November 26, 2025 • 32 mins
informed.now is your news concierge to beat information overload. It provides minimal, concise, and factual daily news briefings via SMS to keep you informed without the influence of bias, sensationalism, or advertisements. Know more, read less. Get www.informed.now Kira Shishkin is the CEO of informed.now, the news concierge service to beat information overload. Kira is a 4-time serial entrepreneur, strategic advisor, and investor in the technology industry. His experience spans investment banking, corporate strategy, and private equity investments in category-defining ventures. His education includes University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, and Stanford. Kira was in Forbes 30 Under 30. Connect with Kira Shishkin: https://l.informed.now/kira Get www.informed.now
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Well, folks, this show is called Extra Connections, and this
person is trying to connect in a way that I
find fascinating. Informed dot Now is a new kind of
news concierge service, and my guess is the founder and CEO.
Of course, when I think of him and I was
seeing some of his product, I feel like it's like.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
News delivered differently.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
That's like something that I'm thinking in my brain, like
news delivered differently, because well, nowadays it's it's it's a
whole broad world out there, and how you get your
news is all over the place. People get him all
kinds of ways. So he's an entrepreneur. He's very smart.
I've talked to him. He's very smart, very nice guy too,
but he's a hard worker. And he has this series
(00:46):
I've been following on Instagram What Changed the World Today?
And he kind gives you a little synopsis of what's
going on each day and in the world and stuff.
But have you read about getting your news texted to
you or other things like that? All kinds stuff going on.
So we're gonna talk to you the CEO and founder
of my new friend, Hi Kira.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Hi James. It's delightful to be here and what a
what an awesome introduction. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Very welcome, right, welcome. So number one, congratulations on this
this venture of yours. I know you're an entrepreneur, so
you've done other ventures and what other things?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Where did this?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
So what is the germination of this kind of idea
that you were you were you were coming out to this?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I mean absolutely, I think it's a it's a generational frustration, right,
So it's something that I embody my generation and bodies
to to a great degree. And I think, you know,
even older generations have sort of seen a legacy news media,
uh you know, develop and sort of like break down
(01:48):
under the weight of bias, under the weight of sensationalism,
under the weight of you know, the need to advertise,
the need to solicit. And I think it's not just
the frustrated millennials or the disengaged Gen Z members, you know,
a whole kind of you know, a whole capsule of
(02:09):
time right now across American culture is yearning for a new,
you know, better way to consume information because factuality has
been robbed from the everyday American person and it's to
due time to bring it back because independent thinking has
never been more pertinent and important than it is now.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
So so which to ask? Which?
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Uh are you? Are you a millennial? Are you a zidio?
Are you gen Z? I don't what joys are you?
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I feel like I identify
with the frustrated millennial category, but uh, it's really hard
to tell.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
You know.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Sometimes I feel like I'm spiritually a boomer when it
comes to using technology, not being able to log into
a zoom, but I don't know if I can. I
don't know if I'm know how to categorize myself.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Well, you know, it's funny you say that because I
am gen X the best one. I'll just say myself
with boomer parents, and I have millennial kids and gen
Z and gen and gen Alpha grandkids like you, I
kind of identify with with each one. And I know
that when gen Zers first started coming around, there are
(03:23):
ways of thinking. People get mad, in fun of them,
They unmocked them. You know, work life balance, what's wrong
with you? Like the people are starting to come around
and go, wait a minute, they got something, They're onto something,
and they're onto this whole thing. And that's kind of
how I am kind of like I like some of
their ideals and what they're you know, what they're searching for.
And just like you said, right now, we speaking of connection.
(03:47):
Connecting where it's broad and fair and unbiased is really
hard to come by, isn't it. Yeah, we need it
so much more so. Okay, so first let's get a
little bit about you, just kind of before we get
to exactly what you're what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Where are you for?
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Originally, I am I've had a long journey getting here
to La. Heard recently that were neighbors. But I was
born and raised in Ukraine, and I had the fortune,
misfortune of coming of age in Israel before it actually
coming to New York and then to Chicago, and then
(04:25):
to San Francisco and now La.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Hey.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
I love New York, I love Chicago. I used to
live in San Francisco, and I love LA So there
you go.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
I love all that. It's very cool.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
So I guess I would I would assume you have
a big world perspective.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Well, I've just seen you know, I've seen propaganda across
so many different environments. I've seen information what I call
information conflict across so many different environments. And and I've
never sort of like lost the faith and the optimism
and the belief that like, hey, you know what, it
doesn't have to be this way, right, We don't have
(05:03):
to live in a world or propaganda. We don't have
to live in a world where the media that we
read and that we consume misleads us. And so I've
kind of kept you know, I kept a fire stoked
up until the moment of you know, coming to the
US and coming of ages an entrepreneur and realizing like,
not only can I still have this can I still
(05:24):
harbor this hope? But I can actually do something about it,
and that I should be the one to do something
about it, because who if not me to help folks out,
Because I've experienced this kind of issue and this problem
across so many very like loud realities. I mean, if
you look at Israel, Ukraine, these are some of the
loudest conflicts of our time right now. And so just
(05:47):
seeing it at the scale and with those stakes, you know,
who if not me to try to do something about it?
And you know, having had some tools to do that,
why don't we try to make a dent?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (06:00):
No, But I think it's also very important for the
as we later talk about your company, that you all
you do have a global perspective, and I think I
think it's it's a plus. Many of us, just by
where we were from or born or money or whatever,
don't get a chance to come from a lot of
spaces you could actually say I live from here, I've
lived here and lived there. I think it's a great thing,
(06:22):
especially being an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
It's taught you a lot, I'm sure, hasn't it.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
I mean absolutely, And I feel like the you know,
more than anything, it told me that I am a
citizen of the world and all of us are. I've
just had the sort of the experience to push that
realization on me. But you know, what we're doing was
informed of Now you know, my main project is very
much where we're serving the American that thinks of herself
(06:51):
as a global citizen. And so you are both looking
for our people and we serve our people. And who
are these people? It's people who think of themselves as
global citizens. And you don't need to have had the
fortune slash misfortune of living across the war zones or
you know, living across three continents as as you would
come on your on your journey to have that belief
(07:15):
and have that identification of like, hey, I'm part of
the world. I'm not just part of the neighborhood. I'm
not just part of the blog. I am actually part
of a much bigger body of of of humans. And
it's it's it's a beautiful realization. And I always encouraged
them when I always get excited when we found our folks,
folks that believe similarly. You may be born in Indiana,
in Sacramento and San Francisco, in la or in New
(07:38):
York or in Zimbabwe, you're you're you're a citizen of
the world. If you identify with with that, well.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, the whole thing, you know, there's that whole saying
was that you know, take locally, act globally or whatever like.
