Business Models: Plugg Start-up winners Mendeley & Myngle
Today, European internet entrepreneurs, investors and bloggers gathered on the Plugg 2009 conference to look at the ‘new web’ and its future. One of the key elements on Plugg is the Start-ups Rally, a pitching competition where 20 start-ups present their business to the audience and a challenging jury of investors and thought leaders. Let’s have a look at the business model of the 2 winners!
Mendeley.com: Last.fm for research
The overall winner was Mendeley.com (congratulations!). Mendeley positions itself as a “Last.fm for research”. They offer a free social application for managing and sharing research papers, in combination with a web 2.0 site for discovering research trends and connecting to like-minded academics. Mendeley is a typical example of a free business model (subcategory: Freemium). When you sign up, the social app and service are completely free. While the existing features will always remain free, Mendeley plans to introduce new features in the future and make them available to premium users for a fee. Conclusion… Free + Premium = Freemium business model.
Myngle.com: The new way to learn languages
The crowds’ favorite at Plugg 2009 was the new study platform Myngle.com. This online platform offers a relative new way to learn languages by bringing together teachers and students from all over the world. Looking in our database of business models, you see that Myngle relies on a typical Broker model similar to eBay or Zopa: bringing a traditional business to the online mass market. The students pay a fixed price per lesson to a teacher. Myngle charges 18% commission on the transactions.
As such, Myngle brings a successful, existing online business model into a new market. Other start-ups like LiveMocha and Linkua offer similar services, but Myngle differentiates itself by asking students to pay 300-400 EUR upfront for lessons to ensure continuity of taking lessons (not stop after 1 lesson). Myngle has a revenue stream of 20,000 EUR per month growing steadily.
More revenue model examples and inspiration:
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March 13th, 2009 at 10:36
Great presentations of their models. Would you be willing to do the same for all finalists?
March 13th, 2009 at 12:33
Hi Ramon,
Thanks for the feedback. We do have the ambition to map out all start-ups’ models next time upfront similar awards, venture nights etc. Any particular other start-up business model from Plugg that you found innovative or special?
March 13th, 2009 at 18:29
Beebole : http://beebole.com/
And Jinni: http://www.jinni.com/
March 22nd, 2009 at 18:09
[...] En este articulo podrán ver como conceptualizar en 10 entidades y un gráfico sus modelos de negocio. Esta estrategia es muy util cuando están recién ideando su modelo de negocio porque les permite entender más rápidamente las distintas interacciones criticas. Algunos ejemplos de modelos de negocio conceptualizados de esta forma los pueden ver aquí [...]
April 1st, 2009 at 23:31
Hi Everyone,
I have a carpet cleaning business in Houston,TX that was doing pretty good until the economy went bad, and with it my clientele. I have a website for the business but I dont
know what I have to do the get it to show up in a search. Right now it’s somewhere in the yahoo/google netherworld (LOL).
Is there someone on here that can give me some insight or know of anyone that coud give me insight on how I can get my local website on the front
page of a Yahoo or Google search to increase my business without it costing me 5 or 10k $$$? If so please share with me.
I thank you and my hungry over-eating children thank you.
thanks,
April 23rd, 2009 at 00:58
The price seems high, are students granted credits for the lessons, or can they use the teachings on their transcript somehow?
May 2nd, 2009 at 20:42
[...] transaction is not the ownership of a product, it is the service to use it for a period in time. Myngle.com is another example of online service auctions, bringing together teachers and students on a global [...]
June 9th, 2009 at 18:06
[...] general principles into your industry. Specific cases will illustrate what the innovation is in the business model of new start-ups, how you can make the transfer from one model to another, and which key success factors should be [...]
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:37
Great model. I will check if it really works in practice. But hope that it will.
December 9th, 2009 at 03:55
Thanks, that’s really interesting for me. I’ll try to check it in my russian start-up.
February 7th, 2010 at 18:18
One can imagine I read it twice. While I am not as versatile on this issue, I tally with your determinations because they make sense. Thanks and goodluck to you.
March 10th, 2010 at 19:43
This is just what I was looking for. Thank you so much. Do you have an RSS Feed I can subscribe to? Please let me know. Thanks again.
March 10th, 2010 at 20:08
Hello there. I would like to know if you have an RSS Feed so I can subscribe to it. I really liked your post and I would like to maintain up to date. Keep up the good work and thank you in advance.