom Davenport [a consultant who had appeared in that issue] and asked him, "Who are these people and what are they doing?" Tom connected me, and within a week or two they had offered me a job.

David Searson, Web architect: I was working on the Net in Australia, and I couldn't find any decent work. No one was interested in the Internet. I found a tiny entry in a newsgroup saying, "We're looking for a Webmaster." So I sent off details, and Polly sent over a magazine. It was fantastic. I just thought, I have to work there. I borrowed some money to fly myself over for an interview. Then I came back to Australia, packed up my family, and sold off the house and the furniture.

Bill Breen, senior editor: I was hired in June 1995. It was pretty grim. It was a suite of offices in Boston that the U.S. News salespeople had used. Four little offices, three of which had windows. All the junior people were in the mail room, and three or four more were in the conference room. One woman moved into the coat closet.

LaBarre: I walked in my first day, and they very sweetly said they had a place cleared out for me. It was the closet, and the sad thing was, they had to kick someone out of there to give it to me.

Christina Novicki, staff writer: It was an incredibly charged place, almost beyond words. I was wide-eyed, and I came into this situation where I thought blasting music at work, dancing, playing football, throwing ideas around, being 23 and getting on a plane and interviewing CEOs was . . . normal.

Taylor: It was a loud, raucous, very musical place to work. Alan brought Bob Dylan, I brought Springsteen, the young women designers brought in dance. Al Green was . . . nobody didn't like Al Green. He transcended everyone's tastes.

Gina Imperato, staff writer: We were always working, in the wee hours of the morning, weekends. I really love to make lasagna. So one weekend, I made two huge lasagnas, salad, and garlic bread. And that became a closing ritual: Once a month, I'd bring in lasagna. Later, I wrote an article on gourmet cooking on the Web. We had these funny taglines, and Bill wrote that Gina has this great lasagna, email her for the recipe. I got 20 letters--and I didn't have a recipe. So I spent a weekend making lasagna and measuring everything out.

Searson: Alan would come out and say, "We need to get inspired!" He'd turn on Patton as loud as it could go. We'd watch this movie over and over. He'd replay the scene where Patton is up against the flag, giving that great speech. It was distracting if you were trying to make a phone call.

Breen: That summer in 1995, we couldn't seem to get traction. We were trying to turn these articles into what was in Alan's and Bill's heads. They wanted lessons, the ideas, the insights, to really stand out. They wanted to bring a different sort of language to business journalism. At one meeting, Alan was trying to explain this. And the more he talked, the more impatient Bill got. Alan loved talking about the pieces, decoding them. He was talking about some crazy piece about an Indian tribe, and after about three hours, Bill blurts out, "Aren't you just bored out of your minds?"

Webber: Voice was important. We wanted to be much more user-friendly and conversational and engage in a dialogue rather than preach or look down at readers. We also wanted to make a magazine that had a sense of design that was relevant to the time. Design was becoming more and more integral in business. But there were no cool business magazines.