Emerging education startup TeachingMe attracts 2,000 users in a few months
With more than 3.7 million primary and secondary students enrolled in Australian schools in 2016, there is increasing demand for tailored learning outside of school to address individual kid’s needs, develop their potentials, or improve performance for selective school entry, scholarship selection, and tertiary entry exams.
TeachingMe is a Melbourne based startup that provides a teaching and learning platform which pairs teachers and students. Parents and students can easily find tutors and classes in their local area, select tutors with appropriate safety checks and qualifications, and book classes under first-class-satisfaction guarantee in a few minutes. The services cover 9 subject categories: Academic, Language, Music, Art, Craft, Dance, Sport, Technology and Lifestyle.
TeachingMe is on the way to becoming the largest matching portal in Australia for teaching, tutoring, and learning as awareness of this innovative format spreads. In February 2017 TeachingMe has over 2,000 active users since its launch in September 2016.
Here is an example of how parents get help from TeachingMe: Over the holidays, Andrea, a mum, and a private secondary school teacher was looking for a Maths tutor for her daughter to review year 9 Maths key learning points. After asking around and searching online, she struggled to find a suitable tutor who could relate to her daughter and who was available to teach during summer holidays at her home.
Through TeachingMe, Andrea quickly found Subi — an experienced secondary school teacher and tutor. She felt comfortable because the first tutoring session was covered under TeachingMe’s 100% satisfaction guarantee.
Andrea booked the first tutoring class with Subi and her daughter, rated Subi with five stars and continued learning with Subi for another 20 hours of classes. She is so happy with her daughter’s progress that the classes with Subi are ongoing.
Many parents, teachers and school principals are very welcoming of TeachingMe, which they believe is providing a solution for busy parents to easily search, select and safely meet a suitable tutor or find a class outside of school. The platform is being referred amongst parent and school community.
TeachingMe background
Rachel Liu — Co-creator
While Rachel Liu worked for 11 years in both marketing and recruitment roles at Monash, Curtin, and Murdoch Universities, she realised that training providers and teachers who have excellent teaching skills don’t necessarily know how to reach and recruit students.
Her vision to create an online portal to connect teachers, tutors, and students was consolidated after she saw a Flamenco show. Entranced by the beauty of the dance, she searched for a teacher in her local area so she herself could learn. The search engine gave her more than 100 pages of teachers located around the world and she struggled to locate one that suited her needs.
As there was no platform to find the right teacher online, she decided to create one.
The model of teachingme.com took shape when Rachel shared her idea with longtime friend Bruno Thiel, an experienced IT architect and technical expert. Bruno became excited about the idea and joined the project as a co-founder. They began to research the market need to see if Rachel’s observations were valid and if there was room in the market for the proposed portal and found that there was indeed a need for such a service.
Bruno Thiel — Co-creator and CTO
Bruno’s primary background is in IT, web development and architecture.
Having started many years ago as a software engineer at IBM in Germany, Bruno has a strong focus on excellence and quality. He has worked as a Solution and Enterprise Architect for large companies such as Australia Post and Telstra and was the first to introduce mobile video streaming to Australia. He has implemented and monitored payment systems for a number of organisations. More recently, he has turned his attention towards startups, enjoying the challenge of creating solutions that enable new ideas to take shape. Alongside his IT expertise, Bruno also possesses a degree in Naturopathy and has hands on experience teaching Health Sciences.
Editor’s Note:
Rachel will pitch TeachingMe at Melbourne Silicon Beach’s May Pitch Night on 4th May. It will be a very special night as part of Melbourne Knowledge Week. Reserve your FREE ticket here, before the event gets booked out.
See the full MKW 2017 Program. There is a Startup stream, that might be of interest to you.
