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A new AI platform taking the world by storm

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In the event of an Initial Public Offering (IPO), preferred shares will automatically be converted to common stock, which you can then choose to either hold or sell at the market price.

In the event of a merger or acquisition or any other liquidity event, preferred shares might have certain advantages compared to common stock, such as:

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* Additional protections in the form of anti-dilution right, pro rata right or rights of first refusal

INVESTMENT TERMS

Duncan Ironmonger

Founder & CEO of Scuf (acquired by Corsair for $100M+)

"As Founder of several Companies, Technology Entrepreneur and a former CEO, I am very aware of the positive impact and influence that the internet and social media can have towards the education of people, and the success of entrepreneurs and businesses. When used appropriately, this information can be a great thing, however I am increasingly concerned that the younger generations are blindly influenced by unreliable sources of information and may not have reason to question the data they are fed. With the influencer economy growing exponentially, this can put the trust of our future generations in the hands of a the few who may be using data that suits their cause, or beliefs. I believe having a more unbiased source of information is appealing for us all."

Invested $300,000

What is the Otherweb?

1
We are a Public Benefit Corporation: developing cutting-edge AI to fix the information ecosystem
2‍
Building websites and apps that grew to over 5.4m active users already
3
Growing 10,000x in its first year[1]
4
Disrupting a $565B/year industry[2]
5
Riding a $15.7 trillion wave of AI innovation[3]

Big problems require big solutions

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
(Voltaire)

The information ecosystem is fundamentally broken.

All the critical problems facing the world right now depend on our ability to fix it.

We are all bombarded with superficial, trivial, and often false information, because it generates clicks and views and helps the person who writes it get more ad revenue.

The result is that many people have the illusion of knowledge, while in reality, their head is filled with misinformation, disinformation, and plain ol’ junk.

Why is Otherweb the right solution?

We’ve developed a suite of AI models that can detect various forms of junk and filter it out. For everything that isn’t obviously junk, we created a nutrition label that lets people decide whether or not this content fits their preferences.

And with this new toolkit, we created a new kind of platform that aggregates news, podcasts, research studies and many other sources of information in one place.

A place that doesn’t have paywalls, clickbait, autoplaying videos, or any other form of digital junk.

A well-balanced platform where people can have fun and become well-informed at the same time.

Follow the links at the bottom of the page to try it out for yourself.

Here's how the Otherweb compares to what came before it:

Growing 10,000x in our first year

We launched the Otherweb as a web app on August 1st, 2022.

We then launched Android and iOS apps on November 7th, 2022, and so far we've gathered 5,466,725 MAU (monthly active users) across all platforms.

We are growing at an exponential rate because users are sick and tired of being bombarded with junk and, in the Otherweb, they find a safe haven where they are insulated from the noise of the broader internet.

Getting rave reviews from everyone

Investors:

Tracy L Wright

“I think that this is an amazing opportunity for the future!”

Thomas Cain

“I believe in transparency and believe you guys can deliver”

Rekha Jain

“I believe in your mission - something our world urgently need”

Heather Todd

“I’m all for new companies that challenge the status quo”

Michael Humphery

“I believe that a lot of people are fed up with the garbage/junk and want some real content”

Gerald Arter

“Hopefully investing in the next google!”

Robert Son

“This might be the next Google.”

Shaun McDuffee

“I believe in the concept and think you may be on to something special”

Leading experts:

One of the companies I'm most excited about today is Otherweb, which envisions a web of credible news, free of manipulation and clickbait.

It's an approach that convincingly demonstrates that another web is possible and that interested users can start now, rather than waiting for structural changes that may take years.

Prof. Ethan Zuckerman
  • Director of the Digital Public Infrastructure Initiative @ UMass Amherst
  • Fmr. Director of the Center for Civic Media @ MIT Media Lab
Chris More
  • VP Growth @ Brave
  • Fmr. Head of Growth
    @ Mozilla

Everywhere you turn it's just fake news and misinformation, and most people are just really tired of that.

Otherweb is the solution to that problem. You can read the news without all the mess.

App users:

AK158796, 04/20/2023

Loving it so far!
I’ve used this app for a couple days now and I’m really impressed with its ad-free and user-friendly interface. The bullet-point summaries, audio readings, and links to full-length articles are great features that allow for adaptability in my busy schedule. I definitely think this has the potential to become an app I use daily.

Resori, 04/13/2023

News, books, podcasts and courses. All in one!!
I really enjoy using this app. Easy to use, flick screen left & right. This app is all you need to keep updated current events/technology/science and more.I also like they have a nutrition label of language and news resources. Using this label to determine if I would like to share an article to someone.

Denise1342, 04/19/2023

Amazing
I love how the app is add-feee and junk-free, it makes reading the news easier for me. I can choose between reading it myself or listening to it, I am able to put my phone down and just listen to it which is super helpful. It covers several news companies as well.

Hiring the best talent

Alex Fink

CEO

Two-time founder, former VP engineering of a VR startup, and a prolific inventor with 25+ patents granted so far.

We believe the brain is a marvelous machine, but if you feed it junk, you're likely to get junk in return. So we view "information quality" as the mother of all problems - as long as people continue to consume low-quality information, we will continue to observe bad decisions and bad behavior all around us.

Rich Evans

Former head of Facebook News, senior editor at Yahoo News and Sky News
(advisor)

Chris More

Head of growth at Brave, former head of growth at Mozilla
(advisor)

Bob Fine

CEO of IVRHA and the Social Media Monthly magazine
(advisor)

Peter Saint-Andre

2x CTO with multiple exists, former head of partnerships at Mozilla
(advisor)

VH Hadjioglo

Head of Product

Artur Spatari

Head of Engineering
SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS
From the best companies:

Launching at the right time

“AI is eating the world” 

(Marc Andreessen)

Generative AI models like ChatGPT are amazing at producing content. Soon, we'll have so much content created that no human will be able to drink from this firehose.

