The Ascent first began on March 30th, 2016 with the publishing of this article:
Reaching One's Summit - The Ascent - Medium
Our founder, Steve Campbell, started the site as a side project, using it to document his professional journey through business once the clock struck 6 pm.
Soon after, however, he decided to open the site up to contributors, and began reaching out to authors on Medium to request their stories. Having realized that many others were already sharing details of their respective journeys, he set out to build a community instead.
Fast-forward a year to April, 2017. Medium's feature set had evolved. The Ascent had grown to some 30,000 followers. Steve was no longer having to ask for article submissions.
That's also around the time when he decided to leave his job in New York City, moving 1,700 miles west (and another mile up) to Denver. The Ascent gained another editor in Melissa Berdine.
In April, 2018, Steve published a 14-minute read detailing the 7 Meaningful Things We Can All Do to Succeed Here on Medium, Together, which doubled as our version 2.0 submission guidelines:
7 Meaningful Things We Can All Do to Succeed Here on Medium, Together
By that time, The Ascent was closing in on 40,000 followers and was starting to capture some serious attention from readers. Here's how those stats compare a year later:
At the end of the day, our goal is to help people become better storytellers. We believe that a single story has the power to change the world. Our official tagline reads as follows:
A community of storytellers documenting the journey to success.