That's that's around for years. And I think what people
I'm glad you said is I think people need to
kind of and I tried to do just on the
show with my guests, is that whatever you do or
whatever I do, there's a ripple effect in the world,
no matter how small.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Or big it is.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Right, So whatever I if I put this video out
and you are talking, someone sees it, it may get
them to do you know, so there's a ripple effect
that where you can be the average person and whatever
you do for the outside to affect somebody another country
or another part of the another part of your country
across town.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
That's all point, absolutely, And I think this is the
saying that I love your surface, that like I thing
it is think global act.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I got backwards.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Yeah, yeah, but I'm totally on board with what you're saying.
I know what you mean. I think it has an
interesting like backstory to it because sometimes when we're living
through a phase, a period, a moment in history, for example,
locally in let's pick on a random state. You know,
any state would be random in this context. Let's just
just choose Utah. Imagine Uta is going through you know,
(09:00):
cultural shift. You know, there's SoC generational skins and there's
some sort of like you know, moment of transformation, some
sort of like liminal moment in you know, cultural development
of that environment where that's a city or a state
or even like a larger country. If you only have
access to the knowledge base of Utah, you wouldn't maybe
(09:21):
necessarily know how best to kind of respond, how best
to act and so you you kind of don't have
the hindsight or you don't have the benefit of, like,
you know, forward looking I think hindsight. I'm not sure
you don't have the benefit of hindsight. But when you're
aware of what's going on around the world, it's sort
of like a real time exposure to history where you
(09:44):
kind of like real time see like, oh, like the
air spring was an event right of that. You know,
right now, the Ukrainian five four sovereignty, you know, on
behalf of all of Europe. This is going on, right
There's something going on in Turkey, and you know, Turkey
is going through some difficult sort of civil contortions of sorts.
And so you kind of get to learn from cultures
(10:06):
at very different phases and chapters of their story, and
it can inform what you can do locally, can inform
how you and whatever you know microcosm you inhabit at
any given moment, how you can learn from that, be
informed by that, and be inspired by it to make
better steering decisions.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah, and so for you, it sounds like you're like, Okay,
I want to start something that deals with news and information.
I would say information. I get that that would be
the basis of all this is information and getting it
out to people.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
What led you to this enterprise?
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Yeah, I mean just seeing the stakes and I hinted
at this a little bit earlier, like seeing the stakes
of how important it is to be able to have
like the dignity of making up your own mind. There
was just no you know, there's no there's no surrogate,
there's no replacement to that, right, And I've just seen
(11:06):
generations of people, you know, especially among my parents who
grew up in Soviet Russia, I've seen what it looks
like to be robbed of of of facts, be robbed
of you know, factual insight, of insightful information, of of
of accurate information. Right, indeed, just shown things through a
(11:28):
lens of bias, a lens of an agenda, a lens
of a certain perspective, a lens of a certain narrative.
Just seeing that, you know, in history of my family,
in my own kind of upbringing, you know, and development
as a person, both in Ukraine and in Israel, I've
just seen how important it is to give folks to
(11:50):
almost like a restore the power and the dignity of
being informed without being influenced right without being you know,
pushed towards a certain person active. So when I came
to the United States, I felt like, even though this
is a very different scale and the problem here is
nowhere near what the problem was in the Soviet Union,
but I feel like we're living through a moment in
(12:11):
time where you know, accuracy is being is being fading, right,
facts are sort of giving way to fantasies of different kinds,
to allowed statements right to stoking a fear of anger,
of outrage. And we're seeing in some way, obviously it's
very different from the Soviet Union. I don't mean to
(12:31):
make a direct comparison, but we're seeing facts being robbed
from people, right, like facts disappearing.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
There's this, you know, this pretty happened since twenty sixteen.
There was this word of the year. I think it
was like dictionary dot com or Oxford Dictionary publishes the
word of the year, and the word of the year
I believe was post truth, right, kind of like postmodern,
but post truth. We were entering a world where truth
was was no longer the pre eminent value. And I
(13:03):
think we're now living deeply in net world because twenty sixteen.
It was ten years ago, and we're living in a
world that cares not as much about truth anymore, cares
about the volume of the message, cares about the flares,
the color at all, the entertainment value of it. And
I think it's it's due time we offer to the
people who want it a tool to make up their
(13:24):
own lines, a tool to kind of keep your head
on your shoulders and get informed without all the side
effects that come from reading legacy news media.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
So two things I will add piggyback off of you.
One is I call most news infotainment. I work in
the business, so I know I work in networks. I know,
like you just said, ad revenue, ratings, sensationialism. You know,
even our local news it's like bad news, bad news,
(13:54):
bad news, bad news, doom doom, doom, here hoppy. I
got rescued at the very end, thirty seconds. See you
next week. Like it's like it's so when I was
growing up, wasn't like that, and I would the same
thing I want to say is I will say, picking
back off what you're saying. Again, not as bad as
some of the countries you lived in, obviously, but it
was very insidious for me growing up here in the
(14:16):
seventies and in the eighties, our history books, I found
out later were not accurate or we told part of
the story. I got to college, I was able to
get independent study, and I get to and I also
was going out on my own and traveling. There are
(14:36):
a lot of things that have been debunked obviously since
I was a kid, going oh, that's not true, and
that's not true, and that's not true, and that's way
partially true. And you know, you know, and from my
culture being African American me, so we invented peanut butter,
and like that's it. I know. We did more than that.
We did a lot of other things. We invented. Also,
we built this country. Also, it was like it was
(15:00):
always part truth, this truth. And I realized all the
encyclopedias because back then there was no internet, so all
the encyclopedias, all the history books were written by and
kind of like and that's what we got. So even
though I didn't know, it wasn't as blatant. I didn't
know because I was a kid too. I didn't know.