Who's going to filter it all?

Who's going to help people consume high-quality content and control what they put into their brain?

Pursuing a noble mission

Our mission: To improve the quality of information people consume.

We will use your investment to:
  • Index more content from all around the web
  • Train our machine-learning models on larger datasets
  • Increase the accuracy of our models and run inference in real-time
  • Hire the best engineers and designers to build a best-in-class product

Which will allow us to build an exceptional product that helps billions of people consume higher-quality information.

Getting lots of attention

Solving the challenge of our lifetime

In 1998, when the world had 60 million web pages, the biggest problem was “how do we find relevant stuff”?

Google solved this problem amazingly well.

This is why $1000 invested in Google in 1998 would be $77,510,183 today - they solved the right problem, at the right time, and their solution worked!

Today, in a world that has 2 trillion web pages, the biggest problem facing users is completely different. It’s not finding that we need to solve for. It’s filtering.

How do we filter the junk out?

Whoever solves this problem will heal the world.. and become the next Google.

Do you want to join us and craft the future of the internet together?
Click here
to invest
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Why invest in startups?

Regulation CF allows investors to invest in startups and early-growth companies. This is different from helping a company raise money on Kickstarter; with Regulation CF Offerings, you aren’t buying products or merchandise - you are buying a piece of a company and helping it grow.

How much can I invest?

Accredited investors can invest as much as they want. But if you are NOT an accredited investor, your investment limit depends on either your annual income or net worth, whichever is greater. If the number is less than $124,000, you can only invest 5% of it. If both are greater than $124,000 then your investment limit is 10%.

How do I calculate my net worth?

To calculate your net worth, just add up all of your assets and subtract all of your liabilities (excluding the value of the person’s primary residence). The resulting sum is your net worth.

What are the tax implications of an equity crowdfunding investment?

We cannot give tax advice, and we encourage you to talk with your accountant or tax advisor before making an investment.

Who can invest in a Regulation CF Offering?

Individuals over 18 years of age can invest.

What do I need to know about early-stage investing? Are these investments risky?

There will always be some risk involved when investing in a startup or small business. And the earlier you get in the more risk that is usually present. If a young company goes out of business, your ownership interest could lose all value. You may have limited voting power to direct the company due to dilution over time.  You may also have to wait about five to seven years (if ever) for an exit via acquisition, IPO, etc. Because early-stage companies are still in the process of perfecting their products, services, and business model, nothing is guaranteed. That’s why startups should only be part of a more balanced, overall investment portfolio.

When will I get my investment back?

The Common Stock (the "Shares") of [private issuer name] (the "Company") are not publicly-traded. As a result, the shares cannot be easily traded or sold. As an investor in a private company, you typically look to receive a return on your investment under the following  scenarios: The Company gets acquired by another company. The Company goes public (makes an initial public offering). In those instances, you receive your pro-rata share of the distributions that occur, in the case of acquisition, or you can sell your shares on an exchange. These are both considered long-term exits, taking approximately 5-10 years (and often longer) to see the possibility for an exit.  It can sometimes take years to build companies. Sometimes there will not be any return, as a result of business failure.

Can I sell my shares?

Shares sold via Regulation Crowdfunding offerings have a one-year lockup period before those shares can be sold under certain conditions.

Exceptions to limitations on selling shares during the one-year lockup period:

In the event of death, divorce, or similar circumstance, shares can be transferred to:

  • The company that issued the securities
  • An accredited investor
  • A family member (child, stepchild, grandchild, parent, stepparent, grandparent, spouse or equivalent, sibling, mother-in-law, father-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, or sister-in-law, including adoptive relationships)

What happens if a company does not reach their funding target?

If a company does not reach their minimum funding target, all funds will be returned to the investors after the close of the offering.

How can I learn more about a company's offering?

All available disclosure information can be found on the offering pages for our Regulation Crowdfunding offering.

What if I change my mind about investing?

You can cancel your investment at any time, for any reason, until 48 hours prior to a closing occurring. If you’ve already funded your investment and your funds are in escrow, your funds will be promptly refunded to you upon cancellation. To submit a request to cancel your investment please email: alex@otherweb.com

How do I keep up with how the company is doing?

At a minimum, the company will be filing with the SEC and posting on it’s website an annual report, along with certified financial statements.  Those should be available 120 days after the fiscal year end.  If the company meets a reporting exception, or eventually has to file more reported information to the SEC, the reporting described above may end. If these reports end, you may not continually have current financial information about the company.

What relationship does the company have with DealMaker Securities?

Once an offering ends, the company may continue its relationship with DealMaker Securities for additional offerings in the future.  DealMaker Securities’ affiliates may also provide ongoing services to the company. There is no guarantee any services will continue after the offering ends.

Our CEO’s recent article

Alex Fink

CEO @ Otherweb

The Otherweb featured on CBS News

Alex Fink

CEO @ Otherweb

The Otherweb features again on CBS Charleston / WOWK

Alex Fink

CEO @ Otherweb

The Otherweb on KPRC

Alex Fink

CEO @ Otherweb

The Otherweb featured on KVUE / ABC Austin

Alex Fink

CEO @ Otherweb

The Otherweb Featured on WOWK

Alex Fink

CEO @ Otherweb

The Next Big Thing

Alex Fink

CEO @ Otherweb

The Otherweb featured on Fox43

Alex Fink

CEO @ Otherweb

A new addition to our advisory board

Alex Fink

CEO @ Otherweb

Alex's appearance on "This Might Get Uncomfortable"

Alex Fink

CEO @ Otherweb
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Genevieve Du Lac

lead investor
Invested $25,000

I'm excited by this huge opportunity to replace the existing platforms with a more thoughtful alternative. When I saw your oustanding growth and the tight-knit community driving this product forward, I knew this was something special. I think the biggest problem facing the internet today is junk. It’s everywhere. We’re drowning in it. And if 90% of what people consume is junk, how can we expect them to make good decisions? We need better information for the betterment of the public.

