Vox's year in review is Vox’s entire life in review. Hard as it is to believe, we're not even a year old.

Vox launched in April, two months after the team first arrived at the company. In nine weeks, we designed, built and launched an entirely new digital publication. Since turning on the lights, we've published over 7,000 articles, created 30 editorial apps, built over 12 tools, 17 snippets, 150 features, more than 100 card stacks and dozens of videos. We've gone from a staff of three to a staff of 30. In November, we had more than 22 million unique readers — and, of late, are routinely leading mainstays like Politico, the New Yorker, and New York magazine in Comscore. Our work has been mentioned by everyone from President Barack Obama to Bill Gates to Kerry Washington to Marc Andreessen to John Cusack.

Vox has gained so much traction, so quickly, because it identified a hole in the news business and filled it. Plenty of outlets are good at reporting the news. Others are great at commenting on it. But only Vox is truly focused on explaining the news. And we're just getting started.