Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone has invested in a UK-based online tutor startup Scoodle.
Started in 2018, Scoodle positions itself as a platform that transforms ordinary tutors to influencers.
The company disclosed that it has generated $760,000 in pre-seed funding thanks to angel investors as Biz Stone, Tiny VC, IFG Ventures and other unamed investors.
Scoodle has gradually risen in users and boasts of over 100,000 users. With the growth in patronage, the company which hitherto had charged nothing in terms of subscription has now introduced a £10 dollar per month offering that will help tutors gain 30 times more enquiries.
Scoodle is the first ed tech company to join the Oxford University accelerator, Oxford Foundry.
Co-founder Ismail Jeilani said the idea of Scoodle was borne out of his own experience as a tutor, he explained that to pay his college fees he tutored as against taking a student loan.
“It’s difficult to find good tutors, because parents don’t know what to look for,” he tells me. “We solve this with a content-driven approach. Our tutors share content like learning resources on their profiles, which parents get to view before booking a lesson. Through this approach, tutors begin to develop their own brands, like ‘an educator’s LinkedIn.’ ”
The platform hosts top UK educators drawn from the best institutions in the country including Oxford, Cambridge and the Imperial College of London.
Similar to the tutor subscription is also a subscription plan for students which offers access to any tutor and materials and a Pro subscription with the extra added value of quick response and more direct access to tutors.
“It’s very common that a student discovers Scoodle on the back of a Google search,” adds Jeilani. “When they view an answer, they also see other answers from that tutor, along with how many students they’ve helped. This helps create trust.”
Other tutoring platforms in the UK include; Tutorful, Tutorhunt and myTutor but are not as prominent. The differentiator for Scoodle is its focus on tutor branding driven by content.
“Unique content gives us a different user acquisition channel along with long-term defensibility,” he says. “This tutor-focused approach also means we’re the first to have a 0% commission model. This keeps tutors on our platform longer than anywhere else.”