Entrepreneur: Small Business Covers, Side Hustles, and Playbooks

Entrepreneur collecting works the Irvine, California-based business monthly that Chase Revel founded in 1977 and that has since built a specific small-business-focused editorial identity distinct from the more capital-markets-focused Fortune and Forbes. The magazine's specific franchise coverage (the annual Franchise 500 ranking since 1980), the tech-era startup coverage through the late-1990s and the subsequent digital transition, and the specific founder-profile cover tradition all create a collecting calendar tied to specific business-history moments - the specific covers featuring early profiles of founders who became household names have specific historical resonance.

Entrepreneur matters because the magazine documented the rise of franchise business as a major economic force in American business, and the specific early-issue coverage from the 1970s and 1980s captured the specific early-stage stories of businesses that became Subway, Jiffy Lube, H&R Block at scale. The Franchise 500 archive across four decades is itself a historical document of changing small-business economics.

Two practical habits. Track the specific Franchise 500 annual issues as a coherent archive, because the year-over-year comparison of rankings creates genuine business-historical reference that the individual scattered issues can't match. And store issues in acid-free archival boxes with attention to the specific advertiser-heavy issues, because Entrepreneur carried dense small-business display advertising that's itself period-documentary and worth preserving rather than discarding. This community runs on generosity and careful Franchise-500-archive preservation.

The business-journalism long game

Learn the Magazines fundamentals - Entrepreneur Franchise 500 chronology, founder-profile identification, which dealers actually handle business-magazine back-issues reliably - and keep a simple log of what you paid and why.

Find the other Entrepreneur collectors

Niches like Entrepreneur grow sharper when collectors who know the franchise-history coverage can compare issues. Amassable lets you log issues, franchise-rankings, and profile notes, show the run like a gallery, and meet others chasing the same eras. Early members help shape how a specialty grows.

Your turn

Show the archive, compare the Franchise 500s, keep the founder profiles. Amassable is built for Entrepreneur collectors - catalog what you own, refine the want list, and start conversations. Download Amassable from the official store links on our homepage, and help bring the Entrepreneur community together, one issue at a time.