Parveshan Vijendran

Hi. As mentioned in your website, the world is drowning on junk. Otherweb is a breadth of fresh air!!!. All the best!!!

Tara Edwards

I admire ingenuity and creativity of all kinds. I want to support initiatives that make the world a better, more democratic place.

Life is complicated enough without wasting time sorting through junk information. I want to support efforts to clean up the 'noise'.

Michael Smith

Alex, this project appears to have a very promising future. I hope you build the next unicorn. I'll look forward to updates

Raymond Messick

This company is on the ground floor of AI which I feel that will be involved in our future in big way.

Timothy Stoneburner

I think this is a great alternative to what already exists. I would love to see this take off and become a valid option for us.

Gerald Arter

Retired US Air Force Officer

Hopefully investing in the next google!

Christian Vellanoweth

New opportunity

Mary Burrell Besand

I work as a private caregiver for those who generally have few years of life left and want to maintain their stability.

Because this is the future and I love it!!!

Tom Wright

I am a venture capitalist who is extremely excited about the future, and about humanity's potential for greatness.

I invested in Otherweb because it fills a HUGE NEED at just the RIGHT TIME, and it represents the FUTURE OF THE INTERNET. ..... I cannot wait to increase my investment, very soon!!

Ace Irvinski

Whenever there wasn't good work, I would go to school. I must have 50 classes under my belt by now. These days I teach in California. :)

Can use clean access like this to info in education.

Thank you! Your question has been received!
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199

Oscar Short

How is this different from Artifact, the app that Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger accounced last week?

178

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Oscar, Artifact is still in private beta so I'm going off of partial info here, but from their public announcements it seems like their primary focus is on personalization. Kevin even referred to their product as "TikTok for text", and made it pretty clear that when they say "AI-based" they are specifically referring to the use of AI to personalize people's feeds in the same way TikTok does. Our focus is quite different - we apply AI primarily to content evaluation and filtering. While personalization is neat, we don't think the biggest problem facing the world right now is that our news feeds aren't personalized enough. There's a good argument to be made that they're already a bit too personalized (and that each of us lives in a personalized echo-chamber).That said, I think it is actually great that Kevin and Mike are helping us define this new category. I am a big fan of their work and sincerely hope they succeed in this new venture too. Both our products face a similar challenge - by combining elements of social media and news media in the same product, we are delivering more value to users, but we are also going against the division that has existed between these categories until now. So I think we can help each other a lot by defining this new hybrid category together.

147

Morgan Donnelly

Your pitch talks about the entire internet, but your product seems to be mostly news-centric. How do you plan to expand this from news to other types of content?

139

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Morgan, great question. The work we are doing - whether it's crawling and aggregating content, evaluating, filtering, sorting, presenting etc - is all universally applicable to all the content on the web.However, the news present a unique "case study" for our approach because people have a better intuitive sense of what a good news story looks like compared to a bad news story. There might be quarrels about left vs right, but there's a generally-accepted definition of where "up" is. Every university teaches the same journalistic standards.So the news gives us a great place to start. Once we show that our approach to content selection helps people consume a better news-diet, it becomes easier for us to convince the world that the same approach can be generalized to produce a better information-diet, too.

174

Tom Wright

Oh HELL yeah, Alex Fink! I LOVE this. Otherweb is the perfect idea & company, at the perfect time. The Internet IS broken. Otherweb can help fix it. ..... I will be investing next week, and I am extremely excited to be able to do so. Thank you!!!

193

Alex Fink

CEO

Thanks Tom! We look forward to having you on board.

148

Genevieve Du Lac

What is your revenue model?

112

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Genevieve, thank you for your question! We want to delay monetization until we have a large-enough number of users to:a) Ensure that we have staying power and won't be "killed" by monetizing too early, as many startups do.b) Study our users' usage of the platform so we can have a clear understanding of the value they derive from it, and roll out monetization gradually in a way that does not have any negative effects on users' reviews or the value they get from the platform.Our initial experiments show that we can add advertising to the search results pages and monetize each user at $58/year this way (each user searches twice a day on average, and each search can result in $0.08 for us eventually) - without charging subscription fees and without adding ads to the news feed or podcast section. However, these are experiments we ran on a small subset of users - we are waiting for the user count to be substantially larger before we start rolling out this kind of monetization to all users.

177

Dmytro Kriher

If your summaries work so well, people have no reason to click through to the original articles, right? Are you worried about copyright claims?

109

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Dmytro, absolutely, we are always worried about copyright concerns and take "fair use" very seriously. This is why our summaries are abstractive, i.e. they do not include large excerpts from the original work; we don't include images or videos from the original work; we add additional elements (like a nutrition label) that transform the work; and we also link to the original, in a way that credits the author and allows the user to patronize the author's website. We believe that going above and beyond is simply the right thing to do in this case, and so our fair use is substantially "fairer" than what Google News or any other aggregator does.In addition, out of respect for the original authors of the work, we consciously avoid any website that places a paywall on their content (again, unlike Google News and most other aggregators). Even though paywalls generally don't restrict crawlers, we still view them as a clear sign that the author does not wish to share his or her work - and we always respect the author's wish.

126

Carrie Frazier

It seems like you're setting yourself up as an arbiter of content quality. Why would people trust you?

102

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Carrie, obviously we have to earn people's trust, and that's never easy. This is why we are doing many things differently compared to other companies in this space. For instance, we registered as a public benefit corporation and listed "information quality" as our primary mission - which gives people confidence that when push comes to shove, we will continue to prioritize information quality, and they can hold us legally accountable for it. We also opened up our models and datasets and made them source-available - which means they can be audited and tested by anyone (to make sure we are doing exactly what we say we do, and don't secretly throttle or shadowban things we don't like).In general, we think that trust needs to be earned, and the best way to earn it is by being honest and transparent with our audience. We've done well in this regard so far.

