Fast Company April Issue: Features on Facebook, Tesla Motors & MLB Advanced Media

The April issue of Fast Company had three different features with solid writing on some tremendously interesting companies.

The cover story was "'Boy CEO' Mark Zuckerberg's Two Smartest Projects Were Growing Facebook And Growing Up" by Ellen McGirt and it included some excellent "then to now" material. McGirt wrote of first meeting Zuckerberg and writing the May 2007 Fast Company cover story "Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: Hacker. Dropout. CEO." and how he's since evolved as a leader. Pretty remarkable personal transformation and probably more remarkable progress for the company with Facebook going from 19M to 845M users during that time. McGirt notes as well how Facebook in early 2007 opened up to outside developers... a step which for me brings to mind Apple and the transformative effects of its iTunes store.

Another piece from this issue was similar to McGirt's in that it featured a rock-star stature CEO, in this case Elon Musk of Tesla Motors and SpaceX. "Why Tesla Motors Is Betting On The Model S" was written by Jon Gertner and covers the much anticipated and planned for July launch of its $50,000 sedan. Musk is a fascinating guy and the thing that stood out from this piece was his mention of needing iterations (three progressive car models in his view) to reach his ultimate goal of a low priced mass market vehicle. This translates to the Model S sedan as the mid-point between the high priced roadster that's been out for a while now and the planned for the future third model. With this story told, another similarity between the pieces on Tesla and Facebook comes from how McGirt finished off with mention of a circa-2007 Zuckerberg speaking of this same iteration concept and moving towards an end-state.

Finally, a third feature from the April FC issue didn't share the same parallels as those on the companies of Musk and Zuckerberg, but was very interesting in its own right. Written by Chuck Salter, "MLB Advanced Media's Bob Bowman Is Playing Digital Hardball. And He's Winning" is about the innovative and money-making digital arm of Major League Baseball.

Fast Company Pieces - 3M Design Chief / Serial Entrepreneurship / Ads on the Web

Three different stories from the past few months of Fast Company that stood out as being on interesting companies and/or business topics.

From the recent November 2011 issue came Bill Nguyen: The Boy In The Bubble on the founder (or co-founder) of at least four different startups, including Lala (sold to Apple) and now the much talked about, but uncertain as to it's eventual success or failure, Color.

The piece is written by Danielle Sacks and a pretty fascinating read not so much because of the verbiage about Nguyen himself, but the article's description of the ethos of Silicon Valley and the startup culture. Interesting content on seed and venture capital investors backing founders who have had multiple successes (defined by exit with money for investors) and a business idea in an area considered hot at the time. While both of these things do certainly carry an import to them, what's often not taken into effort account is the particulars of the idea itself.

Also interesting from the piece was the description of how investors don't necessarily put a mark against the company founder's track record if not all ventures succeeded. Concept being the business failure looked at as simply a shot that didn't work out and not a big deal as long as other efforts did succeed.

As to Nguyen himself, Sacks details his bona fides in the areas of wealth creation and deal-making (in both the initial cash raising and then end-game business selling phases) and how this past success led to such large amounts of money invested in Color as a business idea. This outlay by investors takes on greater import given the underwhelming launch of Color and subsequent repositiong (with that so called pivot being another acceptable and almost expected thing in startups). Whether the company eventually succeeds or not, Nguyen is wealthy from past successes... and likely would resurface with another business idea, and investors willing to back him.

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From the October 2011 issue of Fast Company was another solid feature... this one dealing not with a startup culture, but rather someone creating change in a large corporate environment. The Nine Passions Of 3M's Mauro Porcini is written by Chuck Salter and details the design chief at the Minnesota based conglomerate. Porcini is described as succeeding at 3M by trumpeting the process involved with outstanding design work as well as it's pure aesthetic value. Beyond this, he's developed credibility within the company by doing the all-important trick of being behind design work that's increased sales.

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Additionally, Adam Lisagor Is Advertising's Quietest Pitchman was an interesting short piece from the September FC issue. Written by Bill Barol, it's about Lisagor's small production company, Sandwich Video and the straight-forward and well received online product videos (web ads) produced for the likes of Groupon, Airbnb, and Flipboard (with the Airbnb spot below and four other videos linked from the Fast Company piece).