Tweetstorm: Our investment in Tortoise

@tortoise is now live on Kickstarter — they’ve quickly become the biggest journalism project ever. We’re excited to support the team as investors and members, as they build a different kind of newsroom.

At @localglobevc we’ve been looking for startups in the news, content and journalism space for the last couple of years.

As a seed stage investor we are often focused on the problem that a founder is trying to solve. What’s the pain point of the customer today? What are shortcomings of current solutions?

@tortoise had the clearest articulation of the problem: news has become noise. We are overwhelmed by information. The problem isn’t just fake news — it’s just that there’s so much of it, and so much of it is the same. Most of it is in a hurry. A lot is partial and confusing.

Too many people chasing the news, but missing the story. It’s made people anxious and distrustful.

There’s a business model problem too. Revenues from both newspaper circulation and print advertising have fallen by half over the past decade. One solution has been to rely on an individual with deep pockets: Mark Benioff owns Time magazine & Jeff Bezos the Washington Post.

The @tortoise solution is to slow down and try to understand what’s driving the news, rather than just what’s on the news. Investigations, analysis & opinions — not breaking news. It’s a membership model, no advertising.

Their first product is The ThinkIn — a live conversation event hosted by an editor. It’s modelled on what newsrooms call a leader conference in the UK, an editorial board in the US. Around the table, there are experts.

And when the debate is done, the editor’s job is to pull the points together and come to a concise view on what should happen next. The next day, @tortoise follow up by setting out those points of view — in video, audio or text — for a digital audience.

I went to one of the first ThinkIn events ‘The Future of the Brain’ It was a delightful experience. The debate was wide-ranging, funny — much snappier than a TED talk. It was heavy on facts and stories without being heavy going, and it exposed quickly what you didn’t know.

Along with the rest of the @localglobevc team I’m looking forward to the 2nd and 3rd Tortoise products, a daily digital edition (concise, thoughtful short reads) and a quarterly book of longer reads.

The three @tortoise founders are exceptional: James was the Editor of The Times and then ran BBC News Katie was the President of the Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones Matthew was US Ambassador to Sweden and the UK

When we find a team as talented as this, leading the charge in a category as important as news, we @localglobevc like to be part of the conversation