The new app backed by Hambro Perks 'eliminating fake news' for millennials

Compass News, an app aiming to ‘cut out’ fake news has been launched for millennials, with the backing of London-based Hambro Perks.

Compass News is aiming to curate a reliable news source of the day’s articles, with an average readership of 24.

As well as this, Compass News is said to have the most successful conversion rate from free user to paid subscriber for a news subscription business at 10 per cent - compared to The New York Times at two per cent.

Launched in 2017 by founders, Matilde Giglio and Mayank Banerjee, Compass News utilises journalism and machine learning to curate unbiased stories which are a brief three bullet points, 100 words max, and viewable on a phone screen.

The company’s rate of conversion from users to paying subscribers is five times The New York Times’ subscription rate - the next highest subscription rate from a news business.

Matilde Giglio, co-founder of Compass News, said: “We are thrilled to have backing from our amazing investor, Hambro Perks, who have worked collaboratively with us to build a brand we are passionate about.

“Our years of research and development have amounted to Compass News bringing important news stories to the often hard to reach younger generation.

“We’re also excited to continue to develop our machine learning system which will see Compass News continue to go from strength to strength.”

Since the product’s launch, Compass News has seen significant developments. With backing from Matter VC and Hambro Perks, the app currently retains over 70,000 users.

The app posts a ‘30 second summary’ alongside a short ‘story so far’ feature, making the news as easily digestible as possible.

Thanks to the utilisation of impressive machine learning and AI editor, Emelle, Compass News is currently the only company able to tailor news, as well as summarising it, with commentaries and analysis.

After reading thousands of articles and observing millions of curation decisions, Emelle now works independently, and the AI successfully predicts editors’ content choices to within 99 per cent accuracy.

Dominic Perks, co-founder of Hambro Perks, concluded: “Matilde and Mayank are innovative and resourceful founders who have an exciting vision which we are delighted to have backed.”