Dutch Student Entrepreneurs Building a Large Scale EdTech Marketplace: StuDocu CEO Marnix Broer (Part 1)

We’ve done a lot of EdTech case studies and also a lot of 2-sided Marketplace Case Studies.
Here’s one from The Netherlands that compares/competes with Course Hero and Quizlet. Terrific story!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Marnix Broer: I was born in a small place close to Amsterdam. I grew up in a nice neighborhood. Back then, you didn’t really realize where you were being raised. It’s a good place to have some fun and be close to Amsterdam.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do for your education?

Marnix Broer: After high school, I started studying at Delft University. That’s where I first did my Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering, after which, I did my Masters in Offshore Engineering. That’s mainly focused on building oil platforms and the like. It’s very interesting, but it’s not what I’m busy with today. With climate change, it’s also not the best area to be in.

Sramana Mitra: What year did you graduate from college?

Marnix Broer: 2014. It’s meant to be done in five years, but I did one gap year. In Delft, the average is around 7.5 years. That’s mostly because many students stop and start their studies. That’s why I had some delays as well.

Sramana Mitra: When did you start the company?

Marnix Broer: In 2010 – midway through my studies. With my co-founders, we’d faced the problems ourselves.

Sramana Mitra: What was the problem that you wanted to solve?

Marnix Broer: Every time the exam season came up and you were about to really study, you would always gather notes and study resources from fellow students. This was time-consuming, taking even five days. Before you speak to everyone and before you were able to get the files, you were already days down the road. While studying, you would always keep an eye out for who has better notes. Why isn’t there a platform where you can find everything in just a couple of minutes? That’s what we started. If we simply put our own documents online, let’s see what happens.

Sramana Mitra: This is in the same genre as Quizlet and Course Hero.

Marnix Broer: Yes, Quizlet to some extent. Course Hero, very much.

Sramana Mitra: We’ve covered them extensively. Tell me about how you got things started. What did you do to get this off the ground? How did you build the company?

Marnix Broer: It started off as a project. We were facing that problem firsthand. At that moment we thought that all we needed to do is build a simple platform where people can just go and view which notes are available. One of my co-founders and I were quite structured. We love to structure things. For the last four years of studying, I saved every document and note on my computer and shared them with my fellow students. As soon as we had the platform live and uploaded my own documents, the only thing I had to say is, “Just go to this website and you’ll find everything you need.” That’s how the ball started rolling. It snowballed quickly.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Dutch Student Entrepreneurs Building a Large Scale EdTech Marketplace: StuDocu CEO Marnix Broer
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