156

Denis Pomogaev

There are eight newsfeed categories at the moment and it would be great to have the AI fine tune to topics within each category that a user appears to choose more frequently. When do you expect such a feature to be available and will there be a way to see individual sub-categories and adjust them?

166

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Denis, excellent question! the short answer is - very very soon. We have already implemented it and we're testing it in a small circle of beta testers (10-12 people) as we speak. If you want to test it out too, ping me separately and I'll add you to our testflight.There's an element of this feature that makes us approach it very cautiously. The kind of customization you see on TikTok and Youtube is blind to semantics - for instance, if you "like" an item about a politician being indicted for corruption, it could be that you like the topic of corruption in politics, or that you dislike this particular politician and you're happy he was indicted. A single "like" button does not differentiate between these scenarios, but we view these scenarios very differently - in one case you are signaling your interest in a topic, and in the other you're signaling your political position.We are trying to customize your feed to the former but not the latter. It's harder to implement and no other media has done it yet, but we think it's the right thing to do. It would allow users to reap the benefits of customized news feeds without creating a political echo-chamber for themselves.Once we roll it out, we'll also allow users to view the implicit customizations we've inferred from their reading patterns and to adjust (or undo) them individually, which is another thing no other media company does today.

185

Jacob Watkins

Do people really care about quality, or is everyone so polarized that it's just about right or left?

135

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Jacob, polarization is certainly a confounding factor, but quality still matters. The question is - what percentage of the population cares about information quality today?In our experience, the % of people who REALLY care is probably around 10-20%. They are our natural audience; our early adopters and evangelists.The remaining 80-90% might be driven more by fashion or inertia, but ultimately they can also be reached. It's just a matter of growth, time, and perseverance.

1

Brian Malloy

What is the timeline for your vision?

1

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey John, we have a roadmap stretching 5-6 years forward, but the goal is to make a significant difference in the marketplace as early as next year.To use one example - Facebook became a known phenomenon when they hit ~10m users. Before that it was something VC's and students knew about but the public still didn't. Once they crossed 10m users, the media and the broader public became aware of this new way of communicating and connecting with people. Our product is obviously different, but the scale at which we shift from early-adopters to mainstream adoption should be roughly the same - and I think we should hit it by late next year (if we maintain our current trajectory).

111

Phillipp Ostermann

What's the difference between investing as an early bird and investing after?

200

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Phillipp, thank you for your question! Early birds get a discount in the valuation cap that is listed on their SAFE note. If we translate this into simpler terms using an example - suppose we raise the next round at some valuation that is above the cap, and then we sell the company for $1B dollars next year (hypothetically). An investor who put his money in as an early bird, will have a return on investment of:1B/6M = 167XAn investor who put his money in after the early bird period ended, will have a return on investment of:1B/8M = 125XSo the return we'll generate for early birds is going to be 33% higher than the return we generate for others who invest in this round.

193

Raymond Messick

Are there any qualified Venture capitalists involved with project in any way?

188

Alex Fink

CEO

Hi Raymond, you can see the list of past investments in the "details" tab. We've only raised from individual angel investors so far.

199

Enrico Varano

Amazing stuff Alex, sorely needed and well executed! Can we get more details on CAC, churn, etc? How many users come from organic growth? How much more has MAU grown in June? To be blunt (but I mean well), I'm worried the exceptional MAU count and growth is inflated by heavy advertising and rotting with churn.

142

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Enrico, I appreciate the kind words. It's a work in progress but I think we're on the right track.Let me answer your questions out of order:1. The June numbers (through 6/26 at 00:01) have been updated.2. CAC is a blend - most of our signups are from shares, from PR, and from secondary effects (e.g. we advertise this wefunder campaign, but then most people sign up for the app to try it out before investing, too). I.e. they are "free", or rather a freebie that gets attached to something else we paid for. But we do have some paid acquisition as well - right now we can get Web and Android users for <$1 and iOS users for $1-3 depending on location. We're not running ads to improve our numbers at this point - the main reason we are running ads is to get a predictable cohort of users each week that we can run tests on (as part of our growth-hacking process to improve retention), because meaningful tests require consistent sample sizes from a consistent source. 3. Churn/retention is our big focus as well. We're facing a difficult challenge - other media companies retain users by showing them the most addictive content they can select; but we are trying to select content that maximizes the user's long-term well-being rather than their likelihood of getting addicted. This means to retain users we are solving a harder problem than others.Here's our current status. Consider the industry benchmarks: andrewchen.com/new-d…apps-do-much-better Our D7 retention right now is 43.6%. That's above average, but it is not elite just yet. According to Quettra's data, this puts us around the top-5000 but not in the top-500 yet. So we have work to do - but I'm sure we'll get there.

121

Bruce Giebelstein

You use an investment in Google as an example of returns that could be realized with an investment into Otherweb... How does a $1000 investment in Otherweb lead to those types of returns? I.e. this doesn't look like a stock purchase, so where is the return coming from?

101

Alex Fink

CEO

Hi Bruce, we're raising the current round using a SAFE (=Simple Agreement for Future Equity) note, which converts into preferred stock when the company raises a future investment round, gets acquired, or performs an IPO. This is the most common legal instrument for investing in early-stage startups, and it has some advantages over a regular stock purchase (e.g. more downside protections for the investor). Since you mentioned the Google story, here is what actually took place: en.wikipedia.org/wik…olsheim#Investments

173

Adan Farrah

Will this require a subscription fee. If so do you think that is going to make people not interested in using it or more interested.

