The Story Behind Guru

Like many great innovations, Guru was born out of frustration…

One day in early 2011, Dr Stu (Stuart Farrimond) was perusing a local news store and becoming very irritated: he couldn’t find anything he wanted to read.

There was plenty on offer – sport, TV, food, women’s weeklies and business; but Dr Stu was looking for something a little different – something with a bit of science but without the jargon; something stimulating and educational without being patronising; something with opinion that didn’t give brain-ache.

Getting together with co-founders Sarah and Ben, they tucked into some tasty carrot cake and a pot of coffee. They pondered:

• Why are the best opinion articles in business periodicals?
• Why do celebrity magazines get the most attention grabbing headlines?
• Why do lifestyle magazines seem to have all the fun?

As Ben licked up the last crumbs, they couldn’t think of any good answers.

So they came up with the Guru vision: to create a regular magazine that mixes the entertainment of lifestyle writing, the authoritativeness of a science periodical, and a splash of opinion and art.

And so the ‘Science Lifestyle’ genre was born.

A “Revolution in Publishing”?

Fuelled on by a combination of sugar, caffeine and good company – the ideas really started to flow. Guru’s three co-founders decided:

• Guru should be accessible to all – so they made it free and available in a variety of formats (for Tablets, e-Readers, etc)
• Guru is to give opportunities for new, emerging and passionate communicators to showcase their work – Guru is completely crowd-sourced by writers, artists and designers from all over the world
• Content must be of the highest quality and comparable to ‘premium’ magazines – Anyone can apply to contribute to Guru but only the best material will be published

Issue One went live on August 1^st and is published bi-monthly (on the first weekday of alternate months). Writers, artists and designers from USA, UK and South Africa contribute. A select few earn the title of ‘Guru’…

On word of mouth alone (with a bit of Tweeting and Facebook), 15,000 people have discovered and enjoyed Guru so far. Some have even gone so far as to describe it as a ‘publishing revolution’ – but the Guru team would be too modest to boast about that…

So, Do you guru?

 

Hello Guru!

Guru lets you explore the things that really matter to you: life, love, media, technology, psychology, food and stuff. It will keep you informed and entertained about what you do with your time, your life and your money.

Guru is a world first – a ‘science lifestyle’ magazine – offering you compelling content but without the ‘geek’ factor you get in a regular science publication. It’s authoritative and everything is presented in a light-hearted and fun style. More like a lifestyle magazine really…

Because Guru is a digital magazine, there’s no paper waste or queuing in the shop. It looks beautiful on your iPad, e-reader, Smartphone or PC screen.

The latest issue of Guru is hot off the press, so click here to download it now!

When People Come Together Great Things Can Happen

What makes Guru so exciting is it is written by you and for you… It’s a project that collaborates the best writers, bloggers, photographers and artists on the internet – from all over the world. Gurus are people like you with a passion to communicate the tricky stuff of life.

If you think that sounds a bit like you, then we’d love to hear from you.

Are you a company and are you interested in advertising in Guru? Click here

Want to Guru?

We want you to read Guru and enjoy it!

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