Have you ever sat in a shared college dorm kitchen space with your roommate and decided to start a business?
I should be clear here: We didn’t really decide to start a business; it was more of a project to create a tool that we could use while studying in school.
Born out of our own frustrations with gathering the right study materials to prepare for exams, Jacques Huppes and I started jotting down what the ideal platform for easily sharing resources like study guides and class notes with other students would look like. We knew we needed to create a simple interface to get started, which was shortly followed by the tedious process of manually uploading hundreds of documents we had gathered from our own previous exam prep and from other friends at the university.
After just three weeks, our idea began to blossom, with friends from other universities asking if we could build the platform to share their school’s study resources as well. We simply asked for their documents and started to subdivide the content based on university. Our company, StuDocu, was officially born and expanding faster than we ever could have imagined.
Our first investment was a USB hard drive, which traveled with us from dorm to dorm — we’d knock on doors to share our story with as many students as possible. We’d use the hard drive to plug into their laptops, copy their files and upload them to the StuDocu website that evening.
While more and more students are now going digital, in 2010 we’d often encounter students with handwritten or printed notes, which we’d collect and carry back on the train ride to Delft to scan and upload in the library. For the first three years, we worked from our dorm rooms in Delft before moving to Amsterdam to grow our business.
We have introduced many iterations of the platform based on feedback and data. In the beginning, we worked based on what we thought was needed, using our own frustration with studying as the guide for how the platform should evolve. One of our other co-founders, Lucas van den Houten, introduced the idea of measuring data we gathered from users via Mixpanel, and from there we were able to give the platform new life. Suddenly, data was telling us where to grow and where to improve. Over the years, we have developed many features and continue to run A/B tests based on the hard data now available to us.
Building a website is a lot of work, but for us, each update had a direct correlation to the increasing uploads and student engagement we set out to achieve. To see those small successes day after day was reassuring.
From “project” to company
As we neared graduation with a platform that was thriving but wasn’t making us any money, we had a difficult decision to make. Knowing how hard we had worked on the platform, and the success we had seen working on this only part time, we didn’t want to abandon it or our mission. But if we were going to continue, we needed to put together a business plan.
Our first thought was to put all the documents behind a “wall,” but that seemed to go against everything we had built. So we decided to lock a small percentage of content students could gain access to. The more they uploaded, the more they could access. This decision was based simply on gut instinct, but it happened to work.
Some of our initial users were upset when we initially introduced the “freemium” model, but we started generating revenue and, more importantly, started to receive more documents. With an increase in activity, we also noticed an increase in quality. When it comes to study materials, quality is more important than quantity. To ensure quality standards, we developed fully automated systems to filter out the low-quality material, while community ratings on uploaded content further assisted students studying for their courses.
Expanding globally
We started with universities within the Netherlands, and once we had a model that worked, we shifted to testing for demand in Belgium, Spain and Australia.
My first piece of advice to anyone looking to expand a business comes down to one word: Data. Store your data and measure it as soon as you have created some traction. Dive into the data yourself or find someone analytical if data isn’t your thing. My co-founders and I are all analytical people — we love data. We have been able to dig into data and test hunches and hypotheses based on data, and it has allowed us to grow faster.
These tests were all positive, which showed us that we could reach students around the world from our office in Amsterdam. The feedback also showed that our platform crossed language and cultural borders, as access to study materials is a universal pain point for students throughout the world. Expanding beyond our country had challenges, including working in a language we didn’t speak and expanding our reach as far as possible, across many time zones.
We had to think about tax laws, data regulations, having local and accessible customer support, and whether we wanted a team on the ground. We took a look at our finances and had to honestly ask ourselves if we had the funds to support the initial investment and sustain the growth we were forecasting. The answer to both was yes, so it was the right time to grow.
However, it’s not easy to persuade a foreign customer to trust your brand when a similar product is made in their home country. So, while some big-name education platforms and innovative educational advancements were thriving in the U.S, we convinced the international market that our brand was trustworthy by doing what we’ve always done — supporting students — and they did the rest.
You could have the best business model, but if you plan on expanding globally, you’ll need a great team or partner. Even if your “partner” takes the form of a mentor, you’ll want someone you trust and who can vouch for you. The people you hire to deal with your overseas business partners and customers must be immersed in the local environment, but they should also be looking out for your interests. Our Amsterdam-based team was dedicated to the growth and values of StuDocu, making the challenges of expansion easier to overcome.
Luckily, data regulations between the United States and the Netherlands were similar, including those regarding cookie banners and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). However, a unique challenge we face is the differentiation in sales tax in the United States, which is extremely complicated compared to European tax regulations. This means companies that are looking to expand to America face the added challenge of complying with and integrating far more advanced tax governance.
My final piece of advice: Give it a shot! You won’t know if your idea can be successful unless you go for it. That doesn’t come without dedication and determination, and there will be many long nights. But if you keep trying, you will succeed.