The Quiet Billionaire

After an idyllic Midwestern upbringing, Joe Mansueto founded an enormously successful financial information company on the simple premise that people might like an easy-to-use guide to mutual funds. Now, the Morningstar CEO is turning his skills to the risky world of magazine publishing. Can he succeed again?

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	Fast Company This business magazine, born of the dot-com frenzy, stands as an emblem of the Roaring Nineties: the real-estate tycoon Mort Zuckerman sold it to Gruner & Jahr in 2000 for a whopping $350 million. At that time, Fast Company attracted more ad pages than Vanity Fair and was pulling in more than $77 million a year in revenue. Last year, it took in a comparatively paltry $31 million. Its close identification with the irrational exuberance of the Internet boom is perhaps its biggest obstacle to attracting a loyal readership in a newly chastened era.
	Inc. The staid, 26-year-old monthly with a devoted following among entrepreneurs took a beating during the magazine slump of the past five years and suffered neglect at the hands of its previous owner. Mansueto, who paid the bargain-basement price of $35 million for Inc. and Fast Company together, hopes to revive the brand's once robust conference business.
	Time Out Chicago Launched just over a year ago, the snappy entertainment guide to the city aims to replicate the franchise's success in New York and London, where the weekly magazine has carved a niche as a youth-oriented alternative to the newspapers' culture coverage. The Windy City version seems to have found its footing, even in the face of recent distribution snags. But will Chicagoans step up and subscribe? Mansueto owns half of the magazine, which he expects will lose money for "several years."

"Well, OK. It's not a perfect analogy," he says. "That's why it's not the Thoreau Company."

This article appears in the June 2006 issue of Chicago Magazine.

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