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NewsCatcher

News API for risk and data teams

We help data & risk enterprise teams get instant access to news and events from over 40,000 news sources. Our main product is a News API to search through an indexed database of online-published news articles in near real-time. “Humans reading the news” is not a scalable way for enterprises to analyse news, and it’s expensive. We help enterprises shift the news consumption from just reading to integrating actionable signals into their internal workflow.

Jobs at NewsCatcher

Remote
$100K - $150K
3+ years
NewsCatcher
Founded:2021
Team Size:18
Location:Kyiv, Ukraine
Group Partner:Michael Seibel

Active Founders

Artem Bugara, Founder

Artem Bugara is the co-founder, CEO of NewsCatcher. Artem works with data and risk teams to help them integrate actionable signals from online news. Previously he ran a team of data engineers for one of the largest underwriting companies within the aviation, energy, and space insurance sectors. He earned a degree in Econometrics from Toulouse School of Economics.
Artem Bugara
Artem Bugara
NewsCatcher

Maksym Sugonyaka, Founder

Maksym Sugonyaka is the co-founder and CTO of NewsCatcher. After one year of a stable job, Maksym understood that the only place where he could realize his potential was entrepreneurship. Now in NewsCatcher, Maksym is the one to take key strategic and technical decisions in order to make the best News API on the market. He has a Master's Degree in Data Science and Finance from Paris Sorbonne. But then, he became a self-taught Data Engineer.
Maksym Sugonyaka
Maksym Sugonyaka
NewsCatcher

Company Launches

tl;dr: We make it easy for data, market research, and risk teams to integrate machine-readable news feed into their internal analytics system.

Hey Fam, we're Artem and Maksym and we're building NewsCatcher. We're on a mission to empower data-driven organizations with the highest quality and easiest-to-use News API.

❌ The Problem

It’s easy to consume news as a human: you open Google News and read.

Now, imagine:

  • you work for a bank, and you have to perform negative news searches for all new & existing accounts for anti-money laundering & financial crime checks
  • you work for a PR firm that has to monitor news mentions on your clients and their competitors
  • you’re an analyst in an investment firm, and you need to calculate news sentiment for each company on the market over the past N years
  • you want to show relevant news to the users on your app to make them spend more time on it

“Humans reading the news” is not a scalable way to resolve a problem anymore, and it’s expensive.

✨ Our Solution

Search and integrate news with code. Find news articles by any topic, country, language, website, or keyword with REST JSON News API.
Go ahead, and make some API calls on our demo page.

We’ve built a generic news crawler that automatically finds new articles, normalizes them, and indexes them. So, you can now automate the news consumption and analysis via an API.

You can read more over this link from our knowledge base.

Here is how an article would look in our search:


Top 3 use cases from our clients:

  • risk intelligence: find insights in the news before they get visible in financial reports days or months later
  • integrate news into your app
  • media monitoring on millions of companies all around the world



🙏 Asks

  1. Try our News API: claim your API key, or/and book a technical session with us
  2. Are you experienced with extracting data from HTML, or you’re an NLP expert? We’d love to chat!

Hear from the founders

How did your company get started? (i.e., How did the founders meet? How did you come up with the idea? How did you decide to be a founder?)

Me (Artem) and Maksym, childhood pals since school days and university companions, teamed up to launch NewsCatcher in February 2020. Both Data Engineers with a knack for problem-solving, we were fed up with the status quo but passionate about data, laying the groundwork for our startup. Embracing the ethos of rapid iteration, we wasted no time, kicking off our journey by creating a Telegram chat dubbed "First million".Following Y Combinator's mantra of swift action, we rolled out our beta in April 2020, fuelled by AWS credits from YC Startup School. Our early strides were apparent when a Python package we crafted gained traction on Reddit, attracting a flurry of sign-ups. By June 2020, we debuted our V1 product on RapidAPI, landing our first paying customer—a serendipitous encounter with a US student bound for YC W24 batch. Our trajectory continued with applications to accelerators like TinySeed and YC, ultimately opting for TinySeed's rapid application process, albeit declining YC's offer later on. With strategic hires and laser-focused growth, we had a revenue surge from $3,000 to $25,000 MRR within a year. We circled back to YC, securing entry in May 2022 with $300,000 ARR. Despite hurdles, like my temporary detour to aid the Armed Forces of Ukraine, we thrived, clinching enterprise contracts and elevating ARR to $450,000 by Demo Day. Post-YC, while grappling with revenue challenges hindering our progress, we gleaned valuable insights into customer alignment, reaffirming our dedication to efficient growth and customer-centricity.