Once I got to college, WHENCE became an adult, like
(15:22):
oh my god, no, Once we got internet and TV,
you know, around the world TV it's like, oh this
is this is not good.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
James, thank you, thank you for the peanut butter. James,
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
It was our pleasure. Yes, I love it.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
People buy my bed over there somewhere I have as
a peanut butter and celery just celery and peanutut. Yes,
we're happy to give it to you. That was George
Washington Carver, folks, George Washington Carver. But we did more
than that obviously. But like but like you said, of
course you said you and I always say, learn your history,
(16:02):
the true history. If you don't want paths to become prologue,
you want to make sure you literally learn the right
stuff so you don't repeat it later. I'm very excited
for your venture, So please explain to people what this
what informed dot now is and what you what your
platform is.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Sure absolutely, and you know, thank you for surfacing that,
because I think part of what we see as like
the power of young informal just briefly kind of big
back when you said, is sometimes folks, based on our
range of different reasons, just don't get a chance to
finish education. Sometimes they don't have a chance to start it,
(16:44):
And so how can you expect them to learn history
or to have access to that knowledge base if they,
for whatever reason, had to quit school to support a family,
or quit school because they had to move in a
violent environment, from a country to country, from a community
to community.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
It's tough.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
And to us, news is a kind of real time
history that you can learn from is almost like the
best next thing after having had proper education and a
primary education of like learning about a country, learning about you,
for example, the fact that peanut butter is a footnote
in African American history. Right, It's like learning about the
(17:21):
things that make up the world. If you have had
a change, if you have the misfortion of skipping that
for whatever reason, following news is sort of like the
next best thing you have to still keep you know,
keep a tab, keep tabs on what's going on around you.
So we think of it as like a okay, well,
a lot of people who have had to skip education.
(17:42):
You know, hope is not lost for you in terms
of understanding the world around you and being able to
make informed decisions, but it comes through news. That's like
what education, almost as an adult education looks like in
any ways, so we see that as a real time
history lesson that has a lot of applicability to your life.
Let me answer your question around you know, origin with
informed I think you mentioned this earlier, but we are
(18:05):
a We are America's number one news by text service,
and what that means essentially, it's it's a shift in
a paradigm around you having to go and discover news,
cross check the figure out. Okay, is this left bias?
Is this blue bias?
Speaker 2 (18:18):
You know?
Speaker 3 (18:18):
How can I get rid of the color of the
political tint all the time without doing all that research
which would take a regular kind of laid person, you know,
north of three hours if not, you know, at least
two hours maybe three hours every day to figure out
like what's going on. We kind of do that work
for you, and instead of you having to go and
seek it out, we text it to you via SMS,
(18:41):
so that news becomes accessible and digestible and understandable in
a very like laconic space. Like you know, a minute
a minute a day is all that you should be
spending time on news. If you're spending more, sure it's
by your choice, by your hobby or interest, but any
person should be a to spend a minute, and we
(19:02):
make that possible. And there really is no other kind
of player who rivals us in the level of clarity
and the convenience of delivery that we're able to sort
of combine to create the informed dot Now experience, which is,
you get a text in the morning, you read it
in a minute, and you know what's going on around you,
(19:22):
what's changing your world, what's affecting your decisions business or personal,
and you feel like even if you hear other people
talking about things you know a longer lost, no longer
feeling like, oh, like, what did they say? Is that true?
Because you know what's going on, And so you're not
vulnerable or susceptible to manipulation from media or from like
(19:42):
secondhand third hand news discussions, because you now can stand
in your own truth. That power, which we describe broadly
as the power of facts and the dignity of making
up your own mind is what we stand for and
the experience that we enable through our product.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
So you basically, so where do you go? So where
do you get your news sources from? Where?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I guess people will ask you that question, where where
is it bipartisan? Where do you get if your news sources.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
From it's not bipartisan, right, because that entails you were
buying into this narrative that there's these two sides and
it's about balancing some between the blue and the purple,
the blue and the red, there's somewhere like you have
to find your purple. It's completely non partisan. We don't
play the game of subscribing to this you know, political
(20:34):
NFL like, we don't really, we don't do that. And
and that's a really important piece because we want to
make news for everybody, and we want to make news
that doesn't trigger response, that doesn't you know, cause agreement, disagreement.
What we do is news. What Americans have been exposed
to their whole lives is news commentary, and it's important
(20:56):
to distinguish the two. We don't comment on the news.
We don't tell you how you should feel. We don't
give you the interpretation. We give you the base facts,
the common fact based across the topic. And our superpower
that allows us to develop a lot of credibility is
we go to primary sources. So instead of you know,
going to other journalists and saying, like here's what they're saying,
(21:18):
we're just regurgitating their words. We actually go directly to
the primary source. So if the issue is about the
Supreme Court, right, there's been a big issue with the
Supreme Court, you know, recalling a federal judges call to
make the Trump administration restore staff benefits, right, food stamps.
This just happened, you know, yesterday today. Instead of hearing
(21:40):
that from some journalists or an inkor talking in a
bar on TV, we will show you the Supreme Court state,
you know, ruling so that you can will both inform
you of what's going on in it and will give
you direct access to that document so that you can
see what the Supreme Court is saying. If it's a
(22:01):
Bill of Congress, we'll take you to the Bill of Congress. Right,
that's we's what we use to inform ourselves. It's the
government report, it's the White House, Census Bureau, United Nations, right, government,
Central Bank of Europe. We will go into the primary
source and see what the horse's mouth is saying, right,
instead of trying to reinterpret regurgency that for you, and
(22:24):
in the events where we don't have a primary source,
we would go to the reporters, the primary reporters, which
is different than the big media outlets that we're all
familiar with. The reporting layer of the journalism industry is
not the same as what kind of gets to us
at the retail level, not even close. There's about a
(22:44):
handful of companies that do primary evidence reporting, right, it's
Associated Press to Reuters, it's Bloomberg, it's AFP. There's a
couple of others who actually do kind of ground evidence collection,
and that's the second best when you don't have a
primary source yourself. And so we look at that level
of fidelity of information and we focus on just the
(23:08):
what we're and the when to give you the es
central facts without saying more, because if you keep talking,
you will never get into commentary, and we never cross
that line.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
I like that, See, folks, I like that. You said,
you're literally you're literally just giving the.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
News the news themselves, pure news, pure news, not news commentary,
not news analysis, not news discussion, not news debate. That
there is no shortage of in America. It's cheap and
it's everywhere.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
It's very true. Daytime TV, like nighttime everything. Yes, everything
is commentary. Like I said, it's in fultaatement. It's all
to entertaine regis people out there to say stuff you're saying,
don't folks be clear when they watch the study I
form got now it's literally just the news as it
happened exactly.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
But you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
That sounds like we're chuckling that. It sounds like, oh
my god, but like it's really like to get that.
It's a major thing right now. It's a real amazing thing.
