Futureful Inc

Futureful Inc -- personalized media discovery The goal was to build a better newsfeed. The team of data scientists and designers developed a patented, graph-based, machine learning platform that modeled user interests and provided recommendations combining relevance & serendipity. Several innovative UIs were created, including the first example of the now ubiquitous 'guided search'. The company began through collaboration with leading university research, and went on to raise $3M from international investors. HQ was in the US, while R&D was primarily in Finland. Apps were launched under the Futureful brand, as well as the brandname Random. These apps received strong reception from the likes of the New York Times, Techcrunch, New Scientist, Vice, TheNextWeb, Gigaom, and many other publications. The app went on to gain traction with an active and loyal user community. However, the scale was not enough to support the freemium model, the service was terminated in Dec 2015, and the assets were acquired by existing investors.