Comment by eranation | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eranation | Hacker News Reader

This sounds overly specific, there are lots of places to find private tutors, so building one aimed specifically at undergrad first 2 years in a specific field - isn’t it a bit too specific? I’m trying to count how many unicorns are there in the tutoring marketplace, and nothing comes to mind. I mean if there was a Tinder and you would be the tinder for pets, I get it, the main category is saturated so you find a niche, but what is the poster child of tutor finding? I used some app in the past and it tried to convince me to use the app to pay the tutor, it ended up just being a way for me to get their phone number, I pay them directly (tutor for my kids). I think you either go with care.com approach where you pay a fee, or mask sending emails / numbers, otherwise, tutors will figure they can cut the middleman and get paid directly once you start scaling and can’t hire them directly. I wish you all the best and lots of good ideas get a lot of “it won’t work” naysayers but I’m curious how you got YC to invest in this, what evidence you have that people will want to pay for it, and that they will use your service vs any of the other “find a tutor” places out there. Last question, how do you make sure it doesn’t turn into a “do my homework for me” thing like course hero etc.

All the best, I’m just curious on how the business of this will work, and how you convinced YC to believe in it too.

You're spot on; we were very intentional about starting niche in these intro weed out STEM courses because we recognized that there was a huge gap in the system and a "hair on fire" problem we could solve: 50% of STEM students switch majors & most who completed undergrad had no idea how much their major choice would impact their career. Dropping these intro classes often is the difference between graduating with a STEM degree & an in-demand job or struggling for a lot longer. This felt like a low-hanging fruit spot to make huge impact.

Some poster children for tutoring are: Chegg, Kaplan and Crimson Education. The way we avoid the "off network" issue (which I've definitely done myself before as well), is by offering group sessions. With this model, we're able to offer students way more help for much cheaper than paying an hourly 1:1 tutor fee. Edlyft Mentors also love tutoring for Edlyft because they are usually CS majors trying to build their resume and we are a YC-backed tech startup. To avoid "do my hw for me", we have all mentors agree to an academic honesty policy, go through mentor training, and all are interviewed before they join Edlyft.

Love the question on convincing YC! Our key insight was that 70% of coding bootcampers already have their bachelor's degree. This is way higher than most realize. Edlyft is tackling the Lambda School problem from a different angle that is much lower cost and higher margins, meaning we don't need to teach curriculum. Instead, we reach students when they are already in an environment for learning and have less responsibility (no kids or full time jobs usually). We give them the support they need to graduate the first time with the skills they would have paid an additional thousands of dollars for in the future.

Nice... great reply, I see why they accepted you guys. I assume now you have more tutors than students, but will you open it as a "gig economy" for tutors in the future? (e.g. join as a tutor). Sounds like something I'd be happy to volunteer doing, let alone get paid for as a side gig :)

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