122

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Adan, for now the plan is to grow as fast as we can, and then to gradually start adding advertising and/or subscription options (perhaps later this year). I think subscription fees are unlikely to turn people off completely - what they tend to do is make growth slow down (because even if our users like it, they find it harder to share with friends). So if we can afford to go without monetization for a while, we should, because the user-base will grow faster this way.When it's time to monetize, we can consider a freemium approach like Spotify/Hulu where the subscription is not necessary, but rather it just allows you to get an ad-free experience.

112

Akash Singhal

I see you are spending too much funds 50k for 1 front end engineer and 250k for two more engineer from Ukraine why ? If this is all front end engineer, you can get at least 20 frontend Developers. I am not aware of AI Engineer Cost. But the amount you mentioned to get Front End engineer is too high. If you want I can help you to get frontend engineer. And I can plan to invest also. If you would like to connect and minimize this cost and increase profit please let me know

101

Alex Fink

CEO

Hi Akash, I appreciate the offer, but we already have a great hiring pipeline that helps us hire superstar developers for 1/3 of their market cost.The cost you mentioned in your question (which comes from our SEC disclosures) is for 12 months. 92.5% of 50k, which is $46,250, or $3,854/month for a software engineer. I don't think this cost is too high for a great developer, and I don't think you can hire 20 developers for this budget. In fact, I am pretty sure we have a significant cost advantage over other startups in our space because we are able to hire great talent so cheaply.There are a few key positions for which we'll need to hire in the US, and a market salary for an engineer in Austin is well north of 100k per year. We've listed these planned hires in our disclosures as well. Over time, we're going to balance costs as much as we can - hiring key employees and managers in the US, and hiring individual contributors in lower-cost countries where we have great access to talent.Thanks!

111

Phillipp Ostermann

What's the difference between investing as an early bird and investing after?

200

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Phillipp, thank you for your question! Early birds get a discount in the valuation cap that is listed on their SAFE note. If we translate this into simpler terms using an example - suppose we raise the next round at some valuation that is above the cap, and then we sell the company for $1B dollars next year (hypothetically). An investor who put his money in as an early bird, will have a return on investment of:1B/6M = 167XAn investor who put his money in after the early bird period ended, will have a return on investment of:1B/8M = 125XSo the return we'll generate for early birds is going to be 33% higher than the return we generate for others who invest in this round.

193

Raymond Messick

Are there any qualified Venture capitalists involved with project in any way?

188

Alex Fink

CEO

Hi Raymond, you can see the list of past investments in the "details" tab. We've only raised from individual angel investors so far.

199

Enrico Varano

Amazing stuff Alex, sorely needed and well executed! Can we get more details on CAC, churn, etc? How many users come from organic growth? How much more has MAU grown in June? To be blunt (but I mean well), I'm worried the exceptional MAU count and growth is inflated by heavy advertising and rotting with churn.

142

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Enrico, I appreciate the kind words. It's a work in progress but I think we're on the right track.Let me answer your questions out of order:1. The June numbers (through 6/26 at 00:01) have been updated.2. CAC is a blend - most of our signups are from shares, from PR, and from secondary effects (e.g. we advertise this wefunder campaign, but then most people sign up for the app to try it out before investing, too). I.e. they are "free", or rather a freebie that gets attached to something else we paid for. But we do have some paid acquisition as well - right now we can get Web and Android users for <$1 and iOS users for $1-3 depending on location. We're not running ads to improve our numbers at this point - the main reason we are running ads is to get a predictable cohort of users each week that we can run tests on (as part of our growth-hacking process to improve retention), because meaningful tests require consistent sample sizes from a consistent source. 3. Churn/retention is our big focus as well. We're facing a difficult challenge - other media companies retain users by showing them the most addictive content they can select; but we are trying to select content that maximizes the user's long-term well-being rather than their likelihood of getting addicted. This means to retain users we are solving a harder problem than others.Here's our current status. Consider the industry benchmarks: andrewchen.com/new-d…apps-do-much-better Our D7 retention right now is 43.6%. That's above average, but it is not elite just yet. According to Quettra's data, this puts us around the top-5000 but not in the top-500 yet. So we have work to do - but I'm sure we'll get there.

121

Bruce Giebelstein

You use an investment in Google as an example of returns that could be realized with an investment into Otherweb... How does a $1000 investment in Otherweb lead to those types of returns? I.e. this doesn't look like a stock purchase, so where is the return coming from?

101

Alex Fink

CEO

Hi Bruce, we're raising the current round using a SAFE (=Simple Agreement for Future Equity) note, which converts into preferred stock when the company raises a future investment round, gets acquired, or performs an IPO. This is the most common legal instrument for investing in early-stage startups, and it has some advantages over a regular stock purchase (e.g. more downside protections for the investor). Since you mentioned the Google story, here is what actually took place: en.wikipedia.org/wik…olsheim#Investments

173

Adan Farrah

Will this require a subscription fee. If so do you think that is going to make people not interested in using it or more interested.

122

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Adan, for now the plan is to grow as fast as we can, and then to gradually start adding advertising and/or subscription options (perhaps later this year). I think subscription fees are unlikely to turn people off completely - what they tend to do is make growth slow down (because even if our users like it, they find it harder to share with friends). So if we can afford to go without monetization for a while, we should, because the user-base will grow faster this way.When it's time to monetize, we can consider a freemium approach like Spotify/Hulu where the subscription is not necessary, but rather it just allows you to get an ad-free experience.

