Hoodline is a startup that has built a platform for analyzing data to find and write local news stories. Founded by Andrew Dudley, Eric Eldon, and Razmig Hovaghimian, Hoodline has raised $10 million in Series A funding, according to TechCrunch.
“We want to cover the news deserts that no one else is covering,” said Hovaghimian, who is also the CEO of Hoodline. “It’s filling a gap. It’s filling a need.”
With this round of funding, Hoodline plans to expand its platform nationwide. The Series A round of funding was led by Neoteny. Joichi Ito of Neoteny is joining Hoodline’s board in conjunction with the funding. Ito is also known for being a director of the MIT Media Lab. Sound Ventures, Dentsu Ventures, and Innovation Endeavors also participated in this round.
“Hoodline is bringing pioneering technology to the world of hyper-local news and content, while layering in editorial expertise and perspective. This uniquely allows them to craft dynamic stories across a wide range of verticals and outlets,” added Ito in a statement. “We’re incredibly excited to be partnering with Hoodline and Razmig as they continue to deliver consumers content that they want, but was previously not available to them.”
Hoodline used to be known as Ripple News. But then the company switched names to Hoodline, which was a hyperlocal news network that was co-founded by Eldon after it was acquired in 2006.
Hoodline is now working with media companies like ABC, CBS, MSN, Yahoo and Hearst for generating local news content. Hoodline participated in Disney’s startup accelerator program in 2017 and has received backing from the mass media company. And the Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten is also a Hoodline backer. Rakuten had acquired Hovaghimian’s previous company — which is a video streaming site called Viki.
Hovaghimian pointed out that so many good stories “go uncovered.” And he also pointed out that “40% of all searches have local intent.”
Hovaghimian told TechCrunch that Hoodline’s platform ingests about 250 terabytes of data from a diverse range of sources such as Yelp and Foursquare along with the feeds of local high school sports teams. And then that data is organized in order to surface interesting local content.