I know a lot of folks like me who aren't
on either side. We're somewhere in the middle. We're independence,
we're in the middle. We're trying to find something. We
just want to us just what happened, you know, we
want to know the facts, like what's the facts of
(24:23):
the case or the facts, like we just want to
know that. We don't want all the punditry, we don't
want all that stuff. We just want to know what
the f happened. And it's hard and really, you're right,
it's hard to find and it's hard to trust. Like,
you know, you go on X who knows what you're
getting over there? So that's on Instagram, so that's on Facebook.
Like you don't know what you're getting at places. So
(24:45):
it's like I just want to know what happened.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
That's all I want. Now, how does it affect me?
That's all.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
That's all I want to know, Like and most I
think most Americans, that's they want.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I think.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
So for your I guess one of your challenges is
getting people who kind of just and I say this
not as a negative, but just lazily go to their
normal sources and just go I know this source. I'm
gonna go here. I'm gonna go there. That's how you
turned on my phone. I'm gonna go to I get it,
I get a Google glorification. So I guess for you
guys just kind of say, okay, let's go away from
(25:16):
that at us in there, it'll get a whole different experience, right.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
I mean, even more radical than that. We we pred
ourselves in being the last news service that you'll need
because our coverage is so broad that we cover across
not just politics, but also technology, not also that, but
also science, not also that, but also cultural, social, military,
(25:42):
you know, changes in the world, economic, you know, business,
which are different. We cover all of these different categories
based on what's changing the world, what is most consequential today,
based on a significant filter and so we we sort
of give you the whole coverage of the entire of
the entire world and the entire industry. For you to
(26:04):
match the level of coverage that we have, you would
essentially have to subscribe to maybe ten or twelve other publications,
which by the way, are not free, are very very expensive,
and come with annual contracts that are you know, extremely expossible.
You know, if the Financial Times is one thousand dollars
a year, which is in an absurd amount for an
(26:27):
everyday American to to pay just to get factual information,
and Financial Times is so narrow in our coverage it's
it's like it's not worth it unless you're a financial professional.
And so you know, we're really looking to give the
power the accessibility to the everyday person. And I also
a price point that anyone can can afford. We don't
(26:47):
do annual contracts. We don't care about locking you in.
We don't want to, We don't want to steal from you.
And if you want out, we want to make sure
that you can get out quite easily, right And you know,
our whole you know, Amma, is really like empowering people
as much as we can and doing our duty or
job of informing you and then getting out of your face,
(27:10):
getting out of the way, right, which no other media
company does. If we have the media company was to
hold you hostage so they can show you advertisements, so
they can solicit you with their own products. Just keep
you reading, doing a crossword puzzle, not doing a trivia.
Now there's an advertisement. Now there's a video, there's a
pop up, and there's an advertisement.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
It's crazy.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
We try to give you the value of being informed
and stop there. There's nothing else. There is no celsitations,
there's nothing of any sort of advertisement format. There is
no like, There is no prompt or push for you
to do more. In fact, you can't structurally interact with
our product more than in that one minute a day.
(27:49):
And that's all on purpose. We're intentionally offline on the weekends.
We're trying to give you the value and get out
of your face. And as simple as that sounds, nobody
does that. Nobody in this industry does that.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
We see there are ideas out there that but untapped.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
I had no idea, but I mean, I like, that's
that's great. I think that's that's totally untapped. There's fun
of you guys are off on the weekends. Okay, what
news happens on the weekends?
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Though he does, he just doesn't have to read it.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
There you go, kids, Well.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Our Monday, our Monday briefings cover the whole of the weekend.
We believe in media mindfulness, Like that's really like the
pioneering spirit is that you want to be mindful of
the media you consume. So much of America is an
autopilot of consumption, right, You're just being served and overserved
media and it's not being very mindful. Like you shouldn't
(28:44):
just eat anything that's been put on your plate. In fact,
if you do, you'll get quite sick. And being mindful
about the information that you consume is about choosing when
you want to take that information and what kind of
information are you going to accept. And with us, we're
trying to create a pretty strict diet of like, hey,
news should be a minute a day, once a day,
(29:05):
not multiple times. And yet your weekends should have nothing
to do with news. And so we're building a product
that's designed around giving that space instead of you know,
click baiting you and holding you hostage.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
I like it, argus here, I like it. I mean
it's great. It was. It was.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
It's that whole thinking about that's in the doom, squirreling,
that's in the endless. It just matter what side drag.
You're just like, you're just following this narrative all day,
every day, all day long, all day long. It's like,
get out in the world, go by the ocean, and
I live by the ocean. Gady ocean. You'll get outside,
you know, visit your family. I don't play with your dog.
(29:44):
I mean, it's just like there's something something different than
always on this, you know, always on this and looking
at the news. I think that's that's your supporting that.
I like that very good in forum dot now. Okay, folks,
So I'll let you promote where to can find you
and all that stuff, and I'll put it in a
description of course, but tell me where I can find
(30:05):
your your your news source.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Absolutely, I mean, our our brand name is our website.
And so if you go to informed dot now, you'll
get to get a little more context about how we
do what we do and a really easy way to
sign up. You know, we are really easy to reach
for anyone who is interested in this medium, mindfulness trend
and this media mentalness kind of philosophy, and we'd be
(30:30):
lucky to you know, we're always on the lookout for
our people. And so if you feel like you've been
you've been sort of losing touch with the world and
you want to know what's going on, but you don't
want to be drained in the process. You don't want
to be kind of you know, you know, kept hostage
in the process. We provide one way to do that,
and it would be lucky to to to have you
(30:50):
give us, you know, opinion, give us feedback, and we'd
love lucky to have you check out our work. So
informed dot now is the best way to do it.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Here as Siskin, you're now my new friend, you're on
my phone. I'll give you in there. I'm really excited
to see this grow. I'm really excited to see that
where this goes. And thank you for trying to affect
change in the world that's positive. We need more more
of you out there doing that.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Well, James, honor to hear that from you. And it's
a pleasure to share the gospel of facts with with
you know, with our broader shared audience.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yes, exactly, it's my all. My followers follow him, go
go to inform not now do it. I'm James sent you.
It's nice to connections and we're here to connect. It's
always about connecting and we personally support and professionally supports people.
Organizations are trying to connect also in very positive ways.
So I'm glad to be able to come on here
(31:52):
and interview him and well him back on again. Well,
well see what's good all with his company. He's nice,
a friend to the to the to our network. Everyone
out there, please is important for you to connect to.
I know it's tough sometimes, but get out the house,
join something, follow something, just like, just do something out
there besides just sitting at home.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Do again, doo scrolling. I'm James Lott Jr.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Extra Connections on Facebook, jail JBDA is everywhere. This show
is on every audio streaming service platform including Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, Apple,
and I'm on the Granddaddy from all YouTube YouTube JLJ Media.
