Ben Werdmuller

Enough is enough. It’s time to support startups that respect our rights.

It’s hard to avoid the headlines. The personal information of tens of millions of people was scraped by a political consultant campaign, using the API of the world’s largest social network. There was no data breach; there were no hackers. The information taken from the API as designed,

Amazon Echo

Voice and ambient computing — for good

“Alexa, what’s new?” It’s part of my morning routine — and the routine for 39 million Americans and counting. As I drink my morning coffee, my smart speaker gives me short blasts from NPR News, BBC World News, and the Washington Post. It sounds like there’s breaking news,

Media

Build the media platform of tomorrow.

The way we learn about the world is transforming.The next wave of internet platforms is coming into view. Four years from now, over half of us will have an intelligent assistant in our home, and over half of all internet searches will be voice-activated. Blockchain technology has brought decentralization

Augmented Reality

New realities are new opportunities

At Matter., our mission is to help create a more informed, inclusive, and empathetic society by investing in the next generation of media institutions. That means investing in products that establish new kinds of media habits. We invest in teams that harness emerging technology to build these new media experiences.

Media

Join Matter Eight

Top highlightMedia is the bedrock of democracy.It’s the way we learn about the world. It connects us. It empowers us to make stronger decisions by arming us with information. The stories we hear through the media define how we relate to the people we share our society with

Media

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S2-E7: Jane Metcalfe — Co-Founder, WIRED

Jane Metcalfe is the founder of NEO.LIFE, an online publication that makes sense of the neobiological revolution. Previously, she co-founded WIRED. As well as WIRED Magazine, the group owned HotBot, the internet’s fastest search engine at the time, invented the banner ad, won numerous awards, and practically invented

The Drunken Walk

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S2-E6: Max Ventilla — CEO, AltSchool

Max Ventilla is the founder of AltSchool, a collaboration between engineers and educators to help build the future of education. He’s also an accomplished serial entrepreneur whose journey has taken him through Aardvark, Google and beyond. In this talk recorded at Matter in San Francisco, he discusses building a

Startup

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S2-E5: Lindsay Stewart & Brian McNeill — Stringr

Lindsay Stewart and Brian McNeill are the co-founders of Stringr, a startup that took part in Matter’s third class. Stringr allows media organizations to connect with professional and amateur videographers in order to source great footage. In this fireside chat with Roxann Stafford, our Director of Program in New

Startup

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S2-E3: Camille Hearst — CEO, Kit

Camille Hearst is Co-founder and CEO at Kit, a community for helping to find the best products for any new activity or experience you want to have in your life. Before founding Kit, she cut her teeth at Apple on iTunes, and then YouTube and Google. In this episode, she

Media

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S2-E2: Raju Narisetti — CEO, Gizmodo Media Group

Our guest in this episode is Raju Narisetti, CEO of Gizmodo Media Group. Raju’s journey is inspiring: from a dairy salesman to the head of a digital media group at the heart of Univision. He speaks with Roxann Stafford, Matter’s Director of Program in New York, in a

Startup

🎧 The Drunken Walk, S2-E1: Morgan DeBaun — CEO, Blavity

Our guest on this episode is a remarkable entrepreneur: Morgan DeBaun, CEO and co-founder of Blavity. Together with her co-founders, Morgan figured out how to build a media business that isn’t dependent on a conventional advertising model while also elevating the voices of populations too often shut out of

Media

Meet Matter Seven

Top highlightThis year is different.When Matter. launched in 2012, we were inspired by Clay Shirky’s words on the rapidly-changing newspaper market: “now is the time for lots and lots of experiments”. Matter was created as a place to do those experiments. This year, in an increasingly divided world

Entrepreneurship

It’s time for media to step up.

Top highlightMatter has always set out to create a more informed, connected, and empowered society. We hope to invest in diverse teams, and teams supporting under-represented communities. When more of our communities are involved in building media platforms, and served by our media institutions, we create a stronger democracy. Media

Media

Beyond targeted advertising

Advertising is in crisis. More than one third of online ad traffic is fraudulent, and the ads are so annoying that more than a quarter of users block them. Half of ads are never seen, and publishers take as little as 40% of the revenue from advertising placed on their

Surveillance

Securing free speech

This year, Matter. is hoping to invest in teams working on easy-to-use secure communications. It’s a new area for us, but online security and freedom from surveillance have never been more important, both for media and society. Freedom from surveillance means the freedom to speak your mind, freedom to

Media

Be part of the solution.

Top highlightThis moment matters.Matter has always set out to create a more informed, connected, and empowered society, and that mission has never been more important than today. Media is an integral part of democracy, but it faces unprecedented opposition. Even the core idea of truth itself is under attack.

Media

Meet Ben!

Top highlightI remember when I first walked through the garage door on Bryant St, to see Corey and Lara’s smiling faces, welcoming us in. I remember the friends I immediately made in my other Matter Three founders, that hold fast to this day. More than anything, I remember the

Web Development

How we built Known

We’ve got some exciting new things in store for 2016 that solve real problems for both higher and corporate education. We’ll discuss this in a future post on the Known blog. First, though, I wanted to take a step back and explain the technical decisions we made for

6 honest reflections on being an early-stage startup founder

This piece was originally published on my Known site at werd.io. I previously co-founded Elgg and served as CTO at latakoo, but Known is the first time I’ve been a CEO. Candid reflections have always been important to me to learn from; maybe someone will find these useful,

Some reflections on a summer at Matter. (written on the way to demo day)

(This piece was originally published on my Known site at werd.io. Known is a simple way to publish on your own site and syndicate to your social media profiles across the web — click here to learn more.) When the garage door rose at 421 Bryant and a beaming Corey