Lessons Learned

Kinzen was born a little over two years ago. It set out with a big ambition: to give every citizen confidence in the news and information in their daily lives.

Today, our team of journalists, engineers and designers are proving out that core mission in ways we didn’t expect.

We have developed a unique technology solution for those who create and protect the world’s supply of quality information, combining the skill of expert editors with the scale of artificial intelligence.

Every day, our technology helps publishers of quality information better engage the communities they serve. Every day, we help technology companies detect disinformation using our editorial insights.

All of this emerged from the work we did to develop our first product, the Kinzen iOS app. So much of current success came from the trial and error that went into building this app. It pushed us to be more ambitious about our core technology, leading to ground-breaking work on machine learning models and new approaches to natural language processing.  

We learned lessons from every person who used the app; some hard, but always valuable. We were inspired by the feedback and support of our early adopters. They helped us understand that no matter how good our technology, editorial expertise would always set us apart.

Ultimately, our app would be the making of Kinzen, but it would not be our future. Today, we are retiring the Kinzen app and focusing our efforts on supporting partners building trusted news feeds for millions of people around the world.

If you have been one of the supporters of our early work, an early patron or a user of our app, we can’t fully express our gratitude. You have helped bring us closer to a shared ambition for the promotion and protection of shared facts.

We hope you will feel some personal ownership of the growing impact our work is having. In ways we didn’t expect. But at a scale we could have only dreamed of.