Go ahead and say, if you're new to me, subscribe
to my channels. To my channel please and check out
(32:36):
our content. We have a lot of great episodes with
all the great people like Kira on our shows and everyone.
We're here on Wednesdays. We'll see you next week by
Well, folks, this show is called Extra Connections, and this
person is trying to connect in a way that I
find fascinating. Informed dot Now is a new kind of
news concierge service, and my guess is the founder and CEO.
Of course, when I think of him and I was
seeing some of his product, I feel like it's like.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
News delivered differently.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
That's like something that I'm thinking in my brain, like
news delivered differently, because well, nowadays it's it's it's a
whole broad world out there, and how you get your
news is all over the place. People get him all
kinds of ways. So he's an entrepreneur. He's very smart.
I've talked to him. He's very smart, very nice guy too,
but he's a hard worker. And he has this series
(00:46):
I've been following on Instagram What Changed the World Today?
And he kind gives you a little synopsis of what's
going on each day and in the world and stuff.
But have you read about getting your news texted to
you or other things like that? All kinds stuff going on.
So we're gonna talk to you the CEO and founder
of my new friend, Hi Kira.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Hi James. It's delightful to be here and what a
what an awesome introduction. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Very welcome, right, welcome. So number one, congratulations on this
this venture of yours. I know you're an entrepreneur, so
you've done other ventures and what other things?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Where did this?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
So what is the germination of this kind of idea
that you were you were you were coming out to this?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I mean absolutely, I think it's a it's a generational frustration, right,
So it's something that I embody my generation and bodies
to to a great degree. And I think, you know,
even older generations have sort of seen a legacy news media,
uh you know, develop and sort of like break down
(01:48):
under the weight of bias, under the weight of sensationalism,
under the weight of you know, the need to advertise,
the need to solicit. And I think it's not just
the frustrated millennials or the disengaged Gen Z members, you know,
a whole kind of you know, a whole capsule of
(02:09):
time right now across American culture is yearning for a new,
you know, better way to consume information because factuality has
been robbed from the everyday American person and it's to
due time to bring it back because independent thinking has
never been more pertinent and important than it is now.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
So so which to ask? Which?
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Uh are you? Are you a millennial? Are you a zidio?
Are you gen Z? I don't what joys are you?
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I feel like I identify
with the frustrated millennial category, but uh, it's really hard
to tell.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
You know.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Sometimes I feel like I'm spiritually a boomer when it
comes to using technology, not being able to log into
a zoom, but I don't know if I can. I
don't know if I'm know how to categorize myself.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Well, you know, it's funny you say that because I
am gen X the best one. I'll just say myself
with boomer parents, and I have millennial kids and gen
Z and gen and gen Alpha grandkids like you, I
kind of identify with with each one. And I know
that when gen Zers first started coming around, there are
(03:23):
ways of thinking. People get mad, in fun of them,
They unmocked them. You know, work life balance, what's wrong
with you? Like the people are starting to come around
and go, wait a minute, they got something, They're onto something,
and they're onto this whole thing. And that's kind of
how I am kind of like I like some of
their ideals and what they're you know, what they're searching for.
And just like you said, right now, we speaking of connection.
(03:47):
Connecting where it's broad and fair and unbiased is really
hard to come by, isn't it. Yeah, we need it
so much more so. Okay, so first let's get a
little bit about you, just kind of before we get
to exactly what you're what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Where are you for?
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Originally, I am I've had a long journey getting here
to La. Heard recently that were neighbors. But I was
born and raised in Ukraine, and I had the fortune,
misfortune of coming of age in Israel before it actually
coming to New York and then to Chicago, and then
(04:25):
to San Francisco and now La.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Hey.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
I love New York, I love Chicago. I used to
live in San Francisco, and I love LA So there
you go.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
I love all that. It's very cool.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
So I guess I would I would assume you have
a big world perspective.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Well, I've just seen you know, I've seen propaganda across
so many different environments. I've seen information what I call
information conflict across so many different environments. And and I've
never sort of like lost the faith and the optimism
and the belief that like, hey, you know what, it
doesn't have to be this way, right, We don't have
(05:03):
to live in a world or propaganda. We don't have
to live in a world where the media that we
read and that we consume misleads us. And so I've
kind of kept you know, I kept a fire stoked
up until the moment of you know, coming to the
US and coming of ages an entrepreneur and realizing like,
not only can I still have this can I still
(05:24):
harbor this hope? But I can actually do something about it,
and that I should be the one to do something
about it, because who if not me to help folks out,
Because I've experienced this kind of issue and this problem
across so many very like loud realities. I mean, if
you look at Israel, Ukraine, these are some of the
loudest conflicts of our time right now. And so just
(05:47):
seeing it at the scale and with those stakes, you know,
who if not me to try to do something about it?
And you know, having had some tools to do that,
why don't we try to make a dent?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (06:00):
No, But I think it's also very important for the
as we later talk about your company, that you all
you do have a global perspective, and I think I
think it's it's a plus. Many of us, just by
where we were from or born or money or whatever,
don't get a chance to come from a lot of
spaces you could actually say I live from here, I've
lived here and lived there. I think it's a great thing,
(06:22):
especially being an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
It's taught you a lot, I'm sure, hasn't it.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
I mean absolutely, And I feel like the you know,
more than anything, it told me that I am a
citizen of the world and all of us are. I've
just had the sort of the experience to push that
realization on me. But you know, what we're doing was
informed of Now you know, my main project is very
much where we're serving the American that thinks of herself
(06:51):
as a global citizen. And so you are both looking
for our people and we serve our people. And who
are these people? It's people who think of themselves as
global citizens. And you don't need to have had the
fortune slash misfortune of living across the war zones or
you know, living across three continents as as you would
come on your on your journey to have that belief
(07:15):
and have that identification of like, hey, I'm part of
the world. I'm not just part of the neighborhood. I'm
not just part of the blog. I am actually part
of a much bigger body of of of humans. And
it's it's it's a beautiful realization. And I always encouraged
them when I always get excited when we found our folks,
folks that believe similarly. You may be born in Indiana,
in Sacramento and San Francisco, in la or in New
(07:38):
York or in Zimbabwe, you're you're you're a citizen of
the world. If you identify with with that, well.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, the whole thing, you know, there's that whole saying
was that you know, take locally, act globally or whatever like.
