Name: Teachlr Website: www.teachlr.com Headquarters: Caracas, Venezuela Vertical: Lifelong Learning Tech: Web App, Mobile App
Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing.
Teachlr® is an educational marketplace, where anybody can learn through online courses and live customized classes. We also offer a Cloud Learning Management System, which is a product aimed at corporations, academies and universities interested in offering private corporate training to their employees and students. Our mission is to democratize education through technology. We integrate a social network with an e-learning platform, which results in the creation of an educational market where published classes and courses are validated and approved by the Teachlr community.
Who are the founders, how did you meet, what are your different roles in the startup.
Moisés Annicchiarico, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Rubén Benarroch, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), are childhood friends. Moisés is a Telecommunications Engineer and Rubén a Systems Engineer.
How was the idea for your startup born?
Rubén identified the demand for personalized classes from the comfort of ones home, while working in his previous project that consisted of private lessons on computer basics taught in customers’ residences. Jean Moisés discovers the demand for quick and accessible online assistance and tutorship. He proposes Rubén to develop a platform where live sessions could take place and Teachlr is born.
What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve.
People and organizations need to have easy and personalized access to high quality education.
Students are constantly seeking to learn new skills, but many don’t have the time or money to take classes at a prestigious institution. Teachers need an additional source of income, but have a reduced number of students, a tight schedule, no transportation and no available classrooms.
It is the case for many educational institutions that they generate insufficient funds, count with a limited space capacity, have professors with little availability, while producing high operational costs.
Many companies have untrained personnel and spend too much money in hiring professors and physical spaces to give programs that do not monitor their employees progress.
Who are your main competitors? What sets you apart from them?
Online courses: ● lynda, Oja.la, Tutellus, Floqq, Udemy and Youtube. ● Coursera.com, Edx, Udacity (MOOCs).
Live classes: ● Liveninja.com. ● Popexpert.com. ● Liveperson.In which markets / regions are you active. What markets / regions are next.
We are already active in Latin America and Spain. Our next market would be finding material in Portuguese and get into the Brazilian market.
Who is your target audience.
Students: Latin American 20-55 year old men and women of middle and high income background, interested in learning about technology, multimedia, business and lifestyle. Every theme attracts different kinds of people. For example, young men are drawn to technology, whereas 20-40 year old women are interested in lifestyle.
Experts/instructors: 26-55 year old men and women of middle and high income background from Spain and Latin America, qualified to teach about technology, multimedia, business and lifestyle.
How do you engage with your target audience. How do you convert them into users of your product.
Social media presence: daily publications on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Tumblr and our blog
Email marketing campaigns:
- Drip mail marketing to a segmented list of users.
- Transactionals mails
- Alliance with coupon website, Tudescuenton.
- Content marketing (Videos, Articles, Infographics)
Our distribution channels to make our three products (Teachlr Marketplace, Teachlr Organizations and Teachlr Content) reach our customers:
- Web: Teachlr.com is the online marketplace where instructors upload their online courses, which, once approved by our team, are available for purchase on the website. Users acquire every course through their PayPal account.
- Discount websites: Our online courses are offered in discount websites that have access to thousands of potential students in Venezuela and Latin America.
- Affiliates Program: Companies and individuals can become affiliates, who promote the online courses in numerous websites through coupons. They receive a 50% commission.
What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost.
The business model currently implemented on the Teachlr® Marketplace is Business to Customer (B2C): instructors and institutions receive 70% for each course or private lesson sold, and there are no charges for the publication of courses, subscriptions or the withdrawal of credits.
Additionally, the Business to Business (B2B) model named Teachlr Cloud LMS is being developed. This is a cloud service tool that allows companies, institutions and universities to offer and manage training programs for employees and students through private lessons or teachlr.com courses. This Software as a Service (SaaS) model is conducted through monthly subscriptions; the cost per user depends on the volume of licenses needed by the customer.
Are there milestones you are especially proud of and would like to share.
- Alexa ranking #80 (Venezuela) and #18k (global)
- 400 registered teachers
- 2.281 likes on our Teachlr Facebook page, plus 4.199 likes on our Teachlr en Español Facebook page.
- Monthly organic growth of 30%
- 10,000 monthly visits
- Ratio of professor to student is 1:30
What are the next steps in growing your startup.
Objectives established for July 2015:
- Annual income of $224,000
- Enrollment of more that 25 B2B
- Enrollment of more than 100,000 certified teachers
- Enrollment of 320,000 active students
- Customer rating of 4+ out of 5 stars
- Launch of the redesigned platform
- Development and launch of the “Needs System”
- Launch of the B2B model
- Native Mobile Applications
- Better video streaming quality
- Faster processing speed
- Geographic redundancy
- 150.000 likes on Facebook
How can people get in touch with you.
email: info@teachlr.com phone: 582126157994 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Teachlr Twitter: https://twitter.com/teachlr_en Google+: https://plus.google.com/+Teachlr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/teachlr Instagram: https://instagram.com/teachlr?ref=badge Our Blog: https://blog.teachlr.com/