We wanted to find out more about Jan Reichelt, Co-Founder and President of Mendeley. Jan is our after dinner speaker at tonight’s Education & Edtech startups dinner. We can’t wait to hear his story.

What’s the elevator pitch for your startup?

Mendeley is a social network for researchers, and also a free suite of tools that makes it really easy to organise, read, annotate, share and cite your papers. It’s cloud-based so everything is backed up and instantly accessible on any device. Our aim is to make researchers’ lives easier and science more open, and we have a community of over 3 million users around the world, so I think we’re doing something right!

What were you doing before you launched your startup?

I was doing a PhD (I’m still enrolled, but too busy with Mendeley at the moment to finish) and also worked at various tech and software companies, and so I realised that there was an opportunity in addressing some of the frustrations that I had with the research tools available out there, and to help improve the world of academia in general, and that led to Mendeley.

Where did you meet your co-founders?

My co-founders Victor Henning and Paul Foeckler were also researchers. I met Victor in university and randomly, when Victor was backpacking across the USA, he met Paul in Las Vegas and realised that they worked in neighbouring buildings at the same university where Victor was doing his PhD. Because we all shared the same problems and frustrations with the research tools we were using, we came to realise there had to be a better way, so we got together to do something about it.

What’s your biggest ‘hindsight’ moment?

At some point I came to realise how important people, speed, and culture are for a start-up. Hire good and experienced people, focus on delivering your product to the market as quickly as possible, and try to cultivate an atmosphere people love to work in. It never works out perfectly, trust me, but these areas deserve special attention!

What will 2014 bring?

In 2013, Mendeley was acquired by Elsevier, and this has given us a lot of extra resources to grow the team and develop the product beyond what we could have done alone. It’s still a little bit of “honeymoon period” incl. integration activities, but we’re already pressing full-steam ahead with new product development, e.g. a better mobile and web experience, connecting Elsevier’s and Mendeley’s products where it makes sense for the users, and we’re looking for a new office to accommodate the growing team. No rest in sight!

1 piece of advice for someone starting a business in the sector?

Identify a problem that you feel really passionate about, check how many other people are affected by this problem, and then of course think of a “out-of-the-box” solution, try something new because you’ve got nothing to lose! And in addition to this passion a founder needs resilience and patience, building a product and a company takes a lot of time and effort!

Convince someone to use your product/service in under 50 words.

Well, we’ve been told that for a researcher, Mendeley is the most fun you can have with your pants on, but if you – like most of the scientists and researchers in the world – have to deal with hundreds of published journal articles which you have to organise and read, then drag&drop them into Mendeley and see the magic work!

What’s your favourite startup in the sector (not including your own)?

I really like Show My Homework – it beautifully addresses a seemingly simple problem (track and monitor homework between teachers and students), but from there now rolls out to entire schools across the country… start small, focus, and then identify opportunities to scale!

What’s your favourite London restaurant?

Jamon Jamon Belsize Park or Camden Town

We are looking forward to hearing more from Jan tonight. 

If you want to see our upcoming tables, have a look here.