About Outpost Publishers Cooperative
So we have to admit it. We're different. First off, we're a publishers cooperative, meaning the goal of the organization is to provide services to publishers, not build value and cash out. We are not funded by billionaires. Our bylaws prevent us from selling out to Big Tech.
When a cooperative member asks us to build a custom feature, other cooperative members get it for their sites too (plus members get to try it out early in our Outpost Labs). If we make more money in a year than we need to run the company, we give cooperative members a dividend.
We believe the future of publishing is people paying to support the publications and writers they care about, and that those publications should keep as much as possible, not make billionaires even more money.
The internet and the web have been revolutionary in expanding the diversity in voices and communities and one of the outgrowths of that is allowing people to make a good, independent living writing about what they care about. Being able to do so without having a boss, 9-5 schedule, commute, or someone telling them to write about something else (or to write in a different way) is revolutionary.
We’re at an exciting moment in tech: it is becoming easier and easier for independent voices to sustainably thrive, and we truly love to see it.
Our Co-Founders
Our co-founders, Andrew Nikolaenko and Ryan Singel, have been building ethical publishing software for over 10 years. Outpost is their second venture into journalism tech together, which happily loops in their first, benefiting cooperative members with intelligent recommendations.
Ryan Singel started working as an online journalist for Wired.com in 2002, after spending three years working for search startups. His beats for Wired included privacy, security, search, social networking, tech policy and startup. He also co-founded the award-winning Threat Level blog.
During his time as a Wired writer, and later editor, Ryan became increasingly frustrated with the tools and CMS available for journalists. He had an idea to create a recommendation system that gave readers more stories on the topic they just read about with intelligent recommendations that keep readers on a publisher’s site by linking to other stories there.
In 2013, Ryan met Andrew Nikolaenko, who has made this recommendation idea an incredible reality that just keeps getting better. Andrew and Ryan’s first venture together, Contextly, has been growing and evolving ever since, helping publishers for over a decade with intelligent recommendations. Today, Contextly is one of the features we offer at the Luna level and above as one of the services that we use cooperative buying power to make cheaper for Outpost member publishers.
Since starting Contextly, Andrew and Ryan have always talked about further ways they could help journalists, and in 2021 co-founded Outpost Publishers Cooperative with the goal of making life easier for people wanting to make their own way as independent publishers and creators.
Team Outpost
In the years since Outpost was founded, the team has grown. We have two main hubs: Outpost West in California, and Outpost East in Europe, with a beautiful constellation of global remote teammates shining like the stars they are, helping us keep Outpost continually evolving and growing in what we offer our cooperative members.
Together, we’ve helped launch and support independent publishers and journalists all over the globe, expanding into hybrid online/print journalism as well.
Outpost Cooperative members are making waves with their scoops, breaking news, local coverage in previously underserved areas, intelligent commentary, and meaningful stories and creation of all kinds.
Outpost provides tools to help publishers and creators, taking care of the time-consuming parts of running an independent business to free up more time for them to do what they love and do best in the world.
To learn more about Outpost, visit our homepage, drop us a note at info@outpost.pub or just start your free, no credit-card-required 21-day free trial of Outpost.
