Babele Reviews

Since the early days I have used the product for projects, to build and contribute to a community.

Pros:

It is visual and engaging. It is a well-designed piece of software which guides you well and provides a good foundation for engaging others. From another perspective, e.g. as an online mentor, it is an accessible way to access some of the data you need to be able to support people, the tool having helped them prioritise.

Cons:

Difficult to say what you like least when the team is so open to adapting the product to your needs for a realistic development budget.

Perfect platform to manage the teams and projects created in our MOOC

Pros:

As one of Babele's first customers, we worked closely to create all the features needed to support us in managing the international projects created by our students in the social entrepreneurship online course. Because it is designed specifically for social businesses and highly adaptable, it was very easy to handle. The community interaction features are a great help to the students and the visual step-by-step business model creation simplified the complex process.

Cons:

Additional features would have been helpful in different situations, but were mostly developed over time.

Great team doing great work to help social enterprises

Pros:

As a social enterprise and one of the first users, I did not have to pay anything. The platform was still in early stages and has developed much more functionality since I used it. It is great to see the new features and how the creators are trying to find better ways to help crowd-source acceleration of social enterprises.

Cons:

At the time I used the platform there were still some bugs with back-and-forth communication with mentors being hard to note or being lost. Also, there was no accountability for mentors to deliver on any commitments they made to the social enterprises. I am not sure if this later point has changed yet.

A powerful way to leverage collective intelligence

Pros:

By using Babele, I was able to expose the mechanics of my company, as well as our mission, our assumptions, our business plan, and our objectives. I was then able to get extremely valuable feedback from a variety of mentors, many times relating to issues that "I didn't know that I didn't know about." This has shaped the growth of my company significantly. The platform is very intuitive to use.

Cons:

Sometimes it was difficult to interact with the Babele team due to the time zone difference of them being in Europe and me in Central America.

I open babele not less than once a week. I find people and projects, I offer my experience, I find

Pros:

Possibility of expanding, customization and flexibility. This software permits to create open or closed communities, and offers them knowledge of projects and people. Moreover it is possible to create groups for coaching, mentoring and supporting users and young people

Cons:

sometimes it is not so easy to order messages, and up to date exchanges between members of communities

Practical and easy-to-use platform with great feedback and interaction features

Pros:

The platform engages its users and invites for feedback and interaction between the users. It is easy to view others' activity, follow their progress and leave comments and likes to give feedback. In this way, users keep each other sharp and active, and that's what makes Babele not just a tool to manage your own project, but a real added value in terms of keeping the project on track and pushing for continuous progress and improvement.

Cons:

Some features could still use further development, e.g. the platform sending reminders about completing different phases of the business plan. Sometimes the website is a bit slow. - but worth the patience!

We used it with our Social Enterprise module and an international competititon (UKISIC)

Pros:

The software is very easy to use and has a great graphical interface. All our students found it made uploading and developing business models very easy, and external mentors enjoyed being able to remark on specific elements of their model. The features are incredibly rich, and the support is nothing short of amazing.

Great tool for running community-centric projects

Comments: Collaboration, sharing ideas and getting feedback from the community

Pros:

I had the opportunity to test the Babele platform during a Lean Startup -related workshop. I was already familiar with the type of contents and structure that such platforms offer. However, Babele caught my attention for the fact that the contents is very well organized, structured and easy to follow. A very friendly user interface. Besides the Business Modelling section that is more or less shaped on the standard topics, there's a lot of focus on collaboration through Discussions, Resources and Network sections that enable you to share ideas and get feedback. That is the part that gives you the most benefits, I think. Being able to expose your ideas and needs and have other entrepreneurs from the community join you and offer support, that's helpful. I am looking forward to manage my next two projects (both community-centric) on the Babele platform.

Cons:

Nothing in particular. I think that there's room for improvements and new features but that is part of the regular life cycle, so no worries.

Great tool with great opportunities for entrepreneurs

Pros:

Babele allows entrepreneurs to connect with mentors and keep all of their documents and feedback in one place. It streamlines the process of having multiple mentors at once and allows entire teams to be up to date on the progress of a single enterprise.

Cons:

I haven't had any problems with Babele. The only challenge is that, as an internet-based resource, it can be quite challenging for people in connectivity-poor areas to fully engage with it.

Perfect platform for a startup team, diverse & remote stakeholders to collaborate on! Well done!

Pros:

It's an incredible platform to run an "incubation" / "acceleration" program on! It allows a team to share their business model with diverse and remote mentors and other stakeholders. It allows you to have your own platform through which you can manage your initiatives. Of course, arguably more valuable, is the incredible professionalism, knowledge, and energy that the charismatic founder, Emanuele Musa, brings to the table! We had the pleasure to work in person with Emanuele during a bootcamp on Lesvos- it was an incredible and very valuable experience for all! It's my great pleasure to be able to highly recommend Babele!

Cons:

The cons is not about the software for us- in our case, we did not have the funding to have a person manage the startups / follow up with them, with the proper incentive for those that continued to participate. Would therefore recommend to always ensure that there is a tangible outcome for any startups that participate on this excellent platform.

A great tool for open innovation

Pros:

I am a mentor in the platform and it is very easy to provide feedback to community members. I think the Babele platform could be an asset to every incubator program for starting entrepreneurs, because all feedback can be kept in one place and it is easy to get an overview of all the projects. Next to this documents and recordings of webinars can be stored in the platform. In this way the entrepreneur (or intrapreneur) can find everything he/she needs in one place. Thumbs up for the team!

A new exciting and practical way to offer business development support to SMEs in emerging markets!

Pros:

One of the best characteristics of Babele ia the easy way to keep entrepreneurs and mentors connected. Entrepreneurs in our program can easily upload information about their enterprises, and process and incorporate the feedback received by our mentors. In addition, the costumer support is great. Whenever we have a question or request, they are fast in replying.

Cons:

The fact that it depends on internet to connect entrepreneurs and mentors can be a challenge some times.

We have used Babele for our entrepreneurship class at ESCE involving a community of 80+ students.

Comments: Babele is a great tool to stream-line the planning and modeling process while structuring the engagement of different stakeholders in the innovation process.

Pros:

Babele is a great tool to stream-line the planning and modeling process while structuring the engagement of different stakeholders in the innovation process. It allowed us to organise the class deliverables in one place, and foster knowledge transfer among students of different years. The platform is intuitive and user-friendly.

Full disclosure - I was so impressed with Babele I called them up, am now on their advisory board!

Pros:

Built straight-up for social entrepreneurs, to crowdsource my businessmodel Helps me tap into expertise from around the world

Cons:

Useability initially was an issue but this has improved greatly. Also I sometimes get tired of typing up essays, would prefer to use more video messaging

Great tool to support entrepreneurs

Pros:

I like the way it has simplified the complex problems faced by startups into multiple simple problems integrated in a logical fashion. This makes it easy to identify the solution and understand its pros and cons