Our Investment in Indiegraf: Powering the Future of Independent Media
StandUp is proud to (finally!) announce our investment in Vancouver-based Indiegraf ’s $2.2M seed round. Investing alongside Coralus, Mucker Capital and other angel investors, we’re excited to be a part of Indiegraf’s mission to enable a thriving ecosystem of independent media entrepreneurship around the world.
Prior to founding Indiegraf, Erin Millar and Caitlin Havlak worked for five years to build an award-winning independent journalism outlet called The Discourse. Through this experience, Erin and Caitlin saw first-hand how technically complicated it was to manage advertising campaigns, monetize their most engaged readers, and to master the skills necessary to build these successful revenue streams — all while still producing excellent content for their readers.
Recognizing their challenges at The Discourse were not unique, they founded Indiegraf to solve the problems of independent publishers everywhere. Indiegraf offers a comprehensive news website builder, email newsletter platform, supporter payment system, advertising platform, expert marketplace and access to growth capital.
Like Shopify did for ecommerce, Indiegraf offers news entrepreneurs the digital tools and support required to build and scale thriving independent publishing businesses. Indie publishers are poised to become a major part of the future of media and Indiegraf is powering that transformation.
Rise of the “Indie Publisher”
Fragmenting media and the unbundling of the newspaper
It’s no secret that legacy news media have struggled to adapt to changes brought on by the internet, namely the destruction of a once lucrative print advertising-centric business model.
As these shifts have taken hold, media networks have become increasingly fragmented and trust in legacy media has diminished. People trust community or niche influencers as much or more than institutions and individual content writers have more opportunity with consumers than they’ve ever had before.
Be it scrolling their X (twitter) feed, catching up on their medley of newsletter subscriptions, listening to podcasts, or perusing a favourite large news publication, consumers rely on a decentralized mix of sources versus going to a single monolith to get all of their information. This information mix is one that increasingly includes new, independent voices across a wide array of niche subject areas.
Opportunity in local (niche) issue coverage
The internet catalyzed consolidation of legacy media, leading to coverage that is more global or national in nature often at the expense of local issues. This coverage gap has, perhaps surprisingly, created a swell of unmet demand for local/niche issues that indie publishers are well suited to fill.
His (Jeff Bezos) aspiration upon taking over was to make the (Washington) Post a “national and even more global publication” …Perry Stein used to cover DC Public Schools…But when she got a promotion, it wasn’t to do something bigger covering DC government or regional issues, it was to cover the Justice Department, where she’s churning out Trump trial stories ….People interested in the topic of local crime have instead followed Alan Henney’s police scanner tweets and the part-time anonymous amateur Substack DC Crime Facts …It really seems that the supply of local news coverage has at long last slipped below the actual demand threshold.” — Matthew Yglesias , “ Another Brutal Year for the Media Industry ”, “Slow Boring”
There’s also a great business case for this type of coverage. Indie publishers with captive audiences around local or niche subject areas can be attractive places to advertise for organizations with a burning need to target these narrow audiences. These direct-sold placements can be extremely high margin when compared to generic “programmatic” digital advertising and represent a major revenue opportunity for indie publishers.
An emerging business model for indie publishers
Over the past few years, digital first publishers have shown the blueprint of a successful business model for indie news entrepreneurs: Direct audience monetization (membership, donations, subscriptions), high margin localized/niche advertising, and a low cost operating model that takes advantage of technology to run as efficiently as possible.
Whereas media used to be subsidized with advertising revenue from non-news categories (eg: classified ads), in this new business model content is king. Nailing the new approach is only possible with high quality content that reliably captivates and engages the publisher’s audience.
Sounds great right? Well it’s not as easy as it sounds…
Indiegraf: Helping indie publishers start, grow and manage their business
The challenging status quo
Publishers rely on a fragmented set of software tools to run an integrated website, email newsletter, the ability to collect reader payments, and an advertising capability. To say nothing of the high cost of all of this, integrating these tools requires technical expertise that many indie publishers do not have in-house.
Furthermore, building successful revenue streams requires a level of sophistication around digital marketing and related best practices that is uncommon for most indie publishers (eg: what to charge readers, when to charge, how to run effective email marketing campaigns and what messages to focus on etc.).
Most importantly, managing all of this takes time away from what ultimately drives success: creating great content.
Indiegraf to the rescue
Indiegraf offers a “media business in a box” solution that gives indie publishers all the resources and support they need to produce great content. That means lowering their expenses, increasing their revenue and freeing up their time to do what they do best.
Indiegraf offers fully integrated publishing tools — website management, email marketing, reader payments, and ads — all ready to use so publishers can focus on delivering great content without managing multiple systems.
Co-founders Erin and Caitlin know from their own experience that tools alone can’t solve every problem, sometimes you need people. Their platform includes access to “Indiegraf Experts” , which offers flexible access to top talent for help with advertising, audience growth, and fundraising at a lower cost than otherwise would be possible for these organizations.
From startup newsrooms to multi-million dollar networks, Indiegraf provides media organizations the tools and support they need to thrive.
Onwards and Upwards
Indiegraf’s tools helped grow over 150 community media businesses operating in multiple languages including, English, Spanish and French. With this capital, Indiegraf will have the resources to scale its offerings to indie publishers around the world.
StandUp believes that most of publishers that Indiegraf will serve in 2030 don’t even exist yet. Our belief is that Indiegraf will act as an enabling force that lowers the barrier to entry and success, making media entrepreneurship possible for thousands of organizations in the coming years.
We’re honoured to be partnering with Erin and Caitlin on their mission and couldn’t be more excited for the future of Indiegraf.
Our Investment in Indiegraf: Powering the Future of Independent Media was originally published in StandUp Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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