The difference between successful people and very successful people, Warren Buffett once said, is that very successful people say no to almost everything. I suspect he’s right. But I’ve never been good at saying no, and when the idea for MoneyWeek popped into my head, I couldn’t resist it. It came to me in the summer of 1999. I’d founded The Week four years earlier, and it was beginning to take off. Why not apply the same formula to the financial world? Most money magazines were so dry. Why couldn’t there be one along the lines of The Week, less share-obsessed than Investors’ Chronicle, taking a wider view: how to make money, how to keep it, how to spend it.
I’d dreamt up The Week on a long walk in Scotland in January 1994. But having resigned as deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph, I struggled to raise the money: the venture capitalists I approached seemed neither adventurous nor anxious to part with capital, and I ended up funding the launch myself – with help from family and friends.
Then along came the quixotic publisher Felix Dennis, who wrote to me out of the blue suggesting we “share a beer”. Anyone heard of Felix Dennis, I asked, waving the letter around. No one had, but while our readership was growing our bank account was not. So a week or two later I found myself on a sunny afternoon sitting under an oak tree in Felix’s garden near Stratford-upon-Avon and doing an impetuous, back-of-the-envelope deal which certainly wasn’t prudent but which gave us the money we needed.
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They were heady days, those early days at The Week, and perhaps it all went a little to my head. Full of boundless confidence, I sketched out a plan for MoneyWeek and recruited Merryn Somerset Webb, who’d done a stint on our City pages before, sensibly, telling me I was paying her too little and returning to the City. I knew she’d be brilliant. So off we went, in November 2000, with a new office in New Cavendish Street from which I could oversee both The Week and MoneyWeek. This time, raising the money was easier, but once again I underestimated how much we’d need.
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The new magazine was aimed primarily at investors, not City professionals, and targeted a similar demographic to The Week: AB readers with disposable income; non-experts (like me) wary of stockbrokers and financial advisers but anxious for guidance on where to put our money and, indeed, how to hang on to it. Some of The Week’s key features, of course, could be replicated: Best Properties on the Market; Good Week, Bad Week; the Briefing; a map for global financial news. My friend Andrew Robson was prevailed on to write a bridge column.
MoneyWeek's early ups and downs
I now had to divide my time between two magazines, and Felix wanted me to sell shares in The Week as the price for doing so. Unwisely, I agreed. You don’t have to do much right in the world so long as you don’t make too many mistakes, says Warren Buffett.
He’s right. I’ve made my fair share of mistakes, too many, and this was one – especially as there were moments when I wondered whether we’d ever make a success of the new venture. I’m a bit “ready, fire, aim”, to use a phrase coined by a clever American friend. I remembered a conversation from the early days of The Week. “I’d give it ten,” said a newspaper circulation manager to a friend of mine. “What – ten out of ten?” replied my friend, rather chuffed. “No, ten issues.”
The worst time was a year or so after launch when our money all but ran out. In the end we were rescued first by a City-based Scottish entrepreneur, Angus Macdonald, and then, a year or so later, by the man who helped propel us to success: Bill Bonner, the quietly spoken founder of Agora, the hugely successful US newsletter company. I was introduced to him by my brother-in-law; we had lunch in Notting Hill, hit it off and did the deal there and then. It was the quickest, most painless transaction I’ve ever been involved in.
After that, things got easier. Bill is a shrewd contrarian who likes a good argument, a perfect match for Merryn. Between them, they gave the magazine a strong personality, aided by John Stepek and a small, clever team including the current editor, Andrew Van Sickle, and Stuart Watkins, who steered production with admirable calmness and good humour. Successful magazines need to have a heart; their readers need to come to know and trust them like a friend. Slowly and steadily, we built the circulation, as I’d done on The Week.
Then, in fairly quick succession, Felix Dennis died; a decision was made by his trust to sell The Week; The Week bought MoneyWeek to bring them both into the same stable; and eventually my two brainchilds were bought by private equity and then, not long afterwards, by the current proprietors, Future Publishing. I left before the second sale – to do two things. One was – indeed is – a weekly email to help CEOs plan for the future called Sunday Briefing; the other a daily newsletter called The Knowledge, a five-minute catch-up on the world which goes out at lunchtime each day.
But I loved every minute of my time at MoneyWeek and am immensely proud of it and the team now running it. It is easily the best and most fun financial magazine in Britain. Nor do I think niche magazines are on their way out. Newspapers may struggle in the longer term, but not specialist publications, which can never quite be replicated online. Long may MoneyWeek survive, as I’m quite sure it will.
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