Stutor: Meet the social ed-tech platform that empowers student tutors to become their own boss
By Jim James, Founder EASTWEST PR and Host of The UnNoticed Entrepreneur.
Former pro-golfer CJ Lee is the co-founder of a company called Stutor. He has been developing a new social ed tech that will bring students together and create a community where they can learn from one another. In the new episode of The UnNoticed Entrepreneur, he talked about their platform and how student tutors can monetise what theyâve learnt.
Image from LinkedIn
What is Stutor?
Stutor is the first of its kind. Itâs an app- and web-based social and educational platform. Any student from any university who has completed classes and got good grades can be an official tutor once their transcript records have been verified.
If a fellow student on the platform says they need help with Finance 201 or Writing 150 from 9 to 10 p.m., every single tutor eligible to teach that class will be notified.
They brand themselves as the Uber for tutoring: They connect student tutors who have been in the student tuteesâ shoes. These are tutors who have taken the same classes and are ready to help others out.
The world of academia has yet to come up with a solution for kids who get stuck on exam preparations and those who miss their laboratory and Teaching Assistant (TA) hours. But they donât need to be penalised because there are actually thousands of students out there who can help. And Stutor is a socialised network that can facilitate just that.
Image from Stutor
The idea for it was born when CJ was a junior in college.
As a student-athlete back then, he missed a lot of lab hours. Even if he did make it to the lab hours, with two TAs catering to 200 kids in an auditorium, he didnât get all his questions answered. He didnât receive the sufficient help he needed.
What Makes them Different?
The expert student model has existed for thousands of years. It can be traced back to the time of ancient Greeks when one could ask a fellow student a question about Socrates, for example.
CJ himself used websites that followed that model. Thereâs Chegg and University Tutor. But, at the time, there wasnât really an app-based platform. None of the platforms was also able to immediately connect him to a tutor (It would take him three to five days before he can get a tutor). Plus, the subjects offered were not class-specific.
Being a student is a precious time. You can fail an exam because you couldnât get help and see your professor or TA. You can fail a couple of assignments. And all this can leave you behind the eight ball.
At Stutor, they can immediately match an expert (who is an active student) to someone who needs their help. They empower students to be able to teach â they donât need to be a scholar. If theyâve comprehended the material and theyâve previously taken the class, they can help others right away.
If a student needs help at 9 p.m., the platform will ping everyone available to teach that class at that time immediately. They wonât need to worry about when theyâre going to find help and they wonât need to wait three to five days.
Screengrab from Stutor
CJ also had an experience when he was a freshman in college, and he got matched with a 65-year-old rocket scientist explaining to him all these theories. However, those werenât what he needed. All he wanted was help with his particular assignment. And what could be a better source of help than a student who has taken the same class the previous semester?
Taking Control of Your Time Better
A lot of part-time jobs available for students require a minimum availability of time. But being a full-time student, you also need to have a life. You may have a date scheduled or intramural sports you need to attend.
With Stutor, you can better spend your spare time than doing conventional part-time jobs. You can teach even if youâre on a soccer field or a roving vehicle via video chat. If youâre at home gaming and you have two hours, why not spend it in a way that you can make extra money?
COVID has made the work-from-model very popular. And with virtual tutoring, Stutor helps kids set their own availability and price and be their own boss. Theyâre empowering a generation of young people to become entrepreneurs by selling their knowledge rather than their time.
Addressing Trust Issues, Maintaining Platform Integrity
How will tutees know if their tutor is going to be a reputable one? To address that, Stutor is implementing a verification process.
If youâre an active student who wants to be a tutor for a certain class in their app, you need to download their app and register the information required. Stutor requires a student ID, student email address, and all information pertinent to making sure that youâre an active student. You also need to upload the current classes youâre taking and your transcript manually.
They verify all this information directly with the school. In some cases, they reach out to the student for additional verification purposes.
