The Kyiv Independent is a media startup from Ukraine. With millions of monthly readers, we keep a global audience updated on Russia’s war in Ukraine whilst attempting to innovate at every turn.

Our startup story has the usual chapters of tech stack pivots, reader revenue challenges, and operational lessons. The underlying difference is that we are building our organisation during the biggest conventional war in Europe since WWII.

The Kyiv Independent began in November 2021 when our founding team rebelled against The Kyiv Post, the biggest English-language paper in Ukraine at the time — which fired the entire newsroom in an attempt to control editorial direction. In less than a month, the Kyiv Independent was live. The team set up our Web site, launched a newsletter and podcast, and secured partnerships to light the road ahead.

Here are three important things we’ve learned.

Lesson 1: Try new things with a team that is passionate, curious, and led by values

Four months later, the unthinkable came to pass. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv Independent was there to cover it. Our live war coverage quickly became one of the main sources of objective trusted news of the unfolding invasion.

Our traffic grew from 13,000 readers in January to around 3 million readers in March, and our core social channel (Twitter) saw an increase of 1 million users in just 10 days. Perhaps most crucially, people stood with us via financial contributions on GoFundMe and by joining our membership. Since our launch, more than 45,000 people have supported us financially and our membership has grown to around 10,000 paying members.

Together, we were able to fight back.

Lesson 2: Don’t worry about perfectionism — find motivation through continuous wins, transparency 

Today, reader revenue sustains us. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to retain and acquire staff, send journalists to the front lines, or seek justice on behalf of ordinary Ukrainian people.

During times of war, P&L management becomes more complex. Even things like security equipment and public speaking engagements abroad become substantial costs.

For this reason, bringing our reader-revenue platforms in-house was essential. This allowed us to build a closer relationship with our readers and decrease dependencies on vendor partners (which can often feel bittersweet — as we have been fortunate to team up with people who share our values).

Our key purchasing criteria whilst pivoting the stack has been integrations. We see it as imperative to invest in systems that can talk to each other easily in the future. Since making these changes, we have been able to better predict monthly recurring revenue.

We’ve started building a CRM in HubSpot for donations. It allows us to properly thank everyone who chooses to contribute to our cause and finds others who may be in a position to help. We think it is essential to let everyone who contributes a significant amount to our cause know exactly how their donation is used and thank them during a call with team leaders.

The goal is simple: Build a personal connection with people so they realise how they are moving us forward. To date, we don’t have one homogenous profile of donors or high net worth segment. Instead, we find people from all walks of life who understand our story could one day become their own if Russian atrocities aren’t held to account.

Lesson 3: Keep strategising and planning ahead, even when you feel it doesn’t make sense

Building a media startup requires a lot of planning and building strategies to make operations sustainable long-term. Planning and strategising get much harder when rockets are flying above your head and you are not sure how the next month or even week will look.

It felt surreal developing our 2023 strategy while rockets were regularly falling on Kyiv and we were losing power in the office every few hours. However, we have to keep pushing forward and find new horizons of mental strength. Together with its community, the Kyiv Independent will continue to stand for the free press. Our commitment to this is greater now than ever.

To support the Kyiv Independent, consider a one-time donation or joining their membership. Contributions to support the news media in Ukraine can also be made to the Ukrainian Media Fund.

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