The founder of mYngle, Marina Tognetti, has 18 years of professional experience in consumer goods marketing and business development by Procter & Gamble, Philips, and Sara Lee; strategy consulting by the Boston Consulting Group; and e-commerce/technology by eBay. Marina lived and worked in Italy, France, and the Netherlands and has an MBA from INSEAD.
Marina is a tech entrepreneur, but the passion for entrepreneurship came later on in her career. When she graduated from university, it was an era when entrepreneurship was not very common for academics. She shares, “It was when working as a consultant on a project on internet strategy that I first saw the potential of the internet to disrupt entire industries and change forever the way we buy, sell, and interact.” I had to be part of that.“ She further adds, “That was the driver to start an innovative company like mYngle, as I knew I could make a real difference, putting in practice all I had learned in my career till then.”
Below are highlights of the interview:
Tell us more about mYngle.
mYngle offers customized language training programs through video conferencing in 45 different languages, anytime, anywhere. Our lessons are one-on-one, with highly qualified native coaches, and related to the learner’s job position. Our virtual classrooms enable learners to take classes 24/7.
mYngle is the solution for busy professionals who need language training to be successful in their international business and for companies that want great learning results and a transparent and controllable learning process to make their investment a success.
Our lesson score is 4.8 out of 5.0. The results speak for themselves!
Why did you choose to become an entrepreneur?
I like challenges in everything I do. Entrepreneurship, especially in tech, allows you to look far ahead, innovate, change traditional business models and disrupt industries.
The initial idea came from my own personal needs. Like many people back then, I was looking at China for opportunities. The first step was learning Chinese. But finding a way to learn the language was not easy for me as a busy manager. I tried everything: an evening school, CDs/ DVDs, a Dutch teacher trying to teach Chinese, a Chinese student that could not teach. I got quite frustrated. If I were living in China, I thought, I could easily find a good teacher! That was when the idea hit me: there are thousands of teachers all over the world; I just needed to use the power of the internet to connect teachers with students. This is how mYngle was born.
My main drive was to start-up something completely from scratch and disrupt one of the most traditional industries, that of education.
What are your responsibilities as the CEO of the company?
My role is primarily to develop the long-term vision and drive the company towards it, foster the company culture and values, guide and align the team, and represent mYngle with the outside world, our investors and all stakeholders, and with the education industry in general.
When we started, we were pioneers. That meant that we had to bypass all sorts of resistance from a still immature market, like the stereotypes that consumers had about education. Now, with COVID, all has changed, and the world is embracing online education. Soon it will become the norm, setting the standards in terms of quality and flexibility. We saw that before many others did.
As CEO and founder of mYngle, I have been responsible for leading the company where it is now, taking it through the highs and lows that are common in innovative entrepreneurship.
What have you failed at and how do you overcome challenges?
The initial mYngle I had envisaged and launched proved not to be the right one. We had launched mYngle as a marketplace, something I knew very well from my previous eBay experience. We thought we had it all: funding, lots of awards and PR, and a very motivated team. But something in the business model was not functioning as we expected. We were investing so much money but not getting the expected results. We were growing, but not enough.
We had to go back to the drawing board and request everything to find a new direction. That is when we ‘pivoted’ from the initial business model to a completely different one, which is the mYngle you see now.
The key to success was accepting that change was needed and not being afraid to question assumptions, truly listening to our customers.
Kindly describe how you will specifically know what success looks like for you. And what has been the best recognition that you have received as a professional?
Success for me means being able to innovate and bring real added value in a new way. We were amongst the first to provide one-to-one teaching of all languages over the internet. Now, online language education is setting the standards in terms of quality and flexibility. And we have been part of that. This has been for me the greatest recognition as a professional.
Success is also having customers that love our product, learners that are proud to be able to achieve their learning results, and companies that stay with us for as long as we meet their needs. At mYngle, we nurture an obsession for customer satisfaction, and this is also one of our key strengths. Our average lesson scores are 4.9 out of 5.0. And our first corporate customer is still with us, 12 years later. The results speak for themselves!
For these reasons, mYngle has also won numerous awards in recognition of its contribution to online education. Immediately at the start (2008): Accenture Innovation Award, European Ventures Summit Award, Benelux Venture Summit Award, and more later on. I also received numerous awards as founder and CEO of mYngle, such as 50 Most Inspiring Women Tech Leaders in Europe, 50 Most Inspiring Women in the Dutch Technology Sector, Iconic Women Creating a Better World for All and many others.
What advice would you give to the next generation of leaders?
Probably the most important piece of advice is that learning is the key to success. In order to learn, you have to recognize and accept that something can be done better.
I remember one of my mentors once told me: “A strong leader is not the one without faults, as we all have faults, but that which is so self-confident to be able to show its vulnerabilities without being scared that it would impact its strength.”
It is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength, to admit you do not know something, or something you thought was right is not, and needs to be changed. That is what makes the difference between failure and success.
What are your future plans to sustain the company’s and your success?
I believe that the integration of information technology into education will be further accelerated and that online education will eventually become an integral component of education.
For mYngle, this means that we need to keep on innovating and pursuing the best possible quality and results, while also educating the market on the difference between improvised solutions and years of expertise, so that we can keep on being ahead in this digital transformation.
There are also new opportunities opening up beyond 2022, as the education world evolves towards online following past COVID lockdowns. This shift also opened our eyes to the potential of the broader training market, which is less mature than language learning in terms of online solutions. This means that we have a window of opportunity here, similar to what we had with language learning years ago.
