Euromaidan Press is an independent online media outlet launched by Ukrainian volunteers in 2014. What started as a grassroots initiative now focuses on reporting Ukrainian news to a global, English-speaking audience. Using solid journalism, the outlet clearly explains complex events in a complicated geopolitical region. This small independent outlet emerged as a David in the media landscape, bravely standing against the Goliath of Russian disinformation.
Without the massive resources of its powerful opponent, Euromaidan Press relies on its journalistic integrity, a clear voice and the power of its community to share the Ukrainian perspective with the world.
Euromaidan joined the Validation Booster programme to help it transition into a sustainable media business. The goal was to diversify revenue and secure new income streams while still effectively reaching its target audience. They hoped to launch a commercial department and create a sustainable revenue stream from business partnerships. Their biggest hurdles were financial constraints and a lack of specialised talent. They knew they had to scale, but they were stuck in an organisational bottleneck: big ideas without enough resources for their execution.
Initially, they thought they knew what they were doing.
They planned to simply create content for businesses that would pay for it, believing the biggest challenge would be finding those businesses. The Editor-in-Chief, Alya Shandra, explained that making money or getting anything done requires a great idea. She realised their original idea wouldn’t work as planned during the early stages of interviews when she wasn’t getting the answers she wanted. This was disappointing, but also relieving.
As she put it, “Our hypothesis was purely theoretical, and it did not survive the first encounter with reality – but the bitter truth is better than sweet lies, as we say in Ukraine”. This realisation allowed them to develop a larger, better and ultimately more useful concept.
After they got closer to finding their real idea, it mobilised supporters and began developing in directions they never envisioned, because they were focusing on the good they could create, not the money they could make. At the same time, they started seeing more realistic monetisation models. They struggled with feedback they didn’t want to hear but knew was true.
“A Danish investor told me they had no reason to read us, and a Danish commercial chamber told me that the companies don’t want any promo because they fear Russian missile strikes”, Alya Shadra shared.
This undermined their original core idea that they could serve as a bridge between investors and businesses, facilitating Ukraine’s economic development.
The breakthrough happened when they stopped thinking about how to sell content and started focusing on creating a truly great idea that would be valuable to businesses. Alya Shandra said the breakthrough came when she was speaking to Technology United for Ukraine.
“Instead of following my questions closely and getting frustrated that they would not say “yeah, the companies would absolutely pay you to make content about them,” I listened to them and learned about the situation on the “market” and what the real media needs of the Ukrainian defence sector are. It was nothing like our hypothesis, so I just started exploring how we might be useful for them, and then just asked directly how we, as an independent media, could get money from this to pay our bills. From this time on, it dawned on me that we should be searching first of all how to solve the larger problem, not how we could make money, because making money is impossible if you are not pursuing a goal larger than yourself.”
They pivoted the initial idea and decided to create a defence blog – a unique and valuable platform for both their audience and the defence sector that would build trust and establish them as a reliable expert voice. Alya’s advice to other media outlets joining the program is, “Don’t be afraid to conclude that your original idea won’t work. Be creative, be flexible, and be out there in the world”.
“At first, my mind was blank when I was conducting these interviews; then, eventually, I got better at finding the right things to ask”, she said. “Now I can ask validating questions if you wake me up in the middle of the night”. She adds that “a validated idea is one that has survived an encounter with reality and found the ways it would be useful to people to the extent that somebody would pay for it”.
The pivot in the original strategy – focusing on a dedicated defence blog – created a new model that will hopefully allow Euromaidan Press to secure a stable revenue stream. By providing high-quality information and analysis on a topic of critical importance, they can attract both a dedicated audience and business partners. In this way, our little “David” found a sustainable stone to throw, one that supports their core mission of providing excellent journalism for the long term.
Author: Gena Traykova
Validation Booster programme is implemented by Thomson Media as a part of Media Innovation Europe led by the Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI), the consortium brings together Thomson Media (TM), The Fix Foundation (TFF), and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN). The programme is co-funded by the European Union.
