Informed wants to revolutionize the news business

With its app, the start-up offers access to hand-picked content from international media. A first test run is now starting in Ukraine.

The term "fake news" has undergone a rapid transformation typical of the internet age. It once simply meant fake news, but over time it has become a fighting term. Former US President Donald Trump in particular threw it around passionately and essentially used it to describe any reporting that didn't suit him.

This is certainly a dramatic development, as the problem of fake news is huge. Last year, the British software company Avast commissioned a survey in which almost half of respondents said they had already been confronted with fake news on social networks. Among 18-24-year-olds, the figure was as high as 67 percent.

"One problem is that we are overwhelmed by news and can hardly tell what is serious and what is not," says Benjamin Mateev. He used to be head developer at Wunderlist, later at Microsoft. "What's more, when you try to access reputable news sources, you often get stuck at paywalls." Mateev wants to change this with his start-up Informed. It would be an offer that young people in particular would be delighted with. After all, they often don't have the money for numerous individual subscriptions. Now all that remains is for enough publishers to get on board with Mateev's start-up.

He founded the company last year together with journalist Martin Kaelble and former Spotify manager Axel Bard Bringéus. "Martin brings the journalistic perspective, Axel is the business expert and I have experience in building software applications," explains Mateev.

The idea behind Informed is simple: with a subscription, users will have access to articles from various publications, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Guardian and Economist. This news is then curated not by algorithms, but by people. There will also be "deep dives" into certain topics. A journalistic advisory board decides which content is included in Informed.

The idea of bundling journalistic content from different publishers on one platform is not new. There are already a number of news aggregators that bring together texts from different publications, such as Axel Springer's Upday service. These have not yet had a real breakthrough. "They rely more on the algorithm than we do," says Mateev. "We believe that our curators can prevent the formation of bubbles and offer more different perspectives." The Informed makers also want to differentiate themselves from offerings such as the news store Blendle. Instead of micro-payments for each article, there will be a subscription model. "This makes it easier to calculate expenditure," says the Informed CEO. Mateev wants to conclude cooperation agreements with the individual publishers. The founder is not yet sure how expensive the subscription will ultimately be for end customers, but it should be in the range of offers such as Spotify or Netflix.

The start-up recently raised five million euros to implement its idea, including from HV Capital and 468 Capital. The market launch was originally planned for the end of the year, but the global situation has now prompted the company to carry out an earlier field test. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Informed launched the "Ukrainian Voices" project. Six experts for the Eastern European country now regularly publish collections of articles on the situation on the ground via Informed. These include Iuliia Mendel, the former press spokesperson for President Volodymyr Zelensky, and Tatyana Kiel, CEO of Klitschko Ventures, the company owned by the two former professional boxers.

"The processes seem to be working, and at the same time our waitlist has grown," says Mateev. "We've just reached a high four-digit number of interested parties."

When it launches in the fall, Informed will be targeting young people in particular, with generations Y and Z in mind. They are most likely to be those who consume news from many different sources but are not willing or able to take out half a dozen individual subscriptions. This group is also often rather untapped by publishers, which is the reason for them to cooperate with Informed. "And for the Anglo-Saxon media in particular, European markets are often rather poorly covered, which is why our offer is interesting for the New York Times, for example," says Mateev. In the medium term, he wants to expand the offering to other publishers, including German ones. "We are also explicitly looking at younger offerings that open up new perspectives."