Yahoo Autos Volv bills itself as 'TikTok for news.' The Snap-backed app makes news stories you can read in 9 seconds.
Volv creates short-read news stories that users can swipe through.
The app combines financial and political news with popular culture, and is aimed at millennials.
The founders got advice from Mark Cuban and pre-seed funding through Snap's accelerator Yellow.
Shannon Almeida and Priyanka Vazirani didn't have any tech experience before they decided to create their own news app.
After working at a social startup on a campaign helping migrants at the border, they noticed how biased the mainstream media was. So the two decided to create an alternative.
Volv, which was founded in March 2020, is an antidote to traditional news apps, Almeida told Insider.
The app aims to create unbiased news in real-time and bills itself as "TikTok for news."
It creates news stories, averaging at around 70 words, which users can read in less than nine seconds. The stories are listed in-app in a swipe format that's easy on the eye. This is crucial to make the app attractive to its millennial target market, Vazirani said.
People in their teens and 20s often check their phones before they even get out of bed, logging into various apps to view the latest newsfeed updates. On Volv, users can scroll through and see all the major news stories at a glance.
The app combines breaking news with pop culture stories, such as explaining memes that are going viral. A prime example would be Bernie Sanders' mittens at Joe Biden's presidential inauguration.
In this way, the app can show people the top political and financial stories and covert non-news readers, while also offsetting heavy stories with lighter reads.
This approach is paying off. Volv publishes around 50 stories a day and its articles have been read nearly 8 million times so far. Its founders said it has a high retention rate, too.