That's that's around for years. And I think what people
I'm glad you said is I think people need to
kind of and I tried to do just on the
show with my guests, is that whatever you do or
whatever I do, there's a ripple effect in the world,
no matter how small.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Or big it is.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Right, So whatever I if I put this video out
and you are talking, someone sees it, it may get
them to do you know, so there's a ripple effect
that where you can be the average person and whatever
you do for the outside to affect somebody another country
or another part of the another part of your country
across town.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
That's all point, absolutely, And I think this is the
saying that I love your surface, that like I thing
it is think global act.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I got backwards.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Yeah, yeah, but I'm totally on board with what you're saying.
I know what you mean. I think it has an
interesting like backstory to it because sometimes when we're living
through a phase, a period, a moment in history, for example,
locally in let's pick on a random state. You know,
any state would be random in this context. Let's just
just choose Utah. Imagine Uta is going through you know,
(09:00):
cultural shift. You know, there's SoC generational skins and there's
some sort of like you know, moment of transformation, some
sort of like liminal moment in you know, cultural development
of that environment where that's a city or a state
or even like a larger country. If you only have
access to the knowledge base of Utah, you wouldn't maybe
(09:21):
necessarily know how best to kind of respond, how best
to act and so you you kind of don't have
the hindsight or you don't have the benefit of, like,
you know, forward looking I think hindsight. I'm not sure
you don't have the benefit of hindsight. But when you're
aware of what's going on around the world, it's sort
of like a real time exposure to history where you
(09:44):
kind of like real time see like, oh, like the
air spring was an event right of that. You know,
right now, the Ukrainian five four sovereignty, you know, on
behalf of all of Europe. This is going on, right
There's something going on in Turkey, and you know, Turkey
is going through some difficult sort of civil contortions of sorts.
And so you kind of get to learn from cultures
(10:06):
at very different phases and chapters of their story, and
it can inform what you can do locally, can inform
how you and whatever you know microcosm you inhabit at
any given moment, how you can learn from that, be
informed by that, and be inspired by it to make
better steering decisions.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah, and so for you, it sounds like you're like, Okay,
I want to start something that deals with news and information.
I would say information. I get that that would be
the basis of all this is information and getting it
out to people.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
What led you to this enterprise?
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Yeah, I mean just seeing the stakes and I hinted
at this a little bit earlier, like seeing the stakes
of how important it is to be able to have
like the dignity of making up your own mind. There
was just no you know, there's no there's no surrogate,
there's no replacement to that, right, And I've just seen
(11:06):
generations of people, you know, especially among my parents who
grew up in Soviet Russia, I've seen what it looks
like to be robbed of of of facts, be robbed
of you know, factual insight, of insightful information, of of
of accurate information. Right, indeed, just shown things through a
(11:28):
lens of bias, a lens of an agenda, a lens
of a certain perspective, a lens of a certain narrative.
Just seeing that, you know, in history of my family,
in my own kind of upbringing, you know, and development
as a person, both in Ukraine and in Israel, I've
just seen how important it is to give folks to
(11:50):
almost like a restore the power and the dignity of
being informed without being influenced right without being you know,
pushed towards a certain person active. So when I came
to the United States, I felt like, even though this
is a very different scale and the problem here is
nowhere near what the problem was in the Soviet Union,
but I feel like we're living through a moment in
(12:11):
time where you know, accuracy is being is being fading, right,
facts are sort of giving way to fantasies of different kinds,
to allowed statements right to stoking a fear of anger,
of outrage. And we're seeing in some way, obviously it's
very different from the Soviet Union. I don't mean to
(12:31):
make a direct comparison, but we're seeing facts being robbed
from people, right, like facts disappearing.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
There's this, you know, this pretty happened since twenty sixteen.
There was this word of the year. I think it
was like dictionary dot com or Oxford Dictionary publishes the
word of the year, and the word of the year
I believe was post truth, right, kind of like postmodern,
but post truth. We were entering a world where truth
was was no longer the pre eminent value. And I
(13:03):
think we're now living deeply in net world because twenty sixteen.
It was ten years ago, and we're living in a
world that cares not as much about truth anymore, cares
about the volume of the message, cares about the flares,
the color at all, the entertainment value of it. And
I think it's it's due time we offer to the
people who want it a tool to make up their
(13:24):
own lines, a tool to kind of keep your head
on your shoulders and get informed without all the side
effects that come from reading legacy news media.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
So two things I will add piggyback off of you.
One is I call most news infotainment. I work in
the business, so I know I work in networks. I know,
like you just said, ad revenue, ratings, sensationialism. You know,
even our local news it's like bad news, bad news,
(13:54):
bad news, bad news, doom doom, doom, here hoppy. I
got rescued at the very end, thirty seconds. See you
next week. Like it's like it's so when I was
growing up, wasn't like that, and I would the same
thing I want to say is I will say, picking
back off what you're saying. Again, not as bad as
some of the countries you lived in, obviously, but it
was very insidious for me growing up here in the
(14:16):
seventies and in the eighties, our history books, I found
out later were not accurate or we told part of
the story. I got to college, I was able to
get independent study, and I get to and I also
was going out on my own and traveling. There are
(14:36):
a lot of things that have been debunked obviously since
I was a kid, going oh, that's not true, and
that's not true, and that's not true, and that's way
partially true. And you know, you know, and from my
culture being African American me, so we invented peanut butter,
and like that's it. I know. We did more than that.
We did a lot of other things. We invented. Also,
we built this country. Also, it was like it was
(15:00):
always part truth, this truth. And I realized all the
encyclopedias because back then there was no internet, so all
the encyclopedias, all the history books were written by and
kind of like and that's what we got. So even
though I didn't know, it wasn't as blatant. I didn't
know because I was a kid too. I didn't know.
Once I got to college, WHENCE became an adult, like
(15:22):
oh my god, no, Once we got internet and TV,
you know, around the world TV it's like, oh this
is this is not good.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
James, thank you, thank you for the peanut butter. James,
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
It was our pleasure. Yes, I love it.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
People buy my bed over there somewhere I have as
a peanut butter and celery just celery and peanutut. Yes,
we're happy to give it to you. That was George
Washington Carver, folks, George Washington Carver. But we did more
than that obviously. But like but like you said, of
course you said you and I always say, learn your history,
(16:02):
the true history. If you don't want paths to become prologue,
you want to make sure you literally learn the right
stuff so you don't repeat it later. I'm very excited
for your venture, So please explain to people what this
what informed dot now is and what you what your
platform is.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Sure absolutely, and you know, thank you for surfacing that,
because I think part of what we see as like
the power of young informal just briefly kind of big
back when you said, is sometimes folks, based on our
range of different reasons, just don't get a chance to
finish education. Sometimes they don't have a chance to start it,
(16:44):
And so how can you expect them to learn history
or to have access to that knowledge base if they,
for whatever reason, had to quit school to support a family,
or quit school because they had to move in a
violent environment, from a country to country, from a community
to community.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
It's tough.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
And to us, news is a kind of real time
history that you can learn from is almost like the
best next thing after having had proper education and a
primary education of like learning about a country, learning about you,
for example, the fact that peanut butter is a footnote
in African American history. Right, It's like learning about the
(17:21):
things that make up the world. If you have had
a change, if you have the misfortion of skipping that
for whatever reason, following news is sort of like the
next best thing you have to still keep you know,
keep a tab, keep tabs on what's going on around you.
