And the winner of Startups for News 2018 is… Vigilant!
Our 8 finalists pitched on the main stage of the GEN Summit 2018, in Lisbon, showcasing their ideas to an audience of 850+ editors and media executives. The jury deliberated, choosing Vigilant as the winner. Poool is the runner-up.
We are thrilled to announce that the winner of the Startups for News 2018 competition is Vigilant! The announcement was made at the GEN Summit 2018, in Lisbon, after a series of pitches by our 8 finalists: 3asyr, Facet, Frames, Grafiti, Jamatto, Poool, Trendolizer, and Vigilant.
Vigilant enables journalists to search and monitor thousands of public records databases in real time. This allows reporters to carry out investigative work more easily and it can form the backbone of news alerting and news automation products. They previously won the ‘Investigating public data’ battle of our Startups for News competition, to secure their place in the final. As part of the winning prize, Vigilant is invited to the GEN Summit 2019 in Lisbon, where they will be showcasing their product at the GEN Expo. They will also receive private mentoring from GEN Board Members.
The runner-up is Poool. Poool has created a dynamic paywall that allows publishers to define the most efficient monetisation and engagement strategies for each reader.
‘Helping people make better use of public data’
Mike Phillips, founder and CEO of Vigilant, said of their win, ‘It’s a tremendous honour for us and for our team to receive this. We’re extraordinarily excited to have the opportunity to work on issues related to data and to help people make better use of public data, open data, and to help leverage those resources to better inform their audiences.’
Greg Barber, Director of Newsroom Product at The Washington Post and jury member of the Startups for News competition said, ‘Open records and data are the bedrock of some of the most important work that we can do in journalism: finding those stories that are hard to find. The kind of work that Vigilant is doing is not sexy, it’s not the kind of things that people often shout from mountain tops because it’s hard work getting into this data. We thought that Vigilant was the type of startup that we wanted to give a little bit of a boost, so that the journalists working out there trying to find the next big story are able to get what they need in order to do it. Congratulations to Vigilant.’
We thank our finalists for bringing their innovative ideas to Lisbon, our jury members for their questions, mentoring, and support, and our sponsor Atex.
