Berlin-based startup informed officially rolls out a digital news platform and makes curated, high-quality journalism accessible to everyone

In a time of an endless flood of digital information, and with fake news and misinformation on the rise, more and more news consumers feel overwhelmed.

They want to be well informed, to make objective comparisons between news sources, and to have a knowledgeable voice in conversations with friends, family and their professional networks. However, most people do not have the time to screen various news sources regularly.

As a response to ‘news overwhelm’ and the rise of misinformation, informed is officially rolling out its digital news platform to help people stay up to date on the news and topics that matter most, and provide easy access to quality, fact-based journalism.

The launch was preceded by a beta phase, during which informed experimented and tested new, innovative ways of news consumption based on extensive user research and feedback from thousands of waitlist users.

From today, informed is available in Apple and Google app stores and will enable users to discover and read the most important news stories from the leading publishers, all in one subscription, curated into one app.

The informed app offers a selection of premium articles from a growing list of the world’s leading, most reliable publications, including The New York Times, Financial Times, The Economist, and many more. The informed editorial team curates must-reads daily.

With hubs in Berlin and London, informed is a remote-first, truly European startup with its diverse team consisting of editors, curators and tech experts spread over several countries and comprising 20 nationalities from six continents.

informed users can choose from two types of memberships: The free tier offers access to a limited set of premium articles, whereas the premium tier provides access to all articles curated by informed, for an annual price of €59.99 or €7.99 per month.

informed is starting with a limited-time launch offer, giving out one month for free if users sign up for an annual subscription. During the one-month trial, users can cancel at any time. After that, we will have seven-day free trials for users that sign up for the monthly plan and 14-day trials for users that sign up for the annual plan.

To guarantee the highest journalistic standards for its digital product informed created an advisory board consisting of board members Katharine Weymouth (CEO of Washington Post Media, 2008-2014), Lionel Barber (editor-in-chief of The Financial Times, 2005-2020), and Bill Emmott (editor-in-chief of The Economist, 1993-2006). 

Informed is planning to gradually expand the advisory board to include additional members. The board will support the informed team with their deep well of experience and provide a valuable link to the publishing industry. All with the goal of understanding publishers’ needs, igniting discussions and providing the input necessary for responsibly building a complex digital news product.

We want to create a safe haven for news consumption that is easily accessible and digestible for mainstream audiences.

Based on the curation of informed’s editorial team and the in-app recommendations of leading online creators and experts, readers can explore and dive deeply into topics that matter. Our curation is done by humans, not purely algorithms.

That’s because we believe that smart human curation is the best way to provide different perspectives across the political spectrum and to include a mix of niche and big publishers as well as a variety of Western and non-Western sources.

All this to fight filter bubbles and misinformation.

says Benjamin Mateev, CEO and co-founder of informed.

Benjamin Mateev was a lead engineer on the to-do list platform Wunderlist which was later acquired by Microsoft, where he spent several years as Product Lead for digital memory and to-do experiences. Earlier, he was also head of product at the opinion news site The European, where he gained experience with editorial products.

Martin Kaelble was head of digital and online editor-in-chief at Germany’s biggest business, monthly Capital, where he gained a lot of experience with digital editorial products and paid products, also building Capital’s first paywall. Before becoming a journalist (first at the German branch of Financial Times), he spent several years in tech, for example, at the well-known European startup Jamba.

Axel Bard Bringéus joined Spotify in an early phase and essentially shaped their rapid global expansion, as he was rolling out the company in Europe, Asia, and LatAm and ultimately became the global head of markets. After that, he worked as a startup investor, being a deal partner at the prominent European fund EQT Ventures. In his early career, he also worked as a journalist for a short period at Svenska Dagbladet in his home country Sweden.

Against a backdrop of rising levels of misinformation and a more fragmented news market, informed seeks to bring users human-curated information on the topics that matter from credible sources.

We’re incredibly proud of informed’s experienced team as they roll out this exciting product to market – potentially revolutionizing one of the largest consumer markets out there.

said Jan Miczaika, Partner at HV Capital.

In April 2022, the startup informed raised €5 million in seed funding from HV Capital and 468 Capital.