WyzAnt, a Chicago-based digital marketplace for tutors, is looking for some of that San Francisco tech bubble magic. But can the veteran platform embrace tech 2.0 while adhering to the law?
WyzAnt / Via youtube.com
At 6'4", Andrew Geant is a big guy on a little coffee-shop stool, and he's squirming. He's trying to avoid saying "growth hacking," but he can't think of another word that means the same thing. "Growth hacking" has been on Geant's mind a lot, ever since he hired Adam Fishman, formerly of Lyft, to be the new vice president of growth at his decade-old tutoring company, WyzAnt (pronounced "Wise Ant"). But while raising the public profile of the company is what Geant is looking to do, actually saying the buzzwords aloud seems to make him uncomfortable.
Geant is visiting San Francisco from Chicago, where WyzAnt's 60-person headquarters is located. Geant briefly tried and hated a career in banking after college, after which he turned to tutoring to make money — but he found it very hard to find clients. "There was Craigslist," he said. "That was it." That frustration turned out to be the inspiration that he needed; soon after, he and Mike Weishuhn — now the company's CTO — launched WyzAnt, a searchable database where parents and students can find tutors.
Today, WyzAnt has more than 80,000 tutors actively using the platform to find teaching gigs, and more than a million students who are (or whose parents are) using it to find and book tutors, track progress, and make payments. There are WyzAnt tutors working in all 50 states, within 10 miles of 97 percent of the U.S. population. Tutors earn, on average, $45 an hour, and WyzAnt takes a about a 20% commission for each lesson.
But the company wants to keep growing — which is why it brought on Fishman, who is working on ways to overcome the limits of geography, for example, expanding the company's online learning product — which offers students and tutors interactive video conferencing — as well as pursuing international markets. And it's slowly starting to experiment with mobile apps: 15,000 tutors have downloaded a WyzAnt app that allows them to scroll for new jobs, book gigs, and otherwise manage their businesses. Next up, although not yet released, is an app for students (or, as the more likely case may be, their parents).
The messaging feature on WyzAnt's forthcoming app for parents
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