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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
