Fast Company was founded in November 1995[2][3] by Alan Webber and Bill Taylor, both former Harvard Business Review editors, and publisher Mortimer Zuckerman.

[8] In 2000, Zuckerman sold Fast Company to Gruner + Jahr, majority-owned by media giant Bertelsmann, for $550 million.

Under Byrne, the magazine received its first Gerald Loeb Award, a prestigious honor in business journalism.

Mansueto, promising to keep Fast Company afloat, won the contest, acquiring both magazine titles for $35 million.

[13] Stephanie Mehta was appointed editor-in-chief in February 2018,[14] after having worked at Vanity Fair, Bloomberg, Fortune, and The Wall Street Journal.

[16][17] In 2024, the company won The Society Of Publication Designers (SPD) silver medal for its “World Changing Ideas” and six gold medals for its projects, including “Selena Gomez and the Meteoric Rise of Rare Beauty”, “YouTube’s Game Day”, “Brands That Matter”, “The Recommender Gift Guide”, and gold in the Best Of Science/Business/Technology category, as well as for the redesign of the magazine, which launched with the Eva Longoria issue.