Who I am
I've spent the last 20+ years building and running Ukrainian digital media — as an executive, hands-on operator, and industry advocate. Editorial Transform is a personal project I built to solve a problem I know intimately: how do you give a news publisher video production capacity without an in-house video team?
This is not a startup with a team. It is a working tool I designed and built myself — leveraging my background in cybernetics — for publishers I know personally, with full editorial control kept in the newsroom.
Career
Web developer, then Chief Technology Officer
Joined at the founding of OBOZ.UA in 2004 as a web developer. Grew the engineering side into a full technology organization and served as CTO through 2010 — before transitioning to the CEO role.
Chief Executive Officer
Leading one of the largest independent news outlets in Ukraine: 1M+ daily unique visitors, 6.5M+ monthly reach.
UA
Deputy Chair, Publishers Committee
Representing publisher interests at Ukraine's national interactive advertising industry body.
Chief Business Development Officer
Membrana operates across 20+ markets with a network of 1,000+ publishers.
Education
Master's degree, Cybernetics
Why I built Editorial Transform
Ukrainian media outlets face a hard reality: readers moved to mobile video, but newsrooms don't have the operational budget to produce dozens of Shorts per day manually. Publishers either ignore the format — losing audience to aggregators and generic creators — or hire outsourcers who don't understand editorial voice.
I've seen both sides. As CEO of OBOZ I watched the audience shift happen in real time and how expensive video production is at scale. As IAB Publishers Committee deputy chair, I hear the same story from every publisher in the market.
Editorial Transform closes that gap. A production tool that assembles video from the publisher's own articles — with full editorial control at every step — and delivers it to their own channels. Built by someone who understands editorial voice because I've defended it for 20 years.
What I believe
Publishers own their audience. Every video Editorial Transform produces goes to a channel or website the publisher owns. I do not aggregate, I do not repost, I do not operate any content channel myself.
AI is an assistant, not a replacement. Automation makes production tractable, but no video ships without a human editor initiating, reviewing, and approving it.
Transparency by default. Every AI-assisted video is disclosed as such — in the platform API, in the video description, and in this documentation.
How I built it
Editorial Transform is a full-stack video production and distribution platform: Python backend, PostgreSQL, S3-compatible object storage, FFmpeg pipeline for vertical and horizontal formats, and a Next.js editorial workstation for the newsroom. Infrastructure runs on EU-based Hetzner Cloud with data residency in Germany. All OAuth credentials are encrypted at rest.
I designed, built, and operate the product myself. Partner publishers get the tool configured to their editorial preferences.
Talk to me
If you're a publisher considering the tool, or a Google/YouTube reviewer with questions about how the app operates — get in touch directly:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/michael-krivda
Email: michael.krivda@gmail.com