Never being afraid to take calculated risks, Marina Tognetti moved from Italy to Holland when she was 23 years old. She spent one year on sabbatical to travel the world, and gave up a successful corporate career to start her own company.
Marina is a tech entrepreneur and the founder of myngle.com, but the passion for entrepreneurship came later on in her career.
When she started her professional life, it was a time when academics were not encouraged to start businesses after graduating from university. She began her career working for large corporations such as Procter & Gamble, Philips, Sara Lee, The Boston Consulting Group, and eBay, living and working in many countries while earning an MBA from INSEAD. 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!“ Marina thought she could make a meaningful impact by putting all she had learned in her career thus far into practice, that is why she decided to launch an innovative company called mYngle.
Below are highlights of the interview conducted between the World’s Leaders and Marina Tognetti:
Describe who you are as a person, inside and outside of the workplace.
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.
I also have a strong idealistic side. I believe each of us can make some difference. We can all contribute to making the world a little bit better. I am in a fortunate position to be able to contribute to the larger goal. You will see more of this in the future.
Tell us about the inception of the company. How did it all start?
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.
What has made you successful? What do you value?
At mYngle, we nurture an obsession with customer satisfaction, and this is also one of our key strengths. We look to continuously improve our service. We do so by constantly listening to users’ feedback and improving accordingly, as well as leveraging new technologies to our advantage.
This is also reflected in our internal evaluation systems and how we assess our jobs. We constantly monitor our users’ reactions and try to adjust accordingly, using adapted versions of NPS (Net Promoter Score), which defines that only excellence counts. Our average lesson scores are 4.9/5.0. And our first corporate customer is still with us, 12 years later. The results speak for themselves!
What are the major services of the company and how do they help the company to get ahead in the competition? What value-added services does the company provide?
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.
I am a firm believer that the key to success is to align with what customers want rather than constantly comparing to the competition. Constant focus on customers and their needs is one of our pillars and key strengths. This is particularly important when you are in an industry that, like that of online education, is in a transition or evolution phase, where the main challenge is not competition but the unawareness or inexperience of customers.
What are the most important aspects of a company’s culture? What principles do you believe in and how do you build this culture?
In mYngle, we stimulate a culture of experimentation and allow mistakes. Innovation cannot exist in a culture of fear of consequences. We try to develop people that think and not only do ‘’jobs’’. We look within our staff for entrepreneurs, people who do not keep the status quo, but push themselves beyond their comfort zone. If you try ten new things, some will fail, some will be OK, and one will make a difference. We are looking for that ‘’special one’.
What is the significance of innovative ideas in the company?
In today’s fast-evolving world, innovation is even more essential to stay afloat and thrive. The pandemic has changed nearly every aspect of our lives, challenging how we do business in a way that was unimaginable only a few months ago. Businesses have been forced to change and innovate in order to survive in times of crisis and find a place in the new world.
Innovative companies like mYngle anticipated these market changes. They were the ones taking the lead after the crisis struck, and are the ones still at the forefront of future innovations.
At any time, but especially in moments of crisis, the companies that are ready to innovate, changing their businesses and taking advantage of new technologies, are the ones that can stand firm even if the market changes, ready to face any challenge that the future can bring.
Give us your opinion on whether organizations rely heavily on individual heroics or team processes?
At first, new entrepreneurial companies that have yet to develop processes and systems rely heavily on individual heroics such as the founders or the first line of managers who were present from the start. It was like that for mYngle as well.
But in order to grow and build a scalable business, companies need to build processes and systems and cannot just rely on those individuals’ heroics to get the work done. This is to avoid individuals becoming the bottlenecks and creating a culture of dependency and a lack of initiative and responsibility. Also, to be able to grow, you need to be able to recruit a growing number of people that can successfully (and independently) perform their tasks and add value. It is a delicate phase of organizational evolution that I also experienced with mYngle, growing from start-up to scale-up. I had to start trusting people in the organization to make the right decisions and take the right steps. The organization must be able to excel independently of one or a few special individuals, otherwise these become its limitations.
What are your responsibilities as the CEO of the company? What is the happiest part of your daily routine?
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.
I am happiest when I can make changes while looking at the vision for the future. Strategic vision has always been one of my strengths, and what I value now in my own company is the capability to evolve and change fast.
What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time?
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 the one who is so self-confident as to be able to show his (or her) vulnerabilities without being scared that it would impact his strength.”
