Varsity Tutors: Finding your Perfect Tutor Online
Finding market map is very crucial when you are planning to start any business. If the founder himself has experienced that gap than it can be a great business opportunity. Similar was in the case of Varsity Tutors.
Varsity Tutors is an online tutoring company that connects students and professional teacher for academic and test preparation. Chuck Cohn, founder and CEO, was assisted by private tutor in high school to achieve better grade. But Cohn had difficult time when he had to learn French from a tutor who did not speak proper English. At that time he realized it was difficult to find a perfect tutor.
The idea for Varsity Tutors came up during his junior year at Washington University in St. Louis. Two of his friends had just successfully tutored him to a great grade in calculus, and it made him think what can be successful tutoring and what can be unsuccessful.
“I ended up asking those two friends if they wanted to be the first two tutors, borrowed $1,000 from my parents to start the company, and the business was born,” says Cohn. “The feedback we got from the first few clients was so positive that I knew there was a real opportunity.”
Varsity Tutors was founded in 2007 and has connected learners with over 40,000 experts in more than 1,000 subjects across 65 U.S. cities. The company charge students around $55 per hour depending on the student’s geography and the difficulty of the material.
In beginning website served as a sign up site where students used to sign up for an in- person tutoring session. This was completely modified in 2014 as a digital platform to connect students and teachers.
Varsity Tutors has raised over $107 M in venture capital funding and has provided more than 3 million hours of live instruction till date.
The company is looking to expand their platform to categories outside of tutoring, such as technical training and music , in geographies outside of the USA.
