Category: MGT 5985 – Reflections

This was one of the best courses so far, after taking other management classes. Most of the learning was self taught, reading articles, putting all what you have been taught into action, creating a website. It was all for our benefits, coming out of our comfort zone and trying out things we thought we could never do or achieve. Is one thing to create a business idea plan for a class and it is another thing to take more steps further and run this business idea plan to see what your targeted customers really think. That was the most fun part of this course the MVP testing. I am happy I got the chance to actually create an ad, I have never done that before. It is so cool to watch other people or see people being interested in your product you thought of  literally two months ago. It takes people years to come up with an idea but all of us in this where put into that test and we experienced what it had to take design a solution/product that people would be interested in. 

Also, I liked the fact that the mode of teaching for this class was very open and understanding, giving students the option to pick working by themselves or working with students in class was a good teaching skill. People are better off working better when they are alone and they are given the opportunity to do that. 

It was a pleasure taking the course with all of you and professor you were the best! Have nice summer everyone!

After three weeks of not hearing from anyone, I decided to make use of my social media platforms to reach out to some start up business, I honestly thought it wasn’t going to work out because I felt it was more appropriate to email companies or use professor social platform to reach out to people for interviews but this time it actual worked out.

I message the owner of Tutting, a start up company.  Andres Sanabrai, he is from Guatemala and it is a different time zone from New York, he still agreed to meet up with me for 30 minutes to asers the questions I had for him. Andres was extremely grateful that I asked him to do this and he was happy to search his experience with me.

Andres started his Tutting business started recently in 2020. The platforms used in hiring face- to- face and online tutors via mobile.

Questions asked during the interview

1. What Motivated him to start the company?: Before I thought about starting the company I worked in universities, I had my own students that I will tutor. I made a lot of friends while I was working, I had some personal problems that people were dealing with as I was tutoring but I really couldn’t do anything about it, it wasn’t in my place. Then he did some surveys and reached out to people about his idea, quit his job and decided to start his own business. 
2. Where their competitors made it difficult for you to start, how did he handle it?: He said, I have just started, I am still at a point where I am trying to validate the customer bracket. It is difficult for me to directly compete with other established businesses, it is pretty difficult for a one man team, compared to already established companies that have all sizes of business customers. The most difficult part is building up something that will be entirely different and people will like so much and will prefer to use your application than the other established companies. 
3. What constant challenges he is facing right?: The most difficult thing is to have enough people on your platform. There are tutors, students and you need to have a good amount of tutors for these students. If students come online and search for the type of tutors they are looking for and they don’t find them, they will end up leaving his platform and going to another tutoring site, which is bad for him. This is the type of challenge he is facing right now. Balancing tutors with students.

I will be reaching out to Wyzant (Key Competitor) through their support customer care email and hoping someone actually writes back. I am also going to Tutor.com on the website they have a session where you could make inquiry to speak to someone working with the company. 

Questions I’d like to ask is:

1. What motivated them to start this company?
2. Where there competitors that made it difficult for them when they started and how did they handle it?
3. What are the constant challenges you can be facing in the business? Have you faced any yet?
4. Could you give an estimate of how much it cost you or your team to start this business?

I am hoping to get more insight about entrepreneurs and their business. I know it’s very difficult to start a business and be successful at it, I want motivate ideas that they had to come up with. The challenges that they faced while working, did they have a partner that almost sabotaged the business and how did they handle their competitors. I will like to gain more knowledge on how to be an entrepreneur, the gains and pains companies go through to succeed. I am looking for real life problems and accomplishments. 

I did a competitive analysis on a tutoring company called Wyzant. It is also a professional private tutoring platform that connects students with professional teachers who have a Bachelor’s degree, teaching certificate to provide solutions to students’ needs. This company had features I plan on implementing into my business idea such as having in person tutoring and not just online through the website or app, having multiple ways to pay tutors, no upfront payments or subscriptions to making sure students get the full satisfaction before they pay. Those are some common features that both my company and wyzant will be having.

Although this is similar to my idea, during my research I found some cons about wyzant that make their customers quit using their planform and I could use those cons and apply them into my own idea in a good way, for example wyzant allows tutors to pick the prices they want to charge their students which is a good thing but then 25% of the money goes to the company which tutors find that really challenging and difficult to give because they aren’t making much profit on their ends. Wyzant does not supply previous exam past questions to students who need them for practice and wyzant in person meetings with tutors are based on locations that either tutor or a student pick, which is not safe for both parties. For my idea the in person meeting has to be within a school’s premises to keep both the tutor and the students in a safe environment. I won’t want to be taking 25% off tutors payment, instead I let the students pay in cash to tutors after their services or give the tutors the options to pick their mode of payment.

Our value proposition is almost the same goal, being flexible, efficient and effective to serve both tutors and students from different colleges because we are both carrying out the same kind of services. I think I’d still go on with this business idea, I will probably still have to do more research on how to stand out because Wyzant currently has tons of users at different colleges, they are flexible, have multiple slots available for students, over 300 subjects available to all students not just college students. If I am coming into the market I have to make that big/important change to attract customers and make profit. 

I remember joining TikTok some time in April 2020, when it was blowing over the internet. A lot of people started using it due to quarantine idleness to entertain one another and create content to express themselves or their talent, it could either be cooking, dancing, artistry work, start up business etc. I believe TikTok made a positive path in solving people’s problems such as making people have more confidence in themselves when leaving positive comments on the content they create. It has united people from all over the world, It has made it faster for individuals to get noticed for example, uploading a video of your small business and getting views from all over the world, showing people life hacks, singing or dancing and lands you a contract with a big company. I believe it has also created a safer space for individuals to be themselves, show their passion and creativity. It has also made people feel less lonely.

TikTok gets funding through advertising, their business model is based on advertising. People get over 100Million views and get so many people’s attention from different parts of the world, so most people use TikTok to boost their business and in order to run an ad through TikTok you have to pay TikTok. I believe TikTok was originally formed in china from a company called ByteDance. I remember this app called musical.ly and it was exactly like how TikTok is, making short video clips to share with friends. When TikTok was released, I thought they only changed the name but it was like an upgrade and a different goal from the former app, musical.ly. Right now TikTok is not fully owned by China anymore, 15% of it is owned by the U.S. I couldn’t really find an old pitch from early years but I found a slide deck from 2019.  https://s3-prod.adage.com/s3fs-public/2019-10/20191008_TikTokDeck_Watermarked.pdf