112

Akash Singhal

I see you are spending too much funds 50k for 1 front end engineer and 250k for two more engineer from Ukraine why ? If this is all front end engineer, you can get at least 20 frontend Developers. I am not aware of AI Engineer Cost. But the amount you mentioned to get Front End engineer is too high. If you want I can help you to get frontend engineer. And I can plan to invest also. If you would like to connect and minimize this cost and increase profit please let me know

101

Alex Fink

CEO

Hi Akash, I appreciate the offer, but we already have a great hiring pipeline that helps us hire superstar developers for 1/3 of their market cost.The cost you mentioned in your question (which comes from our SEC disclosures) is for 12 months. 92.5% of 50k, which is $46,250, or $3,854/month for a software engineer. I don't think this cost is too high for a great developer, and I don't think you can hire 20 developers for this budget. In fact, I am pretty sure we have a significant cost advantage over other startups in our space because we are able to hire great talent so cheaply.There are a few key positions for which we'll need to hire in the US, and a market salary for an engineer in Austin is well north of 100k per year. We've listed these planned hires in our disclosures as well. Over time, we're going to balance costs as much as we can - hiring key employees and managers in the US, and hiring individual contributors in lower-cost countries where we have great access to talent.Thanks!

180

Kali Houston

The app seems a bit text-heavy. Why no images?

130

Alex Fink

CEO

Hi Kali, our initial design followed a style that is similar to Google Reader, and emphasized the ease and speed with which our early adopters (i.e. information-junkies like me) could consume as much information as possible in as little time as possible. We are now working on a redesign that will make the platform more appealing to mainstream users and allow us to cross the chasm - showing one headline at a time, with nice-looking images and swipe gestures to navigate the feed. The new design will be rolled out before the end of February.We will maintain an option for users to revert to the old design (which many of our early adopters will likely use), but I absolutely agree that mainstream users generally prefer more images and less text on the screen. We will support both options soon.

173

Jodie Barlow

How do I check on the value of my investment, and can I cash out?

159

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Jodie, a SAFE note gets converted to equity in the company when we raise a priced round above a certain threshold. Startups like us tend to raise funds in multiple rounds, where ideally in each round our valuation is higher than in the previous one.So, when we raise the first priced round, you could see a certain return on investment right away - for example, if we raise the round at 18M and your valuation cap was 6M, each share you receive will immediately be worth 3X what you paid for it.In each subsequent round, the value of your investment will rise or fall together with our valuation. And each time this happens, you will be notified of the new valuation, and may even be asked to vote on whether you accept the terms of this new round or not.Finally, when we reach an "exit", i.e. an IPO or acquisition, your shares will be converted to publicly-traded shares, or shares in the acquiring company, or cash - depending on the exact type of exit we have. Typically, that is the point at which most investors cash out, but you can also choose to continue to be a shareholder afterwards.

193

Bob Wade

The search feature is pretty cool. Which API do you use? Bing?

173

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Bob, I know it's an uncommon answer these days, but.. we made our own search engine. There are two main reasons for this decision:1. We think that all existing search engines are full of junk results. And there is no easy way to filter these results in real-time - NLP is slow - so to be able to filter them quickly while the user is searching, we had to index them ahead of time for at least the most common queries.2. We think that the basic UX pattern people use with search is unnatural. We're all used to doing it, but.. there's a better way. If you mention a phrase in a conversation, let's say "UX pattern", and I want to find out more about it - I will ask you "what's that?". I won't pull out my phone and type some key phrases into the address bar of a new browser window, right? That's a weird thing to do. And yet online, we're all doing it.Think about how much better "what's that?" is, compared to typing into the address bar of a new browser window. It doesn't interrupt the flow of the interaction or break context. The person I ask "what's that?" has the full context of what we were just discussing, so there won't be any ambiguity in how to interpret my query. Finally, it requires fewer actions.So, we implemented this exact UX pattern into the Otherweb. If you see any phrase you'd like to know more about, you can highlight it and search the web, or wikipedia, or research studies, etc. It's the equivalent of "what's that?" built into the news reader itself - and to do it well, we needed our own search engine under the hood.

174

Adan Farrah

Do you think this is going to over take Google and Yahoo search Engines. If so by when.

122

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Adan, right now we aren't really competing with search engines directly. You could say we are much more competitive vs Google News or the Yahoo portal than we are with the search engine part of Google's business. It's also worth noting, Yahoo is not a search engine - it is a news portal that uses Bing API as their search engine under the hood. Here, we actually have a viable B2B play, since our own search API is comparable to Bing API (which is used by many smaller search portals like Duckduckgo, Quant, Neeva, Ecosia, etc) for some specific use-cases. It's not our focus right now, but as we grow and become large enough to support multiple product lines, we can definitely consider licensing our search API to companies like Duckduckgo.

148

Christopher Michael Szyskowski

I have $30k easily in my DCP currently in money market. I believe through a company like ALTO IRA I could invest my limit of $6k a year for five years. They should be able to get the bulk of $30k to you. The only question, is there a way we can make this happen?

119

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Christopher, I am not an expert on retirement accounts, but I know someone who can help with the mechanics of getting money from your DCP to Wefunder (if this is the only obstacle). Shoot me an email at alex@otherweb.com and I'll make an intro.

163

Steve H

So far Otherweb looks brilliant to me. Thanks for this awesome app!When I signed up there was an offer to recommend it to two friends in exchange for ad removal. I couldn't recommend something I didn't know, but I'm ready now. Is this offer available after initial sign-up?Also, it would be a good idea to register all recommendations. My list is a lot longer than two!

130

Alex Fink

CEO

Hi Steve, thank you for the kind words. The reality is we don't have ads yet. We plan to turn them on in a few months (which is why the 12 months offer is still valuable), but they're not on yet.The screen you saw is an experiment to see how people would respond to such an offer if it is made early in the onboarding process - we have more than 20% uptake so far, which is a very good result, but I agree with you that it still needs work (including the option to share with more than 2 people, or to do so at a later stage).For you specifically, let's do this manually:1. Please drop me an email at alex@otherweb.com so I know your email/username and I will make a note on the account to exclude you from ads in the future.2. Please share the app with all your friends directly - via email, whatsapp, etc. The more the merrier!

163

Tony Perry

How does ChatGPT affect your plans?

