AUSTIN, Texas: Broadly speaking, modern communication was disrupted rapidly in the last 20 years with the invention of the Internet, and later, the mobile smartphone-thereafter, what many refer to as the 'mobile web.' News media in particular, has been shocked by this frame shift.
Since then, the world of apps seems to have conquered the timeshare of most digital citizens' screen time. Today, a burgeoning technology company based out of Austin seems to have the answers to the future of news in the Internet age.
Explica (explica.co) has reached over 10 million monthly users via their popular media destination site, covering sports and entertainment for a primarily US-based audience. The company is experiencing breakneck growth in a short period of time—they corporation has existed for just over a year. An audience of 18 - 35 yr. old readers rely on Explica for a wide range of news including basketball, football, celebrities, music, film, television, and gaming.
Few would expect the key to communication to lie within the faceless lines of code behind a computer screen, but it appears that exactly is the secret behind Explica's growth. The key behind Explica is their proprietary content engine, ExplicaBuilder. The content engine relies on big data science to accelerate & enable their lean newsroom to consistently & quickly deliver predictable virality: the site has been steadily doubling viewership every quarter. The tech, and proceeding viral growth, were constructed from the design & development expertise of Explica's principles, Nando Luna & Vip Sitaraman. Using visually engaging stories, paired with the intelligence of data, this company has proven to be the faster growing in their space.
One of Explica's earliest investors was Austin based, M78 Ventures (m78ventures.com).
M78 Ventures was founded by industry leaders in finance, investment, and entrepreneurship. It's principle founders include: Lorin Radtke, a former partner at Goldman Sachs who ran their Mortgage and Structured products group; Steve Kuhn, former Partner and Portfolio Manager at Pine River Capital - where he managed one of the world's most successful hedge funds of the past twenty years; and Hunter Powell who was CEO of Splice, the earliest and most popular video editor for mobile devices that exited to a billion dollar consumer tech company.
In the words of Hunter Powell, 'Our primary goal at M78 is to provide meaningful insights, guidance, and assistance to early stage Austin companies led by some of the brightest minds in Texas. It's particularly exciting when we witness the kind of explosive growth and product maturity exemplified by the Explica team.'
As the era of social media's reign & the war over content persist, the growth of Explica and other independent news websites/apps will define the future of how news is delivered.
