Earlier this month, The Logic turned five. We’ve been so busy, we’ve barely had time to acknowledge the milestone. 

Every so often, a month in the life of a startup founder can feel like a year. Nothing seems to be going right, everything around you seems to be on fire and you feel the full weight of the boulder you’re trying to push up the hill. Then there are months that vault you ahead in your journey—momentous leaps forward that forever change your trajectory and remind you that what you’re building truly matters. In their more modest moments, founders chalk these up at least in part to luck. But you’ve got to be good to be lucky, as the cliche goes, and founders also know “luck” is often the result of hard work, perseverance and building a great team.

For The Logic, this has been one of those good months: the ones that move you forward. 

We earned five nominations for the 2022 SABEW Canada Best in Business Award awards, the most of any outlet other than The Globe and Mail. 

The SABEWs are the journalism prize we value most. They’re the only awards to which we as a newsroom apply every year. Beyond their prestige, they give us the chance to measure ourselves against our peers—the best in Canadian business media, and the Canadian arms of some of the world’s finest news-gathering organizations.

This year’s nominations include two for our Ottawa correspondent David Reevely, one for our Broken Links series—a six-part examination of Canada’s supply-chain crisis, which David led, and for which Anita Balakrishnan, Jesse Snyder and Catherine McIntyre were also nominated—and the other with our cryptocurrency reporter Claire Brownell, for their breaking news coverage of the crackdown on the Freedom Convoy’s finances.

Our Montreal correspondent Martin Patriquin is also nominated twice, for his Quebec Ink columns, and for his scoop that revealed Amazon’s threats to pull its Marketplace service from Canada.

Finally, the nomination I value at least as much as any other: for the fifth consecutive year, The Logic newsroom was nominated for best newsletter for The Logic Briefing. The work they do daily to put the Briefing together is remarkable. It remains in many ways our signature product—it’s our equivalent of a newspaper front page—and the whole-of-newsroom collaboration that goes into it is unique in Canadian journalism.

Behind these terrific reporters is a team of incredible editors and producers. Their bylines may not appear in the stories, but their hard work is present throughout.

The Logic Summit, our biggest event yet, is officially sold out. We’re looking forward to hosting our subscribers nine days from now for an afternoon of intellectual stimulation and community-building, with appearances from the likes of Affirm CEO Max Levchin, GM Canada CEO Marissa West, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence, Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian and many, many more. Keep an eye out for future events throughout the year, and a special thank-you to our presenting sponsor Sun Life, as well as our platinum sponsors BMO, Deloitte and Telus. It’s going to be a fun afternoon. 

We were an early investor in The Peak, which Zoomer Media acquired this month. It’s rare for a media company to grow successfully in this economic climate, and we couldn’t be prouder of the Peak team. 

Meanwhile, as you may have read, the tech conference Collision agreed to accredit The Logic’s full team of reporters, granting them access to cover the event. You’ve heard enough from me about the details of this dispute, but I’m returning to it today because for me the experience has been a clarifying one.

After we published my original letter to readers explaining the situation, we were overwhelmed with expressions of support from Canada’s business and journalism communities. Journalism is a rough business. The people you report on don’t always appreciate being reported on, and the competition with other media outlets is fierce. In a small industry, it can all sometimes feel more personal than it is. We didn’t ask anybody to take a stand on our behalf—which made it all the more meaningful to hear that so many were behind us. 

I always ask myself and our team, If The Logic disappeared tomorrow, would Canadians care? That’s my ultimate barometer of whether we’re providing value to our readers and to this country. This month, I’ve been reminded that while our product is digital, The Logic has become a living, breathing thing.

After the Summit, we’ll celebrate our fifth birthday with a small party. There will be slab cake and cheap bubbly. But as we mark that anniversary, I want to say thank you to you, our readers and champions. Your subscriptions got us to this point. They are in many ways the loudest possible form of advocacy for our work, because they let us continue to do what we do. We do not take your investment in us for granted, and we will continue to work to earn your trust every single day. 

Thank you for five great years. Here’s to many more.