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Tutorspree (YC W11) Is An Airbnb For Tutoring

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Re: Tutorspree (YC W11) Is An Airbnb For Tutoring

#51

Post by EGreg »

bvi wrote: post #50
EGreg wrote: post #48

Funny, I had this idea back in 2006 when I discovered web development. This was before AJAX, I was pretty proud of having invented dynamic checking myself. Hopefully the site still works -- it was one of my first attempts at PHP http://thetutorbase.com (used to be dailytutor.com) I abandoned that project because although tutors were easy to get, the marketing to students didn't scale well, and a paywall didn't work w…

Sorry to break it to you, sport, but nobody cares about your "ideas" if you don't execute.

but I did execute. The website is there, and I signed up 100 tutors and got a bunch of students. I got those 100 tutors in a week without any expenses. Even after I abandoned it, the tutors kept signing up for a while afterward. That showed traction on the tutor side.

I couldn't convince anyone to invest into it because I only asked family and friends.

how do you figure?

Re: Tutorspree (YC W11) Is An Airbnb For Tutoring

#52

Post by EGreg »

EGreg wrote: post #51
bvi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to break it to you, sport, but nobody cares about your "ideas" if you don't execute.

but I did execute. The website is there, and I signed up 100 tutors and got a bunch of students. I got those 100 tutors in a week without any expenses. Even after I abandoned it, the tutors kept signing up for a while afterward. That showed traction on the tutor side. I couldn't convince anyone to invest into it because I only asked family and friends. how do you figure?

It's not that I didn't execute. I didn't know anyone who actually cared. I even made a professional business plan about the 4 billion dollar tutoring market and what I was planning to do.

The one rich guy I talked to did not know much about computers and just said "students have no money, I won't invest" -- this is a guy who wanted a friend of mine to build a botnet for him so he can generate traffic to his lead generation business :P

I tried to explain that when it comes to education, students spend quite a lot, especially when they are in need... but it didn't fly.

The bottom line is, you gotta execute AND have existing relationships with people! Both are important factors in a startup's success.

Re: Tutorspree (YC W11) Is An Airbnb For Tutoring

#53

Post by yequalsx »

Some feedback. I teach mathematics at a community college. Using a Tablet PC and services like Adobe Connect I could tutor anyone in the world who speaks English well enough. Your service appears to be location based. With the rise of online education it seems to me that limiting yourself to location based tutoring is too limiting. Online tutoring can be done well (it can also be done poorly).

Re: Tutorspree (YC W11) Is An Airbnb For Tutoring

#55

Post by jacquesm »

ImperatorLunae wrote: post #44

From the FAQ: "...only experienced educators - PhD's, high school teachers, special education instructors, and professors with real classroom experience - can list themselves on Tutorspree." Really? This seems a little stringent. High school teachers are busy teaching high school; PhD's are busy conducting research or teaching their own classes. Of course, some of them are going to pick up tutoring on the side for so…

Personally I like the Karate method: everybody teaches what they know all the time.

High requirements are a good way to get started though, that way you can set the bar high, guarantee good reviews and happy customers, then slowly relax the rules. The other way around wouldn't work nearly as well.

I'd say being a college student should allow you to help out high schoolers in the subject of your studies though, likely you are aware of the problems the high schoolers face better than anybody else, likewise high schoolers should be allowed to tutor grade schoolers.

There might be a nice 'certification' gig hidden in here somewhere.

Re: Tutorspree (YC W11) Is An Airbnb For Tutoring

#56

Post by gawker »

ImperatorLunae wrote: post #44

From the FAQ: "...only experienced educators - PhD's, high school teachers, special education instructors, and professors with real classroom experience - can list themselves on Tutorspree." Really? This seems a little stringent. High school teachers are busy teaching high school; PhD's are busy conducting research or teaching their own classes. Of course, some of them are going to pick up tutoring on the side for so…

How will they verify these qualifications are completely accurate? If they can prove that their tutors are of actual quality then maybe. I can see something like an Elance test happening to try and control the quality of listings.

Re: Tutorspree (YC W11) Is An Airbnb For Tutoring

#58

Post by garylutes »

pagliara wrote: post #24

Not YC-backed and no TechCrunch article, but WyzAnt ( http://www.wyzant.com ) is a similar service that's been around for 6 years already. Another recent one is Teachoo ( http://www.teachoo.com ). Tutorspree isn't the first and probably won't be the last start up in this space.

Add Tutor Matching Service (http://tutormatchingservicellc.com/) to the list--they recently won the Cade Prize for Innovation in Gainesville FL.

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20100612/articles/6121010

Re: Tutorspree (YC W11) Is An Airbnb For Tutoring

#59

Post by akharris »

ImperatorLunae wrote: post #44

From the FAQ: "...only experienced educators - PhD's, high school teachers, special education instructors, and professors with real classroom experience - can list themselves on Tutorspree." Really? This seems a little stringent. High school teachers are busy teaching high school; PhD's are busy conducting research or teaching their own classes. Of course, some of them are going to pick up tutoring on the side for so…

The requirements are a direct function of our ongoing customer dev work. You're gist is absolutely right - there are a ton of great tutors out there who have never taught a class. However, when you look at the overall hitrate of good tutors amongst populations of educators relative to others, you get a sense for why we are starting where we're starting.

That may change over time as our community grows, but our goal here isn't to create a system that is everything to every tutor. We're focused on a specific problem, and are working on a specific solution to that problem. We'll analyze data along the way and modify our assumptions as necessary.

Re: Tutorspree (YC W11) Is An Airbnb For Tutoring

#60

Post by akharris »

jacquesm wrote: post #55
ImperatorLunae wrote: post #44

From the FAQ: "...only experienced educators - PhD's, high school teachers, special education instructors, and professors with real classroom experience - can list themselves on Tutorspree." Really? This seems a little stringent. High school teachers are busy teaching high school; PhD's are busy conducting research or teaching their own classes. Of course, some of them are going to pick up tutoring on the side for so…

Personally I like the Karate method: everybody teaches what they know all the time. High requirements are a good way to get started though, that way you can set the bar high, guarantee good reviews and happy customers, then slowly relax the rules. The other way around wouldn't work nearly as well. I'd say being a college student should allow you to help out high schoolers in the subject of your studies though, likely…

The certification question is a really interesting one. We looked at a lot of other sites focused on various kinds of tutoring while building. We found that the ones that offered online "tests" for certification were producing false positives as to legitimate quality.

If I see a high schooler with certifications in 58 subjects, those certifications tend to lose their meaning. Likewise, if I have a friend with a Masters in English who taught writing at the college level fail your writing certification, it seems a little funny. That's part of the reason we took a different route.

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