early days as being in an uphill battle with competitors. Then Apple named it as a top new app, and more accolades followed—Fast Company named the Flud app as Best UI Design of 2010. Flud received an infusion of $1 million from investors in April (90 percent came from DVP and Ludlow in Detroit, Ghoshal says) and Flud’s developers got to work on the new platform.
“We looked at the aggregation space to see where we could innovate, and we focused on using networks to tell a story about ourselves,” Ghoshal adds. “Flud is the first app in the world to give users a news personality.”
Though Flud is based in San Diego, it also has an office in the Madison Building in downtown Detroit, which will house its business development operation. Ghoshal says DVP’s Josh Linkner plays an important role in the company, helping the 10-person Flud crew not only on the business side, but on the creative side as well.
Ghoshal hopes that, in the future, an increasing number of publications will see the potential for new readership that aggregation apps such as Flud can bring.
“We want to show publications that it’s OK to give aggregators your content,” he says. “We use data to drive traffic back to a publication’s website, and we let publications keep all the money. Aggregators won’t survive without good content, so we have a deep respect for content providers.”