132

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Tony, we think ChatGPT is a really exciting technology and we're sure it will continue to evolve further. And like all breakthrough technologies, it will introduce quite a bit of flux during the transition period.For instance:Consider what effect ChatGPT will have on the cost of creating low-quality content. It is highly deflationary, right? People will be able to generate "passable" content with less time and effort. Or consider what effect ChatGPT will have on content monetization. Search is a major source of traffic for most websites. If search engines switch from a model of linking to other websites, to a model of summarizing the answers on the SERP directly.. the amount of traffic most websites get will decrease, right?Now, add these two trends together - an increasing amount of junk content, chasing a diminishing amount of monetizable traffic - and it seems like a fair bet that ChatGPT will accelerate the trends we've already been seeing over the past 30 years. The signal-to-noise ratio on the web will continue to become lower at an ever-increasing pace. This makes what we're doing even more critical (and in-demand).

132

Kyle Rector

How will you prevent this from.being misused? How will ensure that objective truth does not succumb to any 'Narrative' being pushed by those in power?

100

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Kyle, great question. The best solution I know of it to sample from a WIDE variety of sources from all sides of the political aisle.It's not perfect of course; some narratives can be quite pervasive. But the wider your sample, the more likely you are to see the counter-narrative to every narrative thrown your way. This is why we went with this 3-step approach of:a) Sample hundreds of sources (and not just a select few)b) Prioritize items that are purely-informative (i.e. articles that list facts without trying to tell you what your interpretation of these facts should be)c) Summarize each article into a few short bullet-points - so you can skim through as many articles as possible in as little time as possibleWe also made our AI models and datasets source-available, to make sure that no one (not even us) could bias the sample to the left or to the right. Thanks!

184

David Follin

With the world in a very divisive state, we currently see news from both polar left and right that are packed with biased, sensationalized, and manipulated distortions of the truth. How does Otherweb plan to provide real neutrality to a population diverse of thoughts and belief systems? Are you able to speak to how the AI formulates its decision on what is junk and what is acceptable? Is it created from a diverse group of people? I am really interested in the technology and the desire to clean the clutter out there, but am interested to see how neutral it will be. Thank you for your time!

114

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey David, I agree with your assessment of the current state. Our general approach is to separate the left-right axis from the up-down axis - these axes are (mostly) orthogonal and can be measured separately.Most of our AI models are focused on the up-down axis: detecting and measuring things that are universally viewed as bad. We're trying to catch and label things like clickbait headlines, sensationalist language, persuasion masquerading as reporting, lack of references / insufficient sourcing, etc. On this axis, "good" is basically defined as the absence of things that are known to be bad, and right now we have about 20 different bad things we know how to detect and measure. On the left-right axis, we try to choose sources that span the entire spectrum from sane right to sane left. We think left-right balance and viewpoint diversity are both positive traits of a good information diet. Of course if we had to pick one source we'd probably pick a centrist one; but since we can pick hundreds of sources - it seems better to sample the entire Overton window, and to include everything from the NY Post and Washington Examiner and Reason Magazine to MSNBC and Vox and Salon (and everything in-between).Our goal is for the reader to get high-quality right-wing articles, high-quality centrist articles, high-quality left-wing articles. And even if a particular source prints a lot more junk than others, we will still try our best to sample the few good articles they published and evaluate each article on its merits.Hope this answers your question.

157

Curtis Prescott

What's the end goal? Exit? Acquisition?

149

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Curtis, great question! Here's how we think about it -There are two exit routes - M&A or IPO. Which of the two ends up happening often depends on circumstance, so our job at these earlier stages is to grow the company as fast as possible and to keep both exit routes open.The valuation in both cases is a function of user-count, engagement and growth - so the key for us right now is to grow the user-base and increase engagement. If we have 10m users by this time next year, then perhaps we'll have a decision to make on whether we prefer the M&A route or the IPO route; but until then we have to keep both options in mind, and just focus on maximizing our value and the value we bring to our users.

146

Khaled ALMughrabi

All power to you...

121

Alex Fink

CEO

Thank you!

184

Jeremy Siders

If there is a different common measure of value besides revenue that commonly translates into real dollar valuation, please share that as well. Users? Thanks.

137

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Jeremy, different categories of product tend to use different metrics to track progress and valuation. Consumer apps tend to use monthly active users (MAU) and user-growth as the two primary metrics, because the assumption is that once you have users - you'll find a way to monetize them eventually (via ads, subscriptions, merchandise, etc), and the decision on whether to monetize now or later is a tactical one. Paradoxically, early monetization is often bad for valuation because it slows down user-growth, so if a startup can afford to postpone monetization and focus on just getting more users - it is sometimes (though not always) rewarded in the long run. This is why companies like Google, Facebook and Instagram postponed monetization for as long as they did. We are making the same choice for now.So, let's run through a few public examples: Whatsapp was acquired in 2014 for $20B, when it had about 400 MMAU, i.e. $50/MAU. But that was in 2014 and valuations are higher today. Facebook is valued at $463B with 2.96 BMAU, i.e. $156/MAU. Twitter was acquired for $44B with 256 MMAU, i.e. $172/MAU (that was the peak of the market; today their valuation would be lower). The numbers vary in each case because of differences in growth-rate and in the quality of the audience (e.g. a Linkedin user is obviously worth more than a Snapchat user because he/she has more disposable income, on average). But as a rule, it seems that a non-paying active user is worth somewhere between $100 and $200 right now. We are pricing this round at $80/MAU based on today's user count (and $60/MAU for early birds) to make sure that our early investors have a lot of upside and a vested interest in our success.

199

Vacha Modi

Hello . I need some more information about if I start and invest $250? How and when do I get ROI? I need to speak with someone or get information via questions answers

154

Alex Fink

CEO

Hi Vacha, please take a look at this FAQ: help.wefunder.com/#/…arted-for-investorsSpecifically, I think the section titled "Earning a Return" would help clarify things.If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask!

