How a 16-person financial media team uses newsletters to spotlight Mongolia’s economy

Overview

Lemon Press is a Mongolia-based financial media company co-founded by Ankhbayar Tserenvandan and Zolbayar Enkhbaatar (based in New York). Their mission is twofold:

• Raise business acumen inside Mongolia with a modern, Mongolian-language business newsletter.
• Bridge Mongolia to the world with an English-language newsletter that helps foreign readers understand the country’s economy, culture, and investment landscape.

They run both publications with a 16-person team, and plan to expand into video and other formats.

The Newsletters

1) Lemon Press

• Language: Mongolian
• Audience: Modern business professionals in Mongolia
• Focus: Business, finance, market news
• Cadence: ~22–25 sends per month (as referenced in their email operations)

2) Inside Mongolia

• Language: English
• Audience: Anyone interested in Mongolia (especially foreigners and investors)
• Focus: Business + investment opportunities, market insights, plus broader topics like politics, nature, culture, food, and arts

The Backstory

Ankhbayar is passionate about showing the world what Mongolia really is—beyond the quick mental snapshot most people have (Genghis Khan and a chapter from high school history).

Through Inside Mongolia, readers learn Mongolia’s story as a resource-rich country with meaningful upside: extensive mineral deposits (coal, copper, gold, silver, fluorite) and a deep livestock tradition rooted in nomadic culture (including millions of horses, alongside sheep, goats, cattle, and camels).

Lemon Press originally launched ~18 months prior as a Mongolian-language newsletter. After adding Inside Mongolia in January 2022, the company expanded its mission: inform local professionals while also welcoming global readers into the Mongolia opportunity set.

Why Newsletters

The founders are “huge newsletter fans” and point to newsletters as:

• Personal: a direct relationship with readers
• Accessible: easy for people to consume regularly
• Efficient: cost-effective distribution that reaches thousands consistently
• High-leverage: “thousands of people every day on a regular basis with little to no effort”

They were also inspired by newsletters like Morning Brew, and wanted a similarly modern, repeatable content product for their markets.

The Challenge

Outgrowing Mailchimp

They used Mailchimp for Lemon Press since September 2020, but ran into several operational issues:

• Support friction: Customer support was hard to access at their tier
• Slow workflow: Content builder felt laggy and inefficient
• Pricing mismatch: tiers didn’t align well with their sending volume
• Send-based penalties: sending 22–25 emails/month pushed them into extra costs
• Big upgrade gaps: price jumps between tiers made upgrading feel unreasonable

They needed a platform that wouldn’t punish a high-cadence newsletter business—and that would feel fast, modern, and reliable.

Why beehiiv

Their decision came from a mix of product belief and founder conviction:

• They had been following Tyler Denk’s writing about Morning Brew products and found it “impressive and in-depth.”
• After testing beehiiv for about a month, they committed to migrating both newsletters.
• The result: they reported being “extremely happy” with the switch.

The Vision: Mongolia’s Economy + Lemon Press’s Role

The founders frame Mongolia as resource-wealthy (not “poor”), with strong industrial production tied to minerals like copper and coal, and a large youth demographic (ages 15–34) forming a major share of the population.

Their publications fit into that story like this:

• Lemon Press: aims to become the go-to source for Mongolian business professionals.
• Inside Mongolia: aims to attract foreign investors and share a fuller picture of Mongolia and its opportunities.

A memorable proof point: they learned an Inside Mongolia subscriber (head of an NYC hedge fund) invested a 20% stake in Mongolia’s largest private conglomerate—reinforcing that the audience includes serious decision-makers.

Monetization

• Lemon Press: Yes — revenue primarily comes from branded content.
• Inside Mongolia: Not yet monetized.

Favorite beehiiv Feature

They called out something simple but powerful:

Direct access and responsiveness—being able to “chat up the highest exec” is a big deal.
They also hope beehiiv maintains that personalized customer experience as it scales.

Advice for Anyone Considering a Switch to beehiiv

Their perspective: beehiiv removes platform anxiety.

It lets you focus on the real work—content and business problems—without worrying about the “structure” of the newsletter platform itself.