Business 2.0: The Final Cover

The final issue of Business 2.0 magazine, October 2007, will soon be in the mail to subscribers and on the newstands. It promises to be a collector’s item and will probably be the biggest selling copy of the magazine in its nine year history. The image to the right, we’re told from a source, is the cover for that final October issue. Click for a larger view.

It is a shame to see it go – Business 2.0 is one of only three magazines I subscribe to and read cover-to-cover every issue (the other two are Wired and The Economist). The story style and content was a big inspiration for starting TechCrunch, even though we are a poor imitation and rarely do it justice.

I first heard about Business 2.0 in 1998 when I saw a billboard on the 101 freeway near South San Francisco that advertised it, before the first issue came out. In 2001 it was sold to Time Warner, who’ve done little to grow the brand, and some say they were somewhat proactive in destroying it, always favoring the (in my opinion) sterile business magazine Fortune.

The magazine was one of the first major media publications to cover TechCrunch, exactly one year ago in an article written by Paul Sloan and Paul Kaihla. That article, by the way, was the source of the infamous images of me smoking a cigar and burning $100 bills (I’ve since learned that you don’t actually have to do what the photographer tells you to do).

Earlier this year Heather and I met with editor-in-chief Josh Quittner and we explored a merger between TechCrunch and Business 2.0. I believe we could have made the pieces fit in a way that would have worked well for both sides, but Time eventually squashed any deal by pulling them off the block and simply shutting it down (these discussions were confidential but recently leaked).

I’ve become friends with many of the people at Business 2.0 over the years, and respect the hell out of all of them. Many are moving on to Fortune, or to new gigs. I hope they all continue to write passionately about technology, and know that the work they’ve done will be greatly missed. And even though we never did a deal to merge with Business 2.0, I hope to work with some of the best and brightest from that publication in the future.