How would you like to see the news articles that people in your line of work find relevant? Newsology, a news aggregator app based in L.A., is betting that its new spin on news feeds curated around people's professions will intrigue enough users to help it compete with the Silicon Valley giants.
Founder Mark Hasan tells dot.LA that what distinguishes Newsology's AI recommendation engine from competitors like Apple News, Google News, Flipboard and News 360 is that it incorporates the "extra dimension" of a user's industry, title and location. Hasan, who has a background in mechanical engineering and machine learning, says his patent for grouping multiple descriptors about a user gives his app an edge.
<p>"Say you do real estate in California," he says. "Newsology can show you what's popular among real estate professionals in California. Or someone can say, 'I'm in the pharmaceutical industry,' and Newsology's algorithm will show them what's popular with people in that industry."</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQyNzY0Mi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NDg1MTUwOX0.Ll0i9ypC7WzH6DCPqGdDFvlDhUi1XO83pR_luzs_5c0/image.png?width=980" id="e9de0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="467292f242dc1cb334f8e1c0eecd7106" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Newsology incorporates users' professions into its AI recommendation algorithms</small></p><p>When Newsology first launched, it captured users' professional information via their LinkedIn profiles. But when LinkedIn disabled that capability in May 2019, Newsology started asking people to voluntarily provide that data. Hasan says about 30% to 50% of users comply.<br/></p><p>When they don't, or when the algorithm doesn't have enough data to identify that a given article is popular with a specific profession, users receive recommendations based on which of the 30,000-plus interests<strong> </strong>they add to their profiles.</p><p>The model uses natural language processing to classify news articles, then assesses a story's popularity among a given profession by tracking how long users in that profession stay on the page. But Hasan says this method has pitfalls, as it misses the occasions when a user finds an article relevant even if they don't read it – such as when a story has a useful headline. To counteract that, Newsology has added new functionality to allow users to explicitly state when an article is of interest, rather than relying entirely on the algorithm.</p><p>Hasan says it's still early days for the app. His team is small – five including him, plus the odd contractor. The company is self-funded – he won't share how much they've invested – but Hasan says they are not looking for outside investment.</p><p>Right now the app has approximately 37,000 monthly users, and soon the company will ramp up its marketing.</p><p class="">"Our goal right now is to scale users. We're not even looking at monetization," he says. Hasan notes that it will only make financial sense to do so when Newsology has around 300,000 users. At that point, the plan is to monetize through advertising. <br/></p><p>He points to a recent trend of legacy media companies expanding into news aggregation as an encouraging sign, suggesting that this may bring future partnership opportunities. CNN is reportedly <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2019-10-23-cnn-newsco-news-aggregator-service.html" target="_blank"><u>working on a news aggregator</u></a> called NewsCo; in April <a href="https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2020/04/07/cnn-acquires-canopy/" target="_blank"><u>it acquired Canopy</u></a>, which makes content-personalization tools, to bolster the effort. News Corp <a href="https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/news-corp-launches-knewz-with-400-plus-publishers-promising-no-clickbait-or-narrow-minded-nonsense-1203485249/" target="_blank"><u>recently launched its own aggregator</u></a>, Knewz. And scholars in South Korea <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/8/3296" target="_blank"><u>have documented a trend</u></a> of legacy news publishers forming joint ventures with search portals. </p><p>"In a world where content is being thrown at you in such high volume, it's great that AI and ML...can allow people another medium to see quality, ranked news articles," Hasan says. "We are now at a point with data analytics where we can make that even better."</p>
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Elementary Robotics, one of Los Angeles' top robotics startups, announced Tuesday it has raised $12.7 million in Series A funding to continue developing and deploying its automation products at scale.
Co-founded in 2017 by Bill Gross of Idealab and Arye Barnehama, a Pomona College dropout and former head of design at Daqri, the company says its mission is to assist people by "automating day-to-day repetitive tasks" but it adds cryptically on its website: "We can't detail too much about the technology because we're still in stealth mode."