How did you decide to apply to Y Combinator? What was your experience applying, going through the batch, and fundraising at demo day?

Deciding to apply to Y Combinator was a big step for us. We wanted to take NewsCatcher to the next level, and YC seemed like the perfect fit with its reputation for helping startups succeed. In early 2021, we applied to TinySeed, Alchemist Accelerator, and YC for the third time. TinySeed offered us a spot, which we accepted, even though we also got an interview invitation from YC. We had a monthly revenue of $3,000 at that time. Over the next year, we hired Aditya, Aakash, and Ibrahim and grew our monthly revenue to $25,000. This encouraged us to apply to YC again. In May 2022, despite the challenges of the Ukraine conflict and Artem's temporary absence to help the Armed Forces, we decided to reapply to YC. Our dream came true when Michael Seibel interviewed us, and we got in. Joining YC with around $300,000 in yearly revenue, we embraced their focus on fast growth and solving real problems. Throughout the program, we learned a lot from mentors and other founders. By Demo Day, our yearly revenue had grown to $450,000. After YC, Artem spent two days fundraising and found a great investor in Uncommon Capital, led by Jamie Quint. We also got support from other YC alums.

How have you kept in touch with the YC community and continued to use YC resources & programs since the batch ended?

Staying connected with the YC community has been super important for us as we figure out life after our time in the batch with NewsCatcher. We've been using all the cool stuff YC offers to help us grow and get better. Their knowledge base has been a goldmine of tips and tricks that have really helped us make NewsCatcher bigger and better.We've also been talking to other folks in the YC community for advice on running our business and bouncing around ideas. It's been awesome to have a bunch of other founders and experienced mentors cheering us on and giving us advice as we tackle the challenges of starting up.Plus, we've been taking advantage of discounts YC offers for different services, which has been a huge help in making our operations smoother and saving us some money. The YC community has been super generous in sharing their resources and expertise, and we're really grateful for all the support and camaraderie. It's been a big part of our journey as founders, and we couldn't have done it without them!

What's the history of your company from getting started until the present day? What were the big inflection points?

February 2020: me and Maksym, both Data Engineers, co-found NewsCatcher driven by a shared passion for data and dissatisfaction with existing solutions. April 2020: Launch of NewsCatcher's beta, followed by the release of V1 product on RapidAPI in June, attracting first paying customers. January-February 2021: Joining TinySeed accelerates growth, leading to rapid revenue increase and team expansion. May 2022: Reapplication and acceptance into Y Combinator highlight commitment to excellence and innovation. 2023: NewsCatcher experiences significant growth, achieving an ARR of $1.13 million. 2024: Setting ambitious goals, aiming to grow ARR to $3.7 million. Focus on building scalable customer success processes to maximize retention and upsells. Additionally, hiring first Account Executives to drive sales growth and expand market reach.

What is the core problem you are solving? Why is this a big problem? What made you decide to work on it?

NewsCatcher is all about tackling the big challenge of making real-time news data easy to access from a wide range of sources. Many businesses and researchers struggle to get up-to-date info for things like market analysis, trend tracking, and content creation. It's a pain to manually gather news from lots of places—it takes forever and isn't very efficient. We decided to tackle this problem because, as Data Engineers ourselves, we know the frustration of trying to get good news data for projects. We realized that making this info more accessible could have a huge impact, so we decided to use our skills to do something about it.With NewsCatcher, our goal is to make real-time news data available to everyone. We've gathered news from over 70,000 sources and made it easy and affordable for anyone who needs it. We believe that by solving this problem, we can help spark innovation and improve decision-making.We're all about prioritizing data quality, adaptability, great customer service, and keeping things simple. That way, our customers can always count on getting the news they need to succeed.

What is your long-term vision? If you truly succeed, what will be different about the world?

Our long-term vision for NewsCatcher is to change the game when it comes to how businesses get and use news data, making the business world more informed and connected. If we truly succeed:* Businesses of all sizes will have equal access to real-time news data.* Decision-making across industries will be more informed and agile.* Innovation will be accelerated, driving economic growth.* Transparency and accountability in business operations will be enhanced.* Global connectivity and collaboration among businesses will be strengthened.Basically, we want to give businesses the tools they need to succeed in today's fast-paced and interconnected global market.