Berlin-headquartered informed, a one-of-a-kind news platform, designed to help you stay up to date with the stories that matter most, has picked up €5 million in seed funding.
The investment round was led by European venture capital firm HV Capital known for investing in leading European startups like HelloFresh, Delivery Hero, Zalando, and SumUp. Recently, the investor backed Klima and KoRo among others. Besides, 468 Capital, a prominent venture capital firm based in Berlin and San Francisco that led informed’s €1 million pre-seed round last year also participated in the round.
informed will use the proceeds of this round to further develop its product and grow its team. While its team is working remotely, there are offices in Berlin and London, the latter opening this year.
Idea behind informed
Founded in Berlin in 2021 by Benjamin Mateev, Martin Kaelble, and Axel Bard Bringéus, informed enables its users to discover and read the most important news stories from the best publishers with one subscription. It collaborates with top industry brands and leading news publishers, including The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Reuters and Foreign Policy.
To guarantee the highest journalistic standards for its digital product, informed has set up an advisory board that will create a platform of exchange with the publishing industry, to understand publisher needs and to have the input necessary to build a complex digital news product in a responsible way.
The company aims to establish a diverse advisory board to represent a variety of different perspectives. The startup will add at least two more members and the announcement will be made soon. The advisory board members, who will have shares in the company, will formulate editorial principals.
“It is very complex compared to a startup like doing delivery for food,” he said. “It’s worth it to spend a lot of time on editorial guidelines and principles with a lot of advice, with journalistic expertise.”
How informed works?
The informed app bundles and curates the best trusted news sources in the world. Based on the curation of informed editorial team and the in-app recommendations of leading online creators and experts, readers can explore and take deep dives into topics that matter the most to them.
The curation is done by humans, not purely algorithms. It believes that smart human curation is the best way to provide different perspectives across the political spectrum with a good mix of niche and big publishers and a variety of Western and non-Western sources. These measures will help filter bubbles and misinformation.
The Berlin startup wants to create a safe haven for news consumption that is easily accessible and digestible for mainstream and younger audiences. Its mobile app is currently in beta and will go live before the end of the year.
The news startup sees an opportunity to help publishers make money from readers who might be more likely to subscribe to a collection of outlets than a single publication.