<p>"I'm extremely excited to go public with what we're building, continue to support more companies with their quality and traceability needs, and grow the Elementary team to expand and deploy our innovative platform," said Barnehama.</p><p><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/19/elementary-robotics-raises-cash-to-expand-in-los-angeles-growing-robotics-hub/" target="_blank">In 2018, Gross described to TechCrunch why he was bullish on the company.</a> "Up until now, robotic actuation was mostly about super rigid, super stiff, super strong, repeatable actuation, mostly for manufacturing. But with the recent advances in computer vision, machine learning, and adaptive learning, now you can have a robot that is gentler, less stiff, but MORE (sic) accurate using vision as your feedback system," Gross wrote in an e-mail. "This is a game-changer, and opens up a new frontier of lower cost, easier to program, easier to use robotics for more mainstream operations."</p><p>This latest round was led by Menlo Park's Threshold Ventures (formerly DFJ), an early-stage investor in disruptive technology companies and also had participation from existing investors Fika Ventures, Fathom Capital, Ubiquity Ventures and Toyota AI Ventures.<br/></p><p>"Elementary Robotics is one of a handful of 'new wave' intelligent automation companies contending that the application of AI and robotics will enable a novel set of functions that legacy providers are ill-equipped to address," said Mo Islam, partner at Threshold Ventures. "We were immediately impressed with Elementary's true software-first approach and its ability to deliver on it."</p><p>The valuation was not disclosed but the company last raised $13 million of funding in November at a $48 million post-money valuation, according to Pitchbook data. </p>
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Zeitworks, an under-the-radar early-stage startup based in L.A. and Seattle has raised a $4.5 million seed round.
GeekWire uncovered the company last month. Zeitworks CEO Ryan Windham shared more details about its product and vision in an interview this week.
Madrona Venture Group led the seed round, which included participation from JAZZ Venture Partners and dot.LA co-founder Spencer Rascoff.
Zeitworks' software aims to optimize various business processes for insurance, financial, healthcare, and other companies.
<p>Led by longtime startup leaders and born out of their personal experience, Zeitworks analyzes and suggests improvements to a company's repetitive business processes. Use cases include claims processing, employee onboarding, order processing, or returns management.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzM4NzE0Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyODYyMjQ1OX0.FkBu8LBcoCFIkW6hPTwC2FHh2XetRCGO_k0bG3ar9XU/image.jpg?width=980" id="83ed9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0f94348519a04c3686abac84214a8ef3" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Zeitworks CEO Ryan Windham.
Courtesy of Zeitworks
<p>The company's machine learning and artificial intelligence technology works without interrupting workflows or requiring back-end integrations. The software captures data such as mouse movement or keyboard clicks, crunches the numbers, and then recommends intervention — automation or augmentation of a process, for example.</p><p>"Business leaders are facing pressure to improve the efficiency of these processes, especially now in a downturn," Windham said.</p><p>Companies have traditionally paid consultants, held workshops, or used other manual methods to gather data and improve efficiency.</p><p>"We are competing with the status quo," Windham said. "We're addressing it by democratizing access to business process improvement."</p>
<p>Zeitworks spun out of Seattle-based Madrona Venture Labs (MVL), the startup studio within Madrona Venture Group which incubated the original idea and helped develop the product.<br/></p><p>Blue Nile and Wetpaint co-founder <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/elowitz/" target="_blank">Ben Elowitz</a> is a co-founder of Zeitworks. He joined MVL as managing director <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2018/blue-nile-wetpaint-founder-ben-elowitz-joins-madrona-venture-labs-co-managing-director/" target="_blank">in June 2018</a> and has transitioned out of MVL and will now support the Zeitworks team, which is <a href="https://jobs.lever.co/madronavl" target="_blank">hiring for five roles</a>.</p><p>Other Zeitworks employees include co-founder <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/maholloway/" target="_blank">Matthew Holloway</a>, a veteran of SAP, Shutterfly, Atlas Informatics, and Xinova; <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-h-61854/" target="_blank">Dan Hendrick</a>, former data science director at 98point6; and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-mitchell-89250a167/" target="_blank">Brian Mitchell</a>.</p><p>Zeitworks expects to triple headcount this year, Windham said. It will be co-headquartered in Seattle and Los Angeles, where Windham and Rascoff are based.</p><p>"They are taking a big swing on improving business processes through AI which fits nicely into my personal angel investing theses around the future of work," said Rascoff, who is also an investor in MVL.</p><p>Windham previously led Cedexis as CEO; the application traffic company was acquired by Citrix in 2018. Madrona Managing Director Len Jordan sat on the Cedexis board, and that connection ultimately led Windham to Zeitworks. Jordan is also on the board of Zeitworks.</p><p>"From a market need standpoint, the focus on digital transformation and increasing efficiencies is driving business users' awareness of the benefits of analyzing and understanding their own processes," Madrona wrote in a blog post. "We believe that Zeitworks will be a key enabler in that inevitable digital transformation of enterprises."</p><p><em>This story <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2020/startup-vets-raise-4-5m-zillow-co-founder-madrona-others-optimize-business-processes/" target="_blank">first appeared in GeekWire</a>. </em></p>
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