Research shows that people without access to reliable local news are less likely to vote, volunteer, run for office -- or even trust their neighbours. Communities without local news are more vulnerable to misinformation and even infectious diseases. But the advertising revenue that long supported local newspapers has been disrupted by digital platforms, resulting in layoffs and closures around the world even as eight in 10 people look to news media for information about their communities every day.

This is the problem that Indiegraf co-founders Erin Millar and Caitlin Havlak have obsessed about for most of their careers, first as journalists then as entrepreneurs.

In 2014, Erin founded Discourse Media, a digital publisher dedicated to innovating a new business model for quality local news. (Caitlin joined the company the following year.) An early mover in digital news innovation, Discourse Media built a reader revenue business model just as the trend was emerging among large publishers like the Guardian and the New York Times. Their innovative and community-engaged journalism was recognized with international speaking invitations, global and national awards and by academics who published several case studies about the Discourse Media model.

But accessing the capital to build a sustainable business model proved more difficult, especially at a time when the news industry was undergoing huge challenges. Discourse Media innovated there too, leveraging equity crowdfunding investment to raise capital from more than 350 community members. Angel investors, including Praveen Varshney and Keith Ippel of Spring, recognized the opportunity for both social impact and profit.

Despite strong growth, Discourse Media continued to struggle to raise sufficient capital and suffered several financing setbacks. Twice the company laid off most of its employees for a period of months.

Keith and Praveen were there through it all, supporting Erin and Caitlin as they repeatedly found a new way forward. They helped navigate tricky HR challenges. They negotiated with other investors to extend the runway. They made intros. They critiqued decks and financial models. They offered a shoulder to cry on when needed. And most importantly, they believed.

In late 2019, a leaner, more focused Discourse Media finally achieved profitability. Erin and Caitlin knew they had the pieces of a replicable model that could support community news in the 2000 news deserts across North America. But they also had learned that journalism content production was capital intensive. They knew Discourse Media would not be able to raise enough capital to scale fast enough to really move the needle.

Then the pandemic arrived and 50 community newspapers closed in Canada in the course of six weeks. It was an apocalyptic event for local news.

This lit a fire in Erin and Caitlin. They called their investors and pitched a new idea, a subsidiary of Discourse Media called Indiegraf. Instead of focusing on growing Discourse Media, they wanted to give the tools to journalist-entrepreneurs to launch their own Discourse-like publishers. They wanted to take all the learning and process innovation from Discourse and build a technology platform to scale. And they wanted to do it now.

The idea meant delaying an exit. It meant pivoting. It required more investment. It required talking Discourse's (somewhat unwieldy) cap table into getting behind a totally new plan. Keith and Praveen never flinched. Indiegraf launched in May 2020.

Since then Indiegraf grew its revenue by more than 150% every year, achieving $1.9 million in 2022. Its tools have been used by more than 110 publishers across North America, and are now available in Spanish and French. In late 2020, Indiegraf oversubscribed its pre-seed round when it won Spring's Impact Investor Challenge. It's since attracted funding from Google, impact fund New Media Ventures and top VC Mucker Capital.