Rebuilding The Defiant After Crypto Volatility Derails Media Company’s Ambitions
By: Christiana Sciaudone
In late 2020, The Defiant raised over $1 million to help recreate the ambitious goal of recreating the Bloomberg data and news model for crypto. It hired developers to build a platform that would be the end-all, be-all for the market.
But last year, the news site laid off eight of its 20 staff members, mainly developers, because too many other ventures were doing similar things and capital dried up. Founder Camila Russo is now refocused on news alone and getting to profitability.
“We’ve been in this lean bootstrapped model since then and it’s great,” Russo told A Media Operator. “We are breaking even-to-profitable each month.” She declined to provide any specifics regarding revenue.
The competition in crypto media is extensive, and most outlets have gone through the same ups and downs as the industry they cover. The dust may be settling, for now, and Russo contends that The Defiant is unique in its decentralized finance coverage and can easily compete in the market. That said, she does see space for consolidation among her peer publications.
“We’ve come to a great model where we differentiate from all other crypto outlets in that we are very focused on DeFi and web3 and the on-chain activity side of things, not so much regulation, not so much [centralized finance], not so much like traditional finance and Wall Street,” she said.
Still, she’s open to selling The Defiant but dedicated to continuing in crypto.
The Potential in Crypto
Russo started her career as an intern at Bloomberg in New York in 2010, and it was during her four years in Buenos Aires that she first wrote about bitcoin and saw the potential for crypto.
“I immediately understood the need for an independent currency, seeing what I was seeing living in Argentina with the government having extremely irresponsible fiscal policy, the central bank mismanaging currency, creating pesos inflation, and currency controls, and how badly it was impacting Argentines.”
She was covering markets and bitcoin, and decided to write a book about the history of ethereum, another blockchain. Russo, a native of Chile, took a brief leave and when it was time to return to the newsroom, she found she wasn’t interested in covering markets in the same way. She pitched the creation of a crypto team, which she’d lead, but Bloomberg wasn’t interested. They have since added a crypto team. Bloomberg didn’t respond to a request for comment.
And so, Russo left in January 2019 intending to freelance. She finished her book and started a Substack newsletter as a side gig.
“I thought, you know, I’ll try that out and maybe it would become supplemental income to a freelancing career,” Russo said. Her first newsletter went out in June 2019 to 10 people and she saw very quick organic growth, thanks in part to tweeting the daily newsletter. By October, she put up a paywall and suddenly people were paying to read her work.
“It was just mind blowing,” Russo said. Companies started reaching out to her asking to sponsor the newsletter. She didn’t really know how to handle the demand, but went ahead anyway. Now, sponsorships represent 90% of revenue, with the paid newsletter representing the 10% balance.
She created a podcast (with a $10 headset from her one-bedroom apartment in New York) and a YouTube channel. In that first year, she made the same she had earned at Bloomberg, and from there started bringing on contributors and created a website.
The YouTube channel has over 120,000 subscribers today to the newsletter’s 85,000 and between 100,000 to 200,000 unique monthly visitors to the website, Russo said.
Big Plans
Amid the developments, Russo had a vision to create a Bloomberg terminal for DeFi, and she raised $1.2 million in late 2020 and hired a team of developers. When that money ran out in 2023, she had to go for a seed round, but this was a down year in crypto and VCs weren’t nearly as excited about funding her.
“The data landscape had become super competitive, they didn’t trust me that I could compete with Messari and Nansen, Dune Analytics and all these well-funded data platforms, which was unfortunate,” Russo said. “I still think that our idea for a data platform and doing it in conjunction with The Defiant is a great idea, but unfortunately I couldn’t convince VCs.”
The Defiant froze the data platform and continued to go deep on core niche coverage. Russo said sponsors pay a significant CPM premium over the industry average to get to that dedicated audience. It’s also valuable because it means there is a constant readership that keeps them in business when crypto falls out of favor, as it is wont to do.
“That model is working out pretty well for us, for now,” she said.
Russo admits they haven’t been able to put as much effort on the paid newsletter as they should, and that will be a focus for the near future.
“Definitely our paid newsletter needs work, we’re in the middle of shaping that plan to like revamp the whole thing,” she said. “Hopefully subscription revenue should make up a larger share of total revenue.”
Events are also a possible new line of revenue, though like data players, there is a lot of competition here as well. For now, Russo is happy to have sustainable growth after the attempt with creating a data platform, although she still believes there’s potential there.
“I don’t want my business to be dependent on what phase of crypto and media is, so I would rather grow more slowly, but doing so in a sustainable way,” she said. “It’s a struggle, we’re still kind of rowing, rowing, but it’s good.”
That said, she’s ready to sell if there’s a willing buyer, notably a data company or traditional media looking to add crypto content.
“I’m getting an itch to pursue other things, I definitely want to write a second book, so it’s either maybe I hire someone to replace me day-to-day on The Defiant to do it or maybe I sell.”
