Dutch Student Entrepreneurs Building a Large Scale EdTech Marketplace: StuDocu CEO Marnix Broer (Part 4)

Marnix Broer: For us, that was the challenge to show that we can launch StuDocu anywhere in the world from the Netherlands. Eventually, it worked out. Spain was great to show that we can do it in any language. Australia was great to show how far you can go without going there physically. We could have proven that by simply going to Germany or UK. In the end, it’s more about launching from the Netherlands while it’s abroad.

Sramana Mitra: What does it entail besides putting the website together? How did you launch in different geographies?

Marnix Broer: It was marketplaces, which is what we are. Every university is its own marketplace. For marketplaces, you have to start with the supply side. If you have the supply, demand will follow. First things to do was find students who have documents to share. They were probably already sharing their documents but in an old-fashioned way.

We tried and we still do all kinds of marketing tactics to find the power users who are willing to share their notes on the platform. When you bring students on the platform without anything to offer yet, that doesn’t work. That’s how we launched in every university. We do the same tactic.

Sramana Mitra: Is there something in particular that you did to attract those superusers?

Marnix Broer: Not in particular. The power of our platform is also that the people realize that it’s solely meant for them and their fellow students. That does mean that you have to adapt the product a bit to the country.

You also see some differences in the students there. They study at different times. If you do data analysis, you can see that some universities are way more into studying and they come back way more often. In Italy, it’s much more important to have summaries of books. In Spain, it’s much more important to have lecture notes. These kinds of things, you have to explore and know.

Sramana Mitra: You mentioned that you raised money. At what point did you raise money and what were the decision-making criteria?

Marnix Broer: We raised a couple of times. The first time was an angel round in 2014. That was when we were graduating. We were not sure that the idea we had was going to work out. We went to some angels and explained how many users we had. Everything was working out except revenues. We needed a buffer. We also wanted to hire two developers. We wanted to have two developers on the payroll.

Over the summer, we implemented the business model. The school year starts in September in the Netherlands. Suddenly, we had way more paying users than we could imagine. We could bear our own cost. We didn’t need the angel investment at all. To be honest, we didn’t touch the €100,000 we raised for the first 1.5 years. Revenues were picking up. We could hire the developers and pay them.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Dutch Student Entrepreneurs Building a Large Scale EdTech Marketplace: StuDocu CEO Marnix Broer
1 2 3 4 5