Nordics have a good rep – news outlets generally enjoy higher-than-average trust and audiences are more likely to pay for news. But that doesn’t mean that launching a news outlet here is a guaranteed success.

Co-founder and international director at Zetland, the Danish membership-driven news site, Jakob Moll has overseen the company's expansion from Denmark to Finland, and now Norway, with Germany next on the horizon. His secret weapon isn't sophisticated market research or focus groups but genuine curiosity about what people actually want from their news.

To successfully carry out their Norwegian expansion, Zetland built a community from the bottom up, engaging nearly 1,000 people before even considering crowdfunding. They call it the “listening phase.”

“I just went through their answers,” said Moll. “There are so many people who have great ideas about how they want to be informed and the information needs of society.”

The listening phase confirmed what Moll suspected:........

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