Leading the Fight Against Misinformation
The proliferation of mobile devices, social media and content platforms opened up world and enabled global dialogue. Whilst largely a positive the dark side is that is has increased the threat and impact of misinformation and harmful content. In early 2020 BVP backed Mark Little and Aine Kerr the visionary founders behind Kinzen an Irish headquartered technology company leading the fight against information risk. Below I share some our thinking and core rationale for the investment.
Addressing a Growing Problem – whilst misinformation was not a new phenomenon, events such Covid-19 and some significant political events had resulted in a surge of misinformation that highlighted the need for reliable content moderation tools. Kinzens technology was designed to meet this need by provide platforms with an automated early warning systems that flags high-risk content. Right before we invested and in the midst of Covid , Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit, YouTube, and Twitter all released a joint statement which stated that that that whilst they were working on response efforts they were “helping millions of people stay connected while also jointly combating fraud and misinformation about the virus” this really brought to light the concern around the problem.
Machine Learning with Humans-in-the-Loop – Kinzen’s approach stood out, combining powerful machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) tech with the nuanced understanding of human experts (typically field journalists) Kinzen were able to ensure high accuracy in identifying and mitigating harmful online content. Where ML and NLP brought scalability, the global editorial network brought an understanding which is something purely algorithmic systems often miss. To illustrate, spouters of hate speech might have localized slang such as calling a vaccine a “jab”, use acronyms that ML couldn’t make sense of, calling the coronavirus “Rona” or even use emogis that AI will often misinterpret, this is where the human feedback provided value. Scanning the market we didn’t find another company approaching the problem this way, our view was they were uniquely positioned to win customers who had a heightened need for accuracy.
Proven Team with Clear Vision – Prior to Kinzen, Mark and Aine had founded and successfully exited Storyful (sold to Newscorp in 2013), the worlds first social media news agency. They had been there, done that and knew what it took to build a successful business. Whilst both are leader in their own right, crucially they had deep domain knowledge as seasoned veterans of the media industry, having worked in executive roles in RTE, Twitter and Facebook. They had connections across the industry and understood the inner workings and needs of their customer. On top of this the wider team they had brought in (most from the previous connections) were as Mark would call them all genuine “Rock Stars” who were completely committed to the Company’s mission. A+ all round.
A Mission that Aligned to Our Investment Ethos – Kinzen’s mission was / is to protect the world’s public conversations from information risk” this is a mission BVP got fully behind and one that fit well with a core value of our firm, prioritizing companies and investments are making aiming to have a positive impact on society
In late 2022 Kinzen was acquired by Spotfify https://newsroom.spotify.com/2022-10-05/spotify-continues-to-ramp-up-platform-safety-efforts-with-acquisition-of-kinzen/#:~:text=Today%2C%20Spotify%20is%20excited%20to,our%20platform%20around%20the%20world.