So we think of it as like a okay, well,
a lot of people who have had to skip education.
(17:42):
You know, hope is not lost for you in terms
of understanding the world around you and being able to
make informed decisions, but it comes through news. That's like
what education, almost as an adult education looks like in
any ways, so we see that as a real time
history lesson that has a lot of applicability to your life.
Let me answer your question around you know, origin with
informed I think you mentioned this earlier, but we are
(18:05):
a We are America's number one news by text service,
and what that means essentially, it's it's a shift in
a paradigm around you having to go and discover news,
cross check the figure out. Okay, is this left bias?
Is this blue bias?
Speaker 2 (18:18):
You know?
Speaker 3 (18:18):
How can I get rid of the color of the
political tint all the time without doing all that research
which would take a regular kind of laid person, you know,
north of three hours if not, you know, at least
two hours maybe three hours every day to figure out
like what's going on. We kind of do that work
for you, and instead of you having to go and
seek it out, we text it to you via SMS,
(18:41):
so that news becomes accessible and digestible and understandable in
a very like laconic space. Like you know, a minute
a minute a day is all that you should be
spending time on news. If you're spending more, sure it's
by your choice, by your hobby or interest, but any
person should be a to spend a minute, and we
(19:02):
make that possible. And there really is no other kind
of player who rivals us in the level of clarity
and the convenience of delivery that we're able to sort
of combine to create the informed dot Now experience, which is,
you get a text in the morning, you read it
in a minute, and you know what's going on around you,
(19:22):
what's changing your world, what's affecting your decisions business or personal,
and you feel like even if you hear other people
talking about things you know a longer lost, no longer
feeling like, oh, like, what did they say? Is that true?
Because you know what's going on, And so you're not
vulnerable or susceptible to manipulation from media or from like
(19:42):
secondhand third hand news discussions, because you now can stand
in your own truth. That power, which we describe broadly
as the power of facts and the dignity of making
up your own mind is what we stand for and
the experience that we enable through our product.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
So you basically, so where do you go? So where
do you get your news sources from? Where?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I guess people will ask you that question, where where
is it bipartisan? Where do you get if your news sources.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
From it's not bipartisan, right, because that entails you were
buying into this narrative that there's these two sides and
it's about balancing some between the blue and the purple,
the blue and the red, there's somewhere like you have
to find your purple. It's completely non partisan. We don't
play the game of subscribing to this you know, political
(20:34):
NFL like, we don't really, we don't do that. And
and that's a really important piece because we want to
make news for everybody, and we want to make news
that doesn't trigger response, that doesn't you know, cause agreement, disagreement.
What we do is news. What Americans have been exposed
to their whole lives is news commentary, and it's important
(20:56):
to distinguish the two. We don't comment on the news.
We don't tell you how you should feel. We don't
give you the interpretation. We give you the base facts,
the common fact based across the topic. And our superpower
that allows us to develop a lot of credibility is
we go to primary sources. So instead of you know,
going to other journalists and saying, like here's what they're saying,
(21:18):
we're just regurgitating their words. We actually go directly to
the primary source. So if the issue is about the
Supreme Court, right, there's been a big issue with the
Supreme Court, you know, recalling a federal judges call to
make the Trump administration restore staff benefits, right, food stamps.
This just happened, you know, yesterday today. Instead of hearing
(21:40):
that from some journalists or an inkor talking in a
bar on TV, we will show you the Supreme Court state,
you know, ruling so that you can will both inform
you of what's going on in it and will give
you direct access to that document so that you can
see what the Supreme Court is saying. If it's a
(22:01):
Bill of Congress, we'll take you to the Bill of Congress. Right,
that's we's what we use to inform ourselves. It's the
government report, it's the White House, Census Bureau, United Nations, right, government,
Central Bank of Europe. We will go into the primary
source and see what the horse's mouth is saying, right,
instead of trying to reinterpret regurgency that for you, and
(22:24):
in the events where we don't have a primary source,
we would go to the reporters, the primary reporters, which
is different than the big media outlets that we're all
familiar with. The reporting layer of the journalism industry is
not the same as what kind of gets to us
at the retail level, not even close. There's about a
(22:44):
handful of companies that do primary evidence reporting, right, it's
Associated Press to Reuters, it's Bloomberg, it's AFP. There's a
couple of others who actually do kind of ground evidence collection,
and that's the second best when you don't have a
primary source yourself. And so we look at that level
of fidelity of information and we focus on just the
(23:08):
what we're and the when to give you the es
central facts without saying more, because if you keep talking,
you will never get into commentary, and we never cross
that line.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
I like that, See, folks, I like that. You said,
you're literally you're literally just giving the.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
News the news themselves, pure news, pure news, not news commentary,
not news analysis, not news discussion, not news debate. That
there is no shortage of in America. It's cheap and
it's everywhere.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
It's very true. Daytime TV, like nighttime everything. Yes, everything
is commentary. Like I said, it's in fultaatement. It's all
to entertaine regis people out there to say stuff you're saying,
don't folks be clear when they watch the study I
form got now it's literally just the news as it
happened exactly.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
But you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
That sounds like we're chuckling that. It sounds like, oh
my god, but like it's really like to get that.
It's a major thing right now. It's a real amazing thing.
I know a lot of folks like me who aren't
on either side. We're somewhere in the middle. We're independence,
we're in the middle. We're trying to find something. We
just want to us just what happened, you know, we
want to know the facts, like what's the facts of
(24:23):
the case or the facts, like we just want to
know that. We don't want all the punditry, we don't
want all that stuff. We just want to know what
the f happened. And it's hard and really, you're right,
it's hard to find and it's hard to trust. Like,
you know, you go on X who knows what you're
getting over there? So that's on Instagram, so that's on Facebook.
