Interview with Yoni Tzafrir – Founder, Newsly App [2023]

Newsly is an audio content and news aggregator mobile application. It picks up the top trending new articles about popular topics or topics you define and reads them to you in a natural human voice.

This is a personal newscaster, always available in your pocket, enabling you to listen to anything that comes up on the web, personalized to your interests. It turns any trending web article into a podcast for you. For the first time in the history of the internet, the entire web is now listenable, all in one place.

For years I have been working as an engineer, and as a manager in tech companies. I have seen other people around me either play around with the idea of being entrepreneurs or just idolizing it. But when I tried to ask them ‘Why’? I didn’t get a satisfactory answer. Is it the money? The fame? What exactly is it? And I actually disliked this kind of entrepreneurship.

For me it didn’t make sense, wanting to have a startup, before you have an idea for something. And it doesn’t have to be a world-changing idea, but just something that you think people will want to use and may improve their lives. First started noticing the quality of the text to speech and understood how far the technology has come in recent years.

Then I thought, I have this half an hour commute, and I want to improve my English. Why won’t it read to me just the top news web articles about the topics I am interested in. So I searched and searched, but couldn’t find an app like this.

So I started pitching the idea to different people, and got the best response that you can get when pitching an idea for a product: “Doesn’t that solution already exist?” When you get this response, you know you are onto something. And by the way, the answer is no. That solution didn’t exist.

So, as I previously said, Newsly is like your personal newscaster, always available in your pocket. You can either get the most trending topics on everyone’s mind at any given moment, or on specific subjects like sports, entertainment, and technology, but the amazing thing is that you can follow any topic that interests you.

Just search it on the Explore tab, and start following it. It can be ‘Bitcoin’, ‘Housing market in California, ‘Clean Energy Companies in Canada’ ‘NFL’, ‘NFT’, ‘NBA’, ‘Drake’ or ‘The Kardashians’ and every time there is a new article about those subjects, it can be read to you.

On top of it, we have a podcast from any country, in any language. So you can create your own playlist which combines both topical top trending content personalized to your interests, and your favorite interesting podcasts.

So when I initially played around with the idea of Newsly, a friend who is dyslexic told me that was just the solution she was looking for. Newsly gives a great solution to people with dyslexia, visual impairments, and other learning disabilities.

It also helps people who want to improve their language, like me. It was a way to improve my English.

Most definitely. We have seen users use the application in ways we haven’t even dreamed of. Following on very specific topics, work-related, study-related, and much more. There is one entrepreneur that follows “Alternative Protein” since his business builds protein-based fish.

One person follows a very specific cryptocurrency that she is invested in and one person searches for “Clean Code” to get the latest updates on specific software coding approaches. Every person has his own interests. It can be educational, informative, or just fill your curiosity with the latest updates regarding your favorite Netflix show.

So my schedule is closed every day between 6 pm to 9 pm dedicating myself to my Family. Weekends are all dedicated to the family as well, apart from rare exceptions.

Yes. This is going to be amazing, and I can’t tell you all the details, but I think that the next version is going to be another leap. If the previous version was listening to any topic on-demand, now try to think of a streaming service, inside the app, free for all users, in any language.

For me, it is my first time as an entrepreneur. I have been in the past a hardware engineer, software engineer, system architect, and R&D manager, but I am truly Jack of all trades and master of none. But when I started Newsly I actually discovered this is an advantage. This is what a business owner needs.

In Newsly we all work remotely at the moment because of COVID. There are obvious advantages for it, but I think in the long run that can cause a lot of mental pressure, and I would love it if we can go to at least a hybrid working mode soon.

Just start creating the product you want to build. Forget about anything else. While doing so you would either get your enthusiasm boosted up since you would see your vision come to life, and then you will get more motivated.

If this isn’t for you, you would discover it pretty quick, probably quicker than you think, and the risk won’t be big. It doesn’t mean that you won’t have bad days, or even weeks, in which it seems you are on the verge of despair, but it just means that the overall dream, would push you forward, despite the obstacles.

First of all, I want to make Newsly the best audio app out there: an audio companion that gives you the personal content you want to hear, without making it a social network, in which your privacy is usually compromised. But more than that I want to make it the home app for the common user on every platform.

That is why it was important for us to develop it both for Android and IOS, and add features like weather reports and reading mode, so you can always go to it, connect to the world, or get your relevant topical content.