FLUD, a part-time app maker, is growing into a full-fledged startup thanks to the seed round investment led by Detroit Venture Partners, the firm of Cleveland Cavaliers majority owner Dan Gilbert.
“The most important thing we need to do is hire,” says San Diego-based CEO Bobby Ghoshal. “The biggest issue we’ve had so far is how fast we can deploy the product.”
Ghoshal admits to being outpaced by the competition thus far. FLUD is approaching 1 million users, while its most direct competitor Pulse has surpassed 3 million users, Ghoshal notes.
But with money in the bank, FLUD is intent on firming up content partn erships with publishers, and releasing new applications to reach new audiences. An Android app and desktop version are said to be just a few weeks out.
“We’re not building a magazine app,” insists Ghoshal, who believes that the news reader landscape is in flux. “We’re an RSS reader right now, but we’re moving away from that … the playing field will change quickly.”
FLUD defines itself as a social news ecosystem, and sees a future in creating a “hyper-relevant” news reading experience. If you like certain types of news, Zite will show you more of those kinds of stories, but FLUD can do better than that, Ghoshal says.
How will FLUD deliver on the promise of hyper-relevance? Ghoshal is tight-lipped on the details. The answer may have something to do with the pending release of the FLUD API, which Ghoshal describes in ambiguous terms. “The API will give FLUD a disruptive revenue stream,” he s ays, in one of his more...