Like you don't know what you're getting at places. So
(24:45):
it's like I just want to know what happened.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
That's all I want. Now, how does it affect me?
That's all.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
That's all I want to know, Like and most I
think most Americans, that's they want.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I think.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
So for your I guess one of your challenges is
getting people who kind of just and I say this
not as a negative, but just lazily go to their
normal sources and just go I know this source. I'm
gonna go here. I'm gonna go there. That's how you
turned on my phone. I'm gonna go to I get it,
I get a Google glorification. So I guess for you
guys just kind of say, okay, let's go away from
(25:16):
that at us in there, it'll get a whole different experience, right.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
I mean, even more radical than that. We we pred
ourselves in being the last news service that you'll need
because our coverage is so broad that we cover across
not just politics, but also technology, not also that, but
also science, not also that, but also cultural, social, military,
(25:42):
you know, changes in the world, economic, you know, business,
which are different. We cover all of these different categories
based on what's changing the world, what is most consequential today,
based on a significant filter and so we we sort
of give you the whole coverage of the entire of
the entire world and the entire industry. For you to
(26:04):
match the level of coverage that we have, you would
essentially have to subscribe to maybe ten or twelve other publications,
which by the way, are not free, are very very expensive,
and come with annual contracts that are you know, extremely expossible.
You know, if the Financial Times is one thousand dollars
a year, which is in an absurd amount for an
(26:27):
everyday American to to pay just to get factual information,
and Financial Times is so narrow in our coverage it's
it's like it's not worth it unless you're a financial professional.
And so you know, we're really looking to give the
power the accessibility to the everyday person. And I also
a price point that anyone can can afford. We don't
(26:47):
do annual contracts. We don't care about locking you in.
We don't want to, We don't want to steal from you.
And if you want out, we want to make sure
that you can get out quite easily, right And you know,
our whole you know, Amma, is really like empowering people
as much as we can and doing our duty or
job of informing you and then getting out of your face,
(27:10):
getting out of the way, right, which no other media
company does. If we have the media company was to
hold you hostage so they can show you advertisements, so
they can solicit you with their own products. Just keep
you reading, doing a crossword puzzle, not doing a trivia.
Now there's an advertisement. Now there's a video, there's a
pop up, and there's an advertisement.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
It's crazy.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
We try to give you the value of being informed
and stop there. There's nothing else. There is no celsitations,
there's nothing of any sort of advertisement format. There is
no like, There is no prompt or push for you
to do more. In fact, you can't structurally interact with
our product more than in that one minute a day.
(27:49):
And that's all on purpose. We're intentionally offline on the weekends.
We're trying to give you the value and get out
of your face. And as simple as that sounds, nobody
does that. Nobody in this industry does that.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
We see there are ideas out there that but untapped.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
I had no idea, but I mean, I like, that's
that's great. I think that's that's totally untapped. There's fun
of you guys are off on the weekends. Okay, what
news happens on the weekends?
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Though he does, he just doesn't have to read it.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
There you go, kids, Well.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Our Monday, our Monday briefings cover the whole of the weekend.
We believe in media mindfulness, Like that's really like the
pioneering spirit is that you want to be mindful of
the media you consume. So much of America is an
autopilot of consumption, right, You're just being served and overserved
media and it's not being very mindful. Like you shouldn't
(28:44):
just eat anything that's been put on your plate. In fact,
if you do, you'll get quite sick. And being mindful
about the information that you consume is about choosing when
you want to take that information and what kind of
information are you going to accept. And with us, we're
trying to create a pretty strict diet of like, hey,
news should be a minute a day, once a day,
(29:05):
not multiple times. And yet your weekends should have nothing
to do with news. And so we're building a product
that's designed around giving that space instead of you know,
click baiting you and holding you hostage.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
I like it, argus here, I like it. I mean
it's great. It was. It was.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
It's that whole thinking about that's in the doom, squirreling,
that's in the endless. It just matter what side drag.
You're just like, you're just following this narrative all day,
every day, all day long, all day long. It's like,
get out in the world, go by the ocean, and
I live by the ocean. Gady ocean. You'll get outside,
you know, visit your family. I don't play with your dog.
(29:44):
I mean, it's just like there's something something different than
always on this, you know, always on this and looking
at the news. I think that's that's your supporting that.
I like that very good in forum dot now. Okay, folks,
So I'll let you promote where to can find you
and all that stuff, and I'll put it in a
description of course, but tell me where I can find
(30:05):
your your your news source.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Absolutely, I mean, our our brand name is our website.
And so if you go to informed dot now, you'll
get to get a little more context about how we
do what we do and a really easy way to
sign up. You know, we are really easy to reach
for anyone who is interested in this medium, mindfulness trend
and this media mentalness kind of philosophy, and we'd be
(30:30):
lucky to you know, we're always on the lookout for
our people. And so if you feel like you've been
you've been sort of losing touch with the world and
you want to know what's going on, but you don't
want to be drained in the process. You don't want
to be kind of you know, you know, kept hostage
in the process. We provide one way to do that,
and it would be lucky to to to have you
(30:50):
give us, you know, opinion, give us feedback, and we'd
love lucky to have you check out our work. So
informed dot now is the best way to do it.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Here as Siskin, you're now my new friend, you're on
my phone. I'll give you in there. I'm really excited
to see this grow. I'm really excited to see that
where this goes. And thank you for trying to affect
change in the world that's positive. We need more more
of you out there doing that.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Well, James, honor to hear that from you. And it's
a pleasure to share the gospel of facts with with
you know, with our broader shared audience.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yes, exactly, it's my all. My followers follow him, go
go to inform not now do it. I'm James sent you.
It's nice to connections and we're here to connect. It's
always about connecting and we personally support and professionally supports people.
Organizations are trying to connect also in very positive ways.
So I'm glad to be able to come on here
(31:52):
and interview him and well him back on again. Well,
well see what's good all with his company. He's nice,
a friend to the to the to our network. Everyone
out there, please is important for you to connect to.
I know it's tough sometimes, but get out the house,
join something, follow something, just like, just do something out
there besides just sitting at home.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Do again, doo scrolling. I'm James Lott Jr.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Extra Connections on Facebook, jail JBDA is everywhere. This show
is on every audio streaming service platform including Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, Apple,
and I'm on the Granddaddy from all YouTube YouTube JLJ Media.
Go ahead and say, if you're new to me, subscribe
to my channels. To my channel please and check out
(32:36):
our content. We have a lot of great episodes with
all the great people like Kira on our shows and everyone.
We're here on Wednesdays. We'll see you next week by
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