Stutor also has an integrated video chat as a security feature. As a parent himself (his co-founder, Tyler Croft, is also one), CJ doesnât want his daughter to be going over to someoneâs house, especially if itâs a maleâs house.
If you donât want to meet anyone in person, you can have the virtual tutoring session from your home. If anything inappropriate happens, users can report the video session. The folks at Stutor will then review and flag that accordingly.
Image from Unsplash
When a session is done, the tutee can rate the tutor and vice versa. The rating system goes both ways, just like how it is in Uber. Itâs a safety precaution and it offers a value proposition as well.
For instance, if a tutor has completed 50 sessions and has consistently received five stars and good reviews (e.g. Heâs adaptable, heâs patient), that tutor can put that valuable information in his resume. The company heâs applying for can verify that with Stutor.
Itâs also helpful for the tutees.
If a tutor consistently gets one to two stars, that rating will give them a heads-up that they shouldnât take that session. To check if that low rating is justified, tutees can look at the comments to see why the rating is like that. For instance, if someone rated a tutor one star because the tutor simply didnât give away the answers to his assignment, then you can consider that that rating shouldnât be one star.
Stutor also has an appeal process. If youâre a tutor and receive a one-star rating, you can reach out to them through their platform to contest. If you have been constantly getting five-star ratings and you suddenly got one star, you can use that feature as well.
Like what huge brands like Uber and Airbnb are doing, Stutor will look into the appeals submitted and reach out to the respective tutees who gave such ratings.
They donât want the reputation of a tutor to get tarnished because of a kid who gave a false one-star rating just because he didnât get the answers he wanted. If thatâs the case, they can manually remove the false rating. This will help keep the integrity of their platform.
Spreading the Entrepreneurial Spirit
Stutor is a very market-driven product. Their tutors can set their own prices.
You can set your math tutorial class to $10. If you see that you often get booked and youâre consistently nailing it, you can increase your rate to $15. You can even go up to $100 if youâre really good, though it may be challenging to get someone to book you with that price.
But, essentially, this setup teaches students to be entrepreneurs and know how much theyâre worth.
Another good thing about it is that students also learn how to market themselves. They can advertise on social media that theyâre on this platform, these are the classes theyâve taken, and this is their availability.
Itâs all about being your own boss and managing your own time. Instead of spending all five hours gaming, you can do three hours of teaching and spend two hours on games. You can do the tutoring in the comfort of your own apartment. You donât have to go wear a business outfit and sit at a desk.
Image from Unsplash
As for payments, Stutor has set up integrated payments â and tutees donât have to pay right away. They can avail of a tutoring session and complete the payment within a 24-hour window. They can also leave a tip if they want.
Stutor only takes a minuscule transactional fee. Bigger corporations take a good chunk and itâs understandable because theyâre massive and their overhead expenses are huge. But for them, their goal is not to make tons of money off students. Their main mission is to get students to receive the help they need. And they just need a tiny percentage to facilitate that.
A Program for Student Athletes
Stutor has also built a different platform for athletic administration.
Being a former student-athlete, CJ knows how things can be inefficient for full-time student-athletes who are always on the road. Their platform allows these people to get a premium membership and have access to archived video sessions.
Stutorâs sales teams are pitching that platform to all these athletic administrations. And there have been administrations who have already given them student-athletes and tutors. Thatâs on top of the tutor base that they already have, which regular students can get access to.
An Attractive Platform
CJ is optimistic that students can hop on their platform fairly easily because they need the kind of help that theyâre offering. With their big market pushes, heâs also looking forward to seeing the growth of their tutor acquisition.
What Stutor wants is to take away from the world of academia the negative stigma that you need to be a scholar to be a tutor. You donât need to be a scholar. You just need to be someone who has completed the class and gotten a respectable grade. And the good news is that there are students who are going to pay you for your knowledge.
To learn more about their platform, visit www.stutor.com. CJ and Tyler are also on LinkedIn.
This article is based on a transcript from my podcast The UnNoticed Entrepreneur, you can listen here.
Cover image by Flipsnack on Unsplash
