Meet the eHarmony of Tutoring If it works for dates, it should work for matching students with tutors.
By Andrew Tilin •
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If it works for dates, it'll work for tutoring. That's the approach WyzAnt has taken to introduce its roughly 2 million registered users to the 75,000 active tutors on its database, available to help anyone from kindergartners to Ph.D. candidates nail their coursework. Along the way, the Chicago-based service has booked $100 million in tutoring sessions, earning anywhere from 5 to 40 percent of each lesson, depending on the tutor's experience.
Princeton graduate Andrew Geant conceived the company (pronounced "wise ant") in 2005 after turning his back on a finance career to become a part-time tutor, specializing in math. But he struggled to find clients through word-of-mouth or listing services with limited ads. So he teamed up with software developer Michael Weishuhn, a buddy from college, to create a better way.
"We wanted to create a marketplace that eliminated the overhead and got past the friction of finding a tutor," Geant says.