Led · Seed · Apr 2018

Compass News is a curated news app led by Matilde Giglio that uses an AI editor called Emma to condense global politics, current affairs, business, finance, technology and entertainment coverage into three bullet-point summaries. The app launched nine months earlier in the UK and is available on iOS and Google Play. It currently reports more than 50,000 subscribers on the platform. The company plans to use its new funding to launch in the U.S. market. The app targets millennials with digestible analysis and commentary curated daily by its AI editor. The company is based in New York, NY.

Participated · Series A · Feb 2017

NewsWhip is a real-time media monitoring platform based in Dublin and New York, led by CEO Paul Quigley. Its platform predicts the stories and topics that will matter in the hours ahead, helping communications professionals make quick, confident decisions. The product is used to predict the news, unpack crises and issues, and understand which stories are engaging audiences on global and local scales. Customers include PepsiCo, Google, Tinder, ConAgra, Samsung, McDonald’s, Walmart, ABInBev, the Associated Press, Condé Nast, the Washington Post, and NGOs such as Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières and the World Health Organization. NewsWhip raised $13M in funding and intends to use the proceeds to expand operations and its business reach. NewsWhip offers a SaaS platform that transforms data from stories, videos, and social posts into actionable insights to inform content strategy. Its technology scans the world’s social media activity every two minutes and compares that activity to millions of pieces of content to identify what is spreading fastest and overperforming. The company serves clients including Associated Press, BuzzFeed, MTV, Edelman, and Bauer. Led by CEO Paul Quigley, NewsWhip plans to use the new funding to continue developing its platform. The company is based in New York City and Dublin, EIRE. The announcement frames the Series A as support for product development rather than specific operational metrics or revenue figures. NewsWhip provides a social content discovery platform called Spike. Spike tracks social network activity around millions of stories daily, giving newsrooms, marketers and PR professionals real-time indicators such as tweets, shares and comments. The platform detects articles, videos, Facebook posts and other content and predicts what will matter in hours or days. The company is led by CEO Paul Quigley and is based in Dublin, Ireland. NewsWhip raised over $1.6M in funding to develop the next generation of its platform—improving tracking, predicting and understanding capabilities—and to grow its New York business development team. NewsWhip is a Dublin-headquartered breaking news aggregator whose core product, Spike, identifies and surfaces stories gaining real engagement for journalists, editors, producers, and marketers. The company stores vast volumes of social data and captures hundreds of social data points and metadata for every piece of content to map what it calls the "genome of social distribution." It reports newsroom clients in 12 countries, plus freelancers, small publishers, agencies, and some brands focused on content marketing. NewsWhip will use the new funding to continue developing Spike and to update its main website and Android and iPhone apps. The company also plans to expand geographically, opening a New York office this month and hiring a New York-based sales and communications team. NewsWhip surfaces the latest news by aggregating social signals (tweets and Facebook Likes) from the broader crowd rather than a user’s personal social graph. The company operates a consumer-facing service and has redesigned its site while preparing native mobile and tablet apps. NewsWhip also offers a professional product called Spike, a newsroom dashboard that shows which stories are trending or about to trend; Spike is being trialled with newsrooms and is intended to be subscription-based. Spike was developed with input from the BBC, MSNBC, BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post. Co-founder Paul Quigley has described the product as emphasizing what everyone is sharing across topics to avoid the echo chamber of an individual’s social graph. The company is Dublin-based and has already participated in the NDRC Launchpad program.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2015

Stringr began as a marketplace connecting news organizations with videographers and has expanded into a broader cloud-based video production platform. The company reports a network of more than 100,000 videographers and has added tools for live streaming, transcription, and editing to streamline production. Some customers use Stringr just for footage, while others rely on it as a purely cloud-based solution for producing news programming when staff cannot come into the office. Stringr also launched Embed Studios, a division that uses its videographer network to create branded content for clients including Corcoran, Zillow, HBO Max, Amazon, TikTok, Mastercard, United Way and MGM. The company says demand has increased amid COVID-19 as media companies seek more cost-effective production workflows. Financially, Stringr has raised new funding and says its total capital raised is $7.25 million. Stringr operates a comprehensive video marketplace that enables media organizations to source custom footage, edit and publish under tight deadlines. The company leverages a nationwide network of more than 60,000 responsive videographers who provide broadcast-quality video in every major U.S. market. Stringr collaborates with The Associated Press by providing a selection of daily video stories for syndication through AP’s VideoHub marketplace. The company was founded in 2014 by Lindsay Stewart and Brian McNeill, who met at The Wharton School, and is based in New York City. Stringr raised more than $1M in the latest funding and has raised $4.6M to date. It intends to use the new funds to accelerate growth, including integration of its service into partners’ products. Stringr operates a marketplace that lets media customers post requests for footage and receive submissions, often in under an hour. The platform is open to professional videographers and casual contributors, but emphasizes quality through a curation team that works with both newsrooms and shooters. CEO and co-founder Lindsay Stewart previously worked as a TV news producer for ABC, Bloomberg and Fox News, and says the service was born from newsroom needs. Stringr currently hosts 10,000 videographers on its platform. The company's present focus is editorial footage for breaking news and evergreen stories, with potential to expand to other businesses that need video. Stringr plans to apply learnings from pilot markets toward a nationwide push.