142

Adan Farrah

The Investment Perks are they for a year or are these perks lifetime?

138

Alex Fink

CEO

Lifetime. As soon as we do the first rolling close these channels will be set up and will exist in perpetuity.

187

Raymond Marine

Will Your News Feed Have an Option For Comments? Most Readers Want To Be Able To Comment, But People Can Just Skip The Comment Section If They Do Not Want To Read It.

113

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Raymond, that's a very perceptive question. We actually had the ability to comment before, but disabled it temporarily. So the code exists, but at the moment the comment widget is hidden from users' view.Here's why - There's a difference between dealing with user-generated content and dealing with content generated by professionals (be they journalists, podcasters, wikipedia editors, research scientists, etc). Professionally-generated content comes from publishers whose identity is known, so it is pretty much guaranteed not to have illegal things like incitement to violence or child pornography in it - but comments generated by anonymous users can include all sorts of things.When the number of users was small, this wasn't a big concern. Any comment that included illegal content could just be flagged and removed very quickly. But now that the user-base is getting larger (and growing fast), we need to build an infrastructure for handling this properly.Note that it's not viewpoint censorship we're talking about here. Our primary concern is to have a mechanism in place that allows us to avoid having illegal things on our platform, since that would a serious legal liability.So we launched an effort to add some new models that detect illegal content, and to re-train our AI models to handle user comments as well, but while that effort is ongoing - we figured it's safer to just disable commenting for a while and avoid the legal liability. We will relaunch comments when the models are ready (hopefully next month).

184

Tom Wright

Thank you, Alex for meeting with me today to answer my questions about Otherweb!! That was wonderful. ..... This is the "Ask A Question" section, and I only have one more question: How much can I invest in this FANTASTIC COMPANY? Lol!

132

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Tom, thank you for the great conversation. It was a pleasure!

175

Travis Shore

Hi Alex and ty for taking questions. I fully understand where this is going and love the fact its weeding out clickbait and other "garbage" during a search. However, on the other side of this I see problems. For example, Fake news.. Who or what will be determining what is real and what is not? Personally, I don't see that it is even possible. So many times, over the last 6 years I have watched media claim fake news and later found to be true. I have seen, Snopes, CNN, MSNBC etc., claiming something was fake when I know from firsthand knowledge it was true. Is this web search going to turn into a leftist propaganda machine?? if not how do they plan to keep that from happening? ty

153

Alex Fink

CEO

Hi Travis, I share your concern - every time I hear of fact-checking, I can't help but ask - "who watches the watchers"?Even if fact-checkers had no agenda (which is unfortunately not the case), they'd still not be able to check facts in the general sense. Let's say you claim there's a lion in your kitchen right now - the only way to fact-check your claim would be to break into your house and take a look. But I can't do that, right?What I can do, however, is require a certain "form" for your claim - do you have photos? Do you have multiple eyewitness accounts or external references? Are you describing the claim in sufficient detail, and is your language primarily informative (or, alternatively, is it emotionally-loaded and trying to convince me of something)? That's a natural process we all apply to claims we hear from people. It's also what editors are taught to do in selecting what to publish, but unfortunately these standards have been slipping in most publications today. So we're applying the same process to articles online - except our editors are AI models.When we (i.e. the Otherweb) describe something as junk, we're not saying the substance of the claim is false - we're saying the claim was laid out in bad form, or is missing external references, or uses emotionally-charged language that aims to persuade rather than inform, etc.P.S.We are a public benefit corporation specifically because we want our mission to be legally-binding. This reduces the risk of the company ever losing its way and turning into leftist/rightist propaganda - because the mission is to be apolitical and informative, and not leftist or rightist.We are also making our models source-available - so people can see for themselves that there is no bias on the left-right axis. Our goal is not to move the discussion left or right. It's to move it upward.

174

Ramesh VELAN

How much is the each stock price? If I invest $1000, how many shares will be allocated?

132

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Ramesh, if you get in before the early-bird discount ends, then the cap is still $6m. There are 10m shares outstanding. So the simplified way of looking at this is that each share's price is capped at $0.60 and you're guaranteed to get at least 1667 shares for your $1000.However, that's simplified, and a SAFE with a cap is not exactly the same as a priced-round valuation - it's better for investors, and offers you more protections compared to a regular stock sale. To read more, you can check:pandadoc.com/blog/what-is-a-safe-noteycombinator.com/documents

100

Travis Shore

Ty for your reply, that helps. How ever you mentioned AI. AI's have much controversy that comes with them now especially those designed my MS which as we all know are left leaning. AIs are only as smart as who is creating code for them to know an answer. ""Our goal is not to move the discussion left or right. It's to move it upward."" TWO thumbs up, MUCH needed these days. BTW "who watches the watchers"? According to an article: REUTERS Facebook finally admitted the truth: The “fact checks” that social media use to police what Americans read and watch are just “opinion. WISH you all the best, AMerica needs this badly :-)

120

Alex Fink

CEO

Indeed, that's why making things source-available is probably a necessity for anyone who wants to earn the public's trust going forward. It doesn't solve all biases (RLHF can still introduce heavy bias if done carelessly, as it did in ChatGPT), but it solves a lot of it.

183

Robert Love

Your android app only shows 100+ downloads and IPhone app only has 5 reviews as of April 5th. I don't understand how you claim 280,000 + Monthly Active Users given that number of downloads/reviews. Please explain.

192

Alex Fink

CEO

Hey Robert, MAU are summed up across all platforms (web + mobile + newsletter). Right now web still dominates in our product mix, because our biggest source of traffic so far has been social media (e.g. when Otherweb users share an article on twitter or reddit, their friends follow the link and come to our website). We're working on converting our web users into mobile users - but it's a work in progress. For now we're still very much web-heavy.

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