Palabea – Phoenix from the Flames?

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Last week I had a very interesting talk with Matthias Spanic, the new CEO of Palabea. There has been a radical change of the board and the new team is currently working on a complete reboot of the community.

All of the three executives have an impressive track record in the German startup scene and after our first talk I believe that the platform could actually make a turn around.

The new board consist of Matthias Spanic as CEO, Regine Haschka-Helmer as CMO and Fabian Hübner as CTO. To give you a short overview about their careers so far:

  • Matthias Spanic is co-founder at the video-broadcasting portal “Die Ligen” and founder of “adgroupies”, an online & mobile marketing company.
  • Regina Haschka-Helmer is consulting companies and startups in interactive media for over 20 years and is one of the pioneers and creative heads in the European web community. She also was CEO of I-D Media and worked with clients like eBay, Deutsche Post, Deutsche Telekom, Sony, Swatch and others.
  • Fabian Hübner is co-founder at Zanox, marketleader in the affiliate and online marketing business. He has over 10 years of experience in highly available and scalable platforms.

I think this is both an interesting and powerful mix for a team of executives and it somehow defines where the new course is set: towards revenue. This is pretty similar to Livemocha’s decision to bring in Michael Schutzler as CEO.

Taking a look back, up to now Palabea was somewhat like a sleeper. Founded in 2007 it got some good press coverage through 2008, partnerships with the BBC and Deutsche Welle. The design of the site was very appealing by the standards of online learning platforms / communities back then. In fact the site looks still pretty neat even by today’s standards.

But then all of a sudden at the end of 2008 everything seemed to stop. It somehow reminded me of the Moai culture which also suddenly disappeared (coincidence with the Palabea logo?). When I started blogging about online education in January 2009 I contacted the guys at Palabea once in a while but they never got back nor seemed to be overly interested in doing so unlike others as our niche became increasingly interesting around that time.

Hence, I did not have them on my radar until I read on their blog that Palabea had a new CEO, Matthias Spanic, and that the founder team would be leaving the company in late 2009. When I tried to get in contact with him, oddly enough the old team who were still there for the transition, answered my request and said that they were not interested in a talk. In the end it was Matthias who then got in touch with me a couple of weeks ago.

Taking a look ahead the team has to catch up about two to three years now, of course. At the moment there are around 70.000 registered users on the service, compared to Babbel, Busuu or Livemocha a relatively small number as the others constantly added users and new features to their services over the past years. Palabea needs to do a hell of a sprint now to line up. Looking at the board it seems to be possible and Palabea has the advantage that it can focus on the things that seem to work already as the work to test out the market has already been done by the competitors in some way.

It will be interesting to see in which direction Palabea will go from here and I think we all should keep an eye on them in the coming months. The team has a very interesting profile of different field expertises from community building to affiliate marketing which could give the community a whole new twist.

Related Links:

  1. Palabea

 

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  • Pingback: Kirsten Winkler

  • chinamike

    Interesting. If this were a poker game they just went all in. But they need to. There is nothing unique about their site or what they offer. And they don't offer any content of their own. They seem focusing on helping teachers and students (or language partners) get into contact with each other, but this feature won’t support three high-paid executives.

    Myngle has increasing added features that turns them into a school and moves them away from being a platform. Your readers have already discussed the downsides and challenges attached to becoming a platform. My guess is that unless there are some new innovative thinking behind this reboot that Palabea, to change and become relevant, will need to add more school-like features.

    So, the “Phoenix from the Flames” (destroy in order to create anew) or the caterpillar becomes a butterfly (organic transformation)?

    • http://kirstenwinkler.com KirstenWinkler

      I think, it will be refreshing to see a company strategy that is clearly focused on revenue. As you said, there is nothing to lose at this point so they have the freedom to do whatever they want.

      My guess is that they will stick with the language exchange platform, grow the community exponentially and add something like a language learning marketplace selling software, courses etc. similar to italki.

      • chinamike

        So, you believe that they will continue as a platform? Or transition into a school? My problem with educational platforms is that they don't focus on the quality of the educational experience nearly enough, they suffer from a lack of focus, and they have a problem deciding which is more important- teaching, learning or merely studying.

        Platforms seem to concentrate on putting people who have problems together with people who can solve problems. The platforms don't attempt to solve the problems directly. They are intermediaries in the problem solving process. Is this what students want? Do they want agnostic educational providers?

        The world is full of churches and many (most?) churches are fairly well off– thank you very much. However, there aren't any temples for agnostics and more to the point, even if there were, my guess is that they would be financial failures.

        In my best imitation of Carrie Bradshaw:
        In a world of religious educational providers, can agnostics make money?

        • chinamike

          To give you some context, I believe that at the Beginning and Intermediate levels, the best (most effective) language learning class is akin to a religious experience.

  • chinamike

    oops