StartUs Presents: Meet’n’learn

Describe Meet’n’learn in 50 words or less.

Meet’n’learn will help you find verified and available tutors for your kids or yourself without commissions to tutoring agencies.

Why did you decide to pursue your own dreams rather than someone else’s?

We have tried corporate jobs and freelancing before and we had a feeling that we’re missing something. We were also inspired by successful friends who had their own online business. On the side we were always working on our projects. Somehow it always brought up the passion, satisfaction and freedom to realize our true selves. It was great to see first users in interactions on the platform. It pushed us to continuously improve the platform and workflows and build a company around it.

7 years from now: How did your startup change the world?

It is hard to be a fortuneteller. We celebrated our 3rd birthday, so in 7 years our company will be 10 years old! We want to be an established player in the tutoring business, expand to new markets and have the best partners for business. We believe for example that augmented reality will bring a new experience to learning and we want to be present when this happens. It is really not comfortable to use shared screens for learning, have notes on the screen which disappear after the lesson because they aren’t organized properly. The whole matchmaking platform is just a beginning from our point of view.

In what ways do you measure your success and how do you make sure you don’t lose track?

Feedback from users is always the best measure of success. There is nothing better than an email from a satisfied user. It also works very well in the opposite way. Other than that we’ve developed a list of internal KPIs, which we check on regular basis. If something goes wrong we usually notice it within a few minutes.

Describe your typical working day from coming to the office to leaving it.

I split my day into several parts. The first one early in the morning usually takes about 1 hour – checking KPIs from the day before, emails, etc. Then calls or a meeting with my colleagues about tasks and progress, and working on new opportunities and partnerships in the afternoon. What I found very helpful is a workout or run later in the afternoon. I can relax and new ideas always come to my mind. When that happens, I’m often trying to work on new ideas as soon as possible.

Bootstrapped or financed: What fuels your startup now and what will in the future?

We have just graduated from Wayra Munich accelerator (Telefonica – O2) – a well structured program, which we can compare to an accelerated business course. Acceleration helped us connect with mentors, advisors and investors. We are proud that during the acceleration we were funded by Neulogy Ventures.

With ferocious competition and a booming trend to build new companies: How do you make sure you don’t get lost in the shuffle?

For two-sided marketplaces it is always important to provide both: supply and demand, in order to avoid the “empty disco” effect. We’ve identified the best marketing channels from our first market and created a playbook out of that. Now it is all about replicating and improving this playbook on new markets and doing further development on the old one. We are aware that we aren’t alone in the business, but we think a competitive environment can help all players deliver better products and service to users.

What do you look for in team members?

We found hiring new team members to be the hardest part of building a company. We are still a small team, so a professional approach and good personal connection with new team members is extremely important for us. We fully realized the truth behind the words of advice from our Wayra mentors: that you simply can’t cheat the hiring process.

Why would a talent join your team?

We love the lean approach, testing and ongoing improvements based on observation or feedback from users. It is fun to see that all your actions have a real impact on the platform, you know? For now, we are operating just in 4 countries, so there is still lot of challenges related to expansion to new markets.

What was your most memorable moment so far?

We have several moments from our journey to highlight. The first one was meeting with our first paying customer, who sent us money as thanks for using our service that was free of charge at the time.

Later we received an invitation from Garan Goodman, the director of Wayra Munich, to join the program. Garan saw our promising, yet unsuccessful pitch in Wayra Prague. He was looking for tutors for his kids at the same time, so he understood the problem we offered to solve first hand and realized the potential. In the meantime meet’n’learn helped him find 2 tutors for his kids.

What advice would you give fellow founders for their startup?

Overnight success is a myth. It takes lots of hard work to make something real happen. Be prepared for that. Talk to people, people can help you. You never know, they can suggest you a new business idea or introduce you to a valuable contact. You can learn a lot from how others solve their problems.

Even looking for inspiration in companies from different markets, you can always find something that can help you improve your company. Like, wouldn’t you say that real estate classified websites are dealing with very similar issues as dating sites?

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