Launching publicly on the TechCrunch Disrupt stage this afternoon is a company called StudyRoom, which aims to take student study groups and tutoring online, and make them more social. The company has already been running trials of its program in six universities, starting this spring, and now claims to reach 40,000 students across the U.S. who use it as a platform for social, peer-to-peer learning.
Explains co-founder and CEO Emerson Malca, the idea for an online student-led studying platform is something he was inspired to build, having been a tutor himself. He said the experience helped him to understand that sometimes the best way to learn things is to teach others.
One incident really got Malca thinking about how prevalent the problem still was today, was when a friend came to him for help with her physics homework. He asked her why she didn’t just ask someone from her class, and she said she only had two phone numbers for fellow students. One didn’t reply, she told him, and the other didn’t know how to do the problem.
“We realized nothing had changed at all since we were in college,” says Malca, describing he and his co-founder Pindi Albert’s reaction to hearing this news. “For us it was shocking to see that the most social, most connected generation ever couldn’t get in touch with the people they see everyday in class,” he says.
Judges’ Q&A
Judges this round include: Susan Lyne, President, BBG Ventures; Tony Conrad, Founding Venture Partner, True Ventures; Sarah Leary, co-founder Nextdoor; David Prager, Founding Partner, The Assembly. Q&A paraphrased for brevity.
Leary: Don’t you need to partner with universities for this to work?
A: Absolutely not, we’re doing a student led/peer-to-peer model.
Leary: How do you verify the students are in the classes?
A: We ask the students for their .edu email, so we can verify they attend the school.
Conrad: But don’t you ultimately want to work with universities?
A: We’ve talked to a lot of universities. Getting them to adopt a platform like this is hard. Our approach is to take over the entire school first then go back to university, and show them all the things we’re doing. Plans to share data with them around social learning.
Lyne: During the beta, you had 40K students…any feedback from them about whether they did better than peers?
A: We talked to hundreds of them, and we still found some people needed extra help. That’s why we’re doing the peer mentor model.
Conrad: How did you get 40K students signed up?
A: Did a big marketing push on social media. We started talking to students on Facebook and Twitter; Students think it’s awesome and want to help; We’re also doing on-the-ground thing, and we’re working with fraternities/sororities
Prager: It’s absolutely brilliant…would have signed up if it was avail when I was in school. Haven’t seen something like this. My only question…is the only revenue right now the student mentor model?
A: Yes, that will be the main core of our business.
Lyne: If you do succeed, at certain point students graduate – do you think about what you can do with that population going forward?
A: For people who graduate, if they’re having trouble getting a job, they could still go in and be peer mentors to others.
