I was lucky enough to get an early peek at EduFire, a soon to launch platform for distributed learning (language focused today).
Want to learn Mandarin with a native speaker from Guangzhou? Too lazy to leave the comfort of your new MacBook Pro? Not a problem. Go to EduFire–pick a tutor based on community ratings, set up a time and handle it (via VoIP + live video). By connecting students with language tutors, EduFire intends to create an open marketplace for learning.
The trends I am starting see in educational software are: people teaching people (not bots), applications that get better with scale and the breaking down of location hierarchies. As some of you know, I believe the education space is ripe for disruption (huge infrastructural inefficiencies–much like health care). That’s why I am so intrigued by this new class of innovations that appear to “releasing” the old school friction.
The founders, my friends, Kareem Mayan and Jon Bischke have so far done a superb job at simplifying the user experience. Moreover, the value propositions are extremely clear (for both tutors and students) and it’s evident the application has international reach. EduFire is pre-series A and looks to launch in the next quarter.
Rosetta Stone watch out.
What are you guys up to?
J: We’re building a platform to enable students to learn from teachers over the web and to find teachers directly (rather than through an intermediary). Historically virtually all learning has occurred face to face and therefore people have been limited to learning from those who are geographically close to them. We’re going to change this.
K: We’re helping those phenomenal teachers we’ve all had have a larger influence and get paid correspondingly well. It’s a fallacy that a branded educational institution has the same caliber of teachers, i.e. “If you teach at Harvard, you’re the best”. Sites like RateMyProfessors.com show that the individual teacher matters much more than the institution. We’re creating a platform for those teachers to have a greater impact.
What led to this idea? Was it practical application?
J: I’ve been running online training and education businesses for overa decade. My first business sprung directly from an experience I doing Microsoft training in a classroom and realizing that I couldscale my knowledge so much better online. However my limitation then was technology and I spent way too much time hand-coding HTML (this was 1998) rather than focusing on teaching. A decade later the same limitation exists. It’s simply not as easy as it should be to teach people virtually.
What technical and market forces make you think this application will succeed today?
J: Technically it’s video chat. It’ll sound cliche but I think that’s the next killer app. I think we’re finally there with webcam and broadband adoption. And its emergence will fundamentally change a lot of industries. Market-wise, it’s pretty easy to see that traditional education is broken and people are looking for alternatives. Over 1 million kids are now home-schooled. That number was less than 50K a decade ago. More parents than ever are shelling out money for private tutoring. Education is shifting away from a government-controlled monopoly and towards a private-sector marketplace for the primary reason that the current system is so ineffective. As that happens businesses that are poised to take advantage of this massive shift (education is estimated to be a 2 trillion dollar industry globally) will do very well. Of course there’s a chance I might be biased. 
Tell me about your customer.
K: The customers we’ve talked to so far have been between 13-35, more comfortable with technology than the average person, and motivated to learn. That last point is key–the initial opportunity is with people who are looking to learn from the best tutors out there. We’ve heard crazy stories about affluent families flying a tutor from LA to NY to tutor their kids… while that may continue to happen, geography doesn’t have to be a constraint on who people can learn from anymore. We think our customers are going to be very excited about finding a tutor that’s perfect for them, regardless of where they live.
Can you speak to the global implications of this business?
J: I paid $8 a couple of days ago for a one hour Spanish lesson with an excellent teacher in Guatemala. That’s game-changing. The software industry has transformed into a global marketplace over the last decade. It’s our feeling that education will transform into a global marketplace over the next decade.
Do you have any direct competitors?
J: Tutor.com and Tutorvista have raised a bunch of money in the space. But their models are much different. The closed business model (hiring teachers and making money off the spread) is easier to get off the ground in the short run. The question is whether a closed model can beat an open model (building a platform and community filtering mechanisms to differentiate the great from the good) over the long run. Our feeling is that the success of Wikipedia, YouTube and eBay points to the advantages that open models have. There are definitely tons of challenges with doing an open model right but if you execute amazing things can happen.
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