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- Caroline Mercer via Fast Company
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- Business·4 min to read
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How a sense of urgency nearly destroyed a $100 million media company
ReHow a sense of urgency nearly destroyed a $100 million media company
The co-CEO of KP Media describes how the company's rush to dominate Ukrainian-language media in 2007 led to three failed product launches and nearly bankrupted the business.
The co-CEO of a media company that once reached a $100 million valuation says his own sense of urgency nearly destroyed the business. In a first-person account, the executive describes how the company's aggressive push into Ukrainian-language media in 2007 led to a series of costly failures that almost sank the entire operation.
The story centers on KP Media, a Kyiv-based company founded in 1995 by Jed Sunden, a 25-year-old Brooklyn native who launched the Kyiv Post with $8,000 on his credit card. By the time the author joined in 2004, the company had grown to roughly 200 employees and had become a significant player in the Ukrainian media market, particularly with its Russian-language newsweekly Korrespondent.
The company's fortunes rose dramatically following the Orange Revolution, which brought record foreign investment to Ukraine and increased demand for independent journalism. In 2007, KP Media went public at a valuation of roughly $50 million, and its stock price quickly doubled, making it a $100 million company.
That success led to what the author describes as a "revolutionary idea": moving aggressively into Ukrainian-language media. Ukraine had been bilingual for decades, with Russian dominating print and online media even after Ukrainian became the official language in 1991. The company's research suggested significant pent-up demand for Ukrainian-language content, particularly in the western, more European-oriented cities that were beginning to prosper.
Concerned that competitors would seize the opportunity first, the company decided to move forward rapidly. The plan called for three major product launches within a year: a monthly women's magazine, a weekly women's magazine, and a Ukrainian-language newsweekly to complement Korrespondent. The company also had recently launched a daily newspaper, meaning resources would be stretched to the limit.
The first launch, the monthly women's magazine, saw disappointing copy sales and ad sales. Skeptics questioned whether the market for Ukrainian-language print media was ready. Despite the weak start, the company pressed on with the other two launches, still worried that someone else would copy the plan.
By summer 2008, all three product launches had failed. The author notes that the company had done its homework, had a strong track record, and had the marketing muscle to sustain promotional activity, but none of that was enough to overcome the fundamental miscalculation.
The author reflects that the urgency to act quickly, driven by the fear of missing out, led to boneheaded decisions. "Whenever I convinced myself that an opportunity was so great I had to 'strike while the iron is hot,' boneheaded decisions inevitably followed, usually ending in some crushing failure," he writes.
The company survived, but the experience serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of urgency in business. The author argues that while creating a sense of urgency is often praised as a leadership virtue, it can lead to action without adequate deliberation, and the things you make happen are often the wrong ones.
