
Brief – News for Busy People - gnachman
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/brief-news-for-busy-people/id1475186118
======
andreaaaa
Founder here. I left Google because I want to help fix a broken news
environment. Perverse incentives have led so many news feeds and articles to
feel like piles of clickbait garbage. Brief is my first attempt to build a
better news experience that respects your time and helps you focus on what
matters. It’s still early, but my team and I are super curious to see what you
all think.

Right now we’re iOS only, but we want to build web and Android options. If
you’d be interested in either, please let us know here:
[https://briefnews.typeform.com/to/GxS1WF](https://briefnews.typeform.com/to/GxS1WF)

~~~
e15ctr0n
Great work! Curious about a couple of things on your app store listing [1]:

1\. What does the app's home page look like? What I can see from the
screenshots looks like a second-level view to me.

2\. When you say "Reports written for you by real human editors" does that
mean that you are personally employing someone to write these reports or are
they algorithmically selected?

3\. How much is the monthly subscription and what does it offer over and above
the free version?

[1] [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/brief-news-for-busy-
people/id1...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/brief-news-for-busy-
people/id1475186118)

> _Right now we’re iOS only, but we want to build web and Android options. If
> you’d be interested in either_

Yes, definitely interested in the web version.

~~~
andreaaaa
Great Questions!

> _1\. What does the app 's home page look like? What I can see from the
> screenshots looks like a second-level view to me._

You can see the same preview at
[https://briefbeta.com](https://briefbeta.com). If you’re viewing the App
Store page on desktop, it drops our video preview that shows the home page
(apologies).

> _2\. When you say "Reports written for you by real human editors" does that
> mean that you are personally employing someone to write these reports or are
> they algorithmically selected?_

Yes! We have a newsroom that writes the reports. We use algorithms to
personalize your report based on what we know you already know (so you don’t
re-read the same boilerplate background all the time), but we think real
journalistic judgment is critical.

> _3\. How much is the monthly subscription and what does it offer over and
> above the free version?_

The subscription is $4.99/month. We actually don’t offer a free version,
though we do give a free trial. We deeply believe that high quality news can’t
be funded by ads, which means we have to ask readers to pay. However, we also
don’t want high quality news to only be for rich folks. So, if you can’t
afford it, just email us (support@broadsheet.tech), and we’ll comp your
subscription.

~~~
e15ctr0n
> _Yes! We have a newsroom that writes the reports. The subscription is $4.99
> /month._

I have no experience of the news industry but I would imagine that a newsroom
costs money to run and can produce only so many stories a day. So how do you
intend to make this scalable and sustainable over the long term?

~~~
andreaaaa
Yes! A newsroom does cost money, but we think it’s the right thing to invest
in. The short answer for how we pay for it: we think we can provide a service
in exchange for money.

Many people don’t want “the news” to deliver them endless feeds of articles
they’ll never read; they want an easy way to stay informed. We hope to provide
focused, finite news for people who don’t have the time or interest to stay on
top of Twitter and a bunch of news aggregators all day. Without ads, we don’t
need to be so focused on maximizing impressions and user engagement, and can
afford to say “you’re all caught up!”

Today, only ~13% of American adults pay for digital news, vs. ~75% that pay
for some streaming video service. However, historically, ~90% of households
paid for a newspaper. We think there’s a large, untapped market for a better
news product.

