A $2 Billion News Startup Had Its Roots in the Berlin Wall
- Suzuki’s SmartNews raised funding at $2 billion valuation
- Entrepreneur says the aim of the app is to break down walls
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It all started, Ken Suzuki says, back in 1989 when he visited the Berlin Wall.
Suzuki, who was 14 and on a school trip at the time, was allowed to cross into East Germany because he had a Japanese passport. Along the way, he saw a memorial for a family who’d been shot trying to get to the west. If they’d waited a few months, he thought, they wouldn’t be dead. That November, the wall came down.