The maker of the Media Bias Chart is going global with a mission to bring ad dollars back to quality news.

You may have heard already, but in case you hadn’t, I’m excited to share that Ad Fontes recently closed a Series A funding round of $4.2M, as covered in this article by AdExchanger today.

I’d like to acknowledge and thank Troy Root, Managing Director of Aion Ventures, our lead investor, for his foresight into the opportunity in front of us and his commitment to our mission. When you have an investor who is truly aligned with your vision—rather than one who just views your company as one of many “deals”—it makes all the difference to your company’s success. We wouldn’t be here today without your belief in the world we can create, Troy.

I’d also like to acknowledge Danielle Shoots, Managing Director of New Community Transformation Fund, for starting and creating a fund that fills a huge gap in investing in minority and female founders. Her eye for opportunity that others overlook is also a huge asset to a company like ours, which had done a lot with a little for a long time, and now has the fuel to reach our full potential. Thanks to Kevin Allen and Michael Bevis as well, whose work with NCTF helped everything come together at the right time.

I’m also thrilled to have Will Luttrell and Matt and Luann Abrams on board for this round. It’s hard to overstate the value of industry and domain expertise on your cap table.

If you had told me in 2016 that today we would have a media technology company which had raised over $6M in funding and had some of the biggest companies in the world as clients, I would have been overjoyed and amazed, so allow me to be that now.

Startups are journeys filled with ups and downs, none of which are permanent. This part is certainly an “up,” so I’d like to pause to celebrate it with the people who got us here. 

It started with the first fans of the Media Bias Chart seven years ago. People who shared it and talked about it with their friends because they thought it would make a difference in the conversation. The teachers who used it in their classrooms. The strangers (now friends, investors, employees, advisors, board members—an unbelievable number of them) who reached out over the internet to see how they could help. My family and friends who helped me with odd jobs. All our analysts. Our employees. The first investors in our IndieGogo round! The first investors in our WeFunder round! Our first funds that came on board—Gaingels, Glen Nelson Center Horizon Fund, Stout Street Capital.

When you’re early and your company doesn’t fit familiar molds, not everyone gets it. But all these folks got it. We’ve come a long way, and at the same time, we are just getting started.

Vanessa Otero is a former patent attorney in the Denver, Colorado area with a B.A. in English from UCLA and a J.D. from the University of Denver. She is the original creator of the Media Bias Chart (October 2016), and founded Ad Fontes Media in February of 2018 to fulfill the need revealed by the popularity of the chart — the need for a map to help people navigate the complex media landscape, and for comprehensive content analysis of media sources themselves. Vanessa regularly speaks on the topic of media bias and polarization to a variety of audiences.