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 speed transformation typical of the Internet age. At one time it actually simply meant fake news, but over time it has become a fighting term. Former U.S. President Donald Trump, in particular, threw it around passionately, essentially labeling any reporting that didn't suit him.

This is by all means a dramatic development, because the problem of fake news is huge. The British software company Avast commissioned a survey last year in which just under half of the 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 on the one hand we are overrun by news and can hardly distinguish what is serious and what is not," says Benjamin Mateev. He used to be chief developer at Wunderlist, later at Microsoft. "On top of that, when you try to target reputable news sources, you often get stuck at paywalls." Mateev wants to change that with his startup Informed. It would be an offer that young people in particular would be happy to receive. After all, they often don't have the money to pay for numerous individual subscriptions. Now all that's needed 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 the experience building software applications," Mateev explains.

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 or Economist. This news will then be curated, not by algorithms, but by people. So there will also be so-called "deep dives" into certain topics. A journalistic advisory board decides which content will be included on Informed.

The idea of bundling journalistic content from different publishers on one platform is not new. There are already a number of news aggregators, such as Axel Springer's Upday, that combine texts from different publications. So far, these have not had a real breakthrough. "They rely more on the algorithm than we do," Mateev says. "We believe our curators can prevent bubbles from forming and offer more different perspectives." Informed's creators also want to differentiate themselves from offerings like news store Blendle. Instead of micro-payments for each article, there will be a subscription model. "That way, the expenses are more calculable," says the Informed CEO. Mateev wants to conclude cooperation agreements with the individual publishers for this purpose. The founder is not yet sure how expensive the subscription will ultimately be for end customers, but it should be in the range of offerings 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 actually planned for the end of the year, but the world situation has now brought the company to an earlier field test. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Informed pushed the "Ukrainian Voices" project. Six experts on the Eastern European country are now already publishing regular collections of articles on the situation on the ground through Informed. They include Iuliia Mendel, former press secretary to President Volodymyr Selenskyj, 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," Mateev says. "There we are just getting to a high four-digit number of interested parties."

When it launches in the fall, it will then target young people in particular; Informed has its sights set on Generations Y and Z. These 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, he said, which is the reason for them to partner with Informed. "And for 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," Mateev says. 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."