Our Bold 5-Year Vision: To Fix the World's Broken Information Ecosystem 📊

Our Biggest Ambition Yet...

The global information ecosystem is at a crossroads.

Trust in pretty much everything—from media and institutions to even trust in ordinary people—sits at or near all-time lows.

I’ve always believed that data storytelling can help people get the right insights at the right time. That it can break down the facts in a trustworthy and intuitive way that empowers people to make better decisions: about their lives, their careers, and the direction of society.

It’s why we started Visual Capitalist 13 years ago, and it’s why we get 12 million visits (thank you!) to the website every month.

But despite the amazing work our team does to visualize interesting data and megatrends, we’re only able to scratch the surface of what’s going on in the world.

More Data, More Problems

Above is how I sum up the main challenges in the realm of data storytelling.

But let’s dive deeper, and talk about both the pros and cons of data storytelling in the current information ecosystem:

The Good News:

• There is a vast universe of data storytelling out there to be discovered, with over a million new charts, infographics, maps, and data visualizations created each day
• Many of these are timely and relevant. They can help you learn, form opinions, and make decisions in a complicated world
• There are incredible creators out there making charts and visualizations in every niche imaginable

• Data storytelling is disparate and spread throughout the internet across many different platforms. There’s no obvious place to go to discover new data
• You can’t trust what you see. The data itself, the data source, and even who made it can be opaque or suspect
• Charts are often designed to elicit a reaction (i.e. outrage) because that gets clicks. Many use misinformation, biases, or cherry-picked data to trigger a reaction
• Artificial intelligence (AI) has sped up content creation, which means even more volume and noise for users to sift through

Our Bold Vision: A Platform for the World's Data

To get different results, we can no longer rely on the status quo. We have to change the way the information ecosystem itself works.

We need a new platform, specifically one that is:

Voronoi is That Platform

The good news is that we’ve taken matters into our own hands and have already started building this platform.

We launched the first version of Voronoi (iOS, Android, web), just over a year ago (and many of you have supported it so far - thanks!)

Built on all the values above, we’ve already opened the doors to 120+ data creators who have posted over 4,000 data-driven visuals on a variety of subjects.

Importantly each data story comes with full transparency, where you can see the data behind the chart, data sources, and any methodology notes.

Though still at the minimum viable product (MVP) stage, Voronoi is already picking up major traction with over 200,000 monthly active users (MAUs).

Supercharging Voronoi’s Growth

Since launching, Voronoi has grown its users by about 26% every month.

Meanwhile, average daily users (i.e. the ones that go on Voronoi day in and day out) have surged 64.4% since October.

But this just scratches the surface of what we think is possible.

Here’s our five year vision of where we think Voronoi can go:

In the future, we want Voronoi to be where people go to discover, share, and discuss data. We even want it to be where businesses, media, organizations, and governments go to release their newest data.

By uniting the data ecosystem under one banner, we believe there is a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity as well.

(And don’t worry, Visual Capitalist is not going anywhere. It will continue to be a center of excellence for data storytelling and a high-profile creator on Voronoi.)

Achieving Our Vision Requires Capital

To build the world’s data discovery platform to its potential, we need your help.

I’m asking here because in the 13 years of Visual Capitalist’s existence, I’ve realized how powerful and amazing our following is.

What we need: connections to like-minded investors (venture capital, family offices, other accredited investors like angels) that can help us raise a seed round of capital to get to the next steps in our roadmap and vision.

If you are someone, or if you know someone who can help that believes in this mission—please email me at: jeff.desjardins@visualcapitalist.com

Sincerely,

Jeff Desjardins
Founder of Visual Capitalist and Founder of Voronoi