In 2013, Australian entrepreneur Jeff Taylor and his colleague Soheb Panja noticed something shifting in the culture around them. A new generation was having sophisticated conversations about business models in Sunday coffee shops — people who would never pick up the Financial Times or sit down to watch Dragon's Den, but who were deeply interested in building something of their own. Taylor and Panja recognised what they now describe as the biggest shift since at least the war in the relationship people want between how they earn their money and how they lead their lives. So they made a magazine about it.
Courier launched in London as a free quarterly distributed in independent cafes and co-working spaces — the natural habitat of its readers. The editorial voice was warm, practical, and entirely free of the jargon that makes most business media unreadable. Case studies of real founders replaced abstract strategy pieces. Stories of modern business — the tagline on every cover — meant profiles of people who had quit the nine-to-five to start a supper club, a design studio, a sustainable fashion label, and who were willing to share what they had learned along the way. By 2017, the magazine had transitioned from free to paid, and by 2019, it was printing 60,000 copies per issue and reaching readers in over 26 countries.
In 2020, Courier was acquired by Mailchimp — the email marketing company's first move into print media, and a signal of how seriously the entrepreneurial ecosystem took the magazine's audience. When Intuit subsequently acquired Mailchimp for $12 billion, Courier came along for the ride. The magazine has since published books — Work Better. Live Smarter. Be Happier., The World's Best Shops, Dream Businesses, How to Start a Business — and built an ecosystem of newsletters, podcasts, and events. Through it all, the editorial premise has remained unchanged: that starting your own business can lead to a more rewarding life, and that the stories of people who have done it are the most useful guides available.
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