Two former Northwestern Wildcat football players have created a new search engine that they hope will tackle the problem of misinformation on the web. And they just received backing from a big name in tech to help grow the platform.
Former offensive lineman Eric Olson and wide receiver Christian Salem launched the beta for their new search engine, Consensus, in September, and in two months the site has acquired 15,000 users organically after raising more than $1 million from investors, including Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
Both Division I athletes who came from families of academics, Olson and Salem bonded over their passion of consuming content created by scientists and experts. The problem they found, however, is in this era of fake news, that was becoming increasingly more difficult to find.
That's why they developed Consensus.
Based in Boston, the new search engine uses artificial intelligence to instantly extract, aggregate and distill findings directly from scientific research. The site also prides itself on being 100% ad-free.
Olson said he had been toying with the idea of something like Consensus for a while as he had grown frustrated with having to wait for manually curated content to be created, but it was advancements in artificial intelligence in text processing and his eventual partner Salem that really got the ball rolling.
"I wanted there to be a way that I could ask questions on demand and figure out what the experts think," he said. "Six years later, in the middle of the pandemic, Christian came back to me and said the world really needs this right now."
With upcoming launches of Consensus at Northwestern University and University of Virginia, Olson sees students as being among the primary users of the platform moving forward.
"We wanted to try to do a pilot program with a few universities where we were a part of the library's offering where students can get unlimited access," Olson said.
Heading into 2023, Olson wants to continue to grow the site's user base and to start to focus on monetization by offering a premium subscription service.
