Tutorspree: A better way to hire from the $7 billion tutoring industry

Here are some facts that you probably didn’t know:

• Buyers spend $5-7 billion per year on tutoring
• Agencies take a 50-80% cut on all sessions
• Some sessions run as high as $1,000 per hour

The facts you probably do know? Finding a tutor is difficult at best and word of mouth recommendations are about the only way to find a good one.

Tutorspree is looking to toss the entire tutoring ecosystem firmly onto its ear. By offering an Airbnb-style platform for finding, hiring and giving feedback on tutors, it’s putting more money into the right pockets and keeping quality at its highest.

I had a chance to speak with Aaron Harris, the CEO and co-founder of Tutorspree about the problems that seem to only be known to those who find out too late.

“The problem with the system right now is that it robs people of the things that they want”, says Harris. Those things, he posits, are the ability to know the quality of a tutor, the ability to compare that quality and an easy way to get the hiring handled.

Tutorpsree has a few advantages that most self-hired tutors can’t touch. First off, it has credit card processing. For the parent-at-home scenario, this is key. Beyond that, though, it also offers a messaging service, the ability to book a tutor directly from the site and a feedback loop. That loop is a quintessential missing part from most choices on the market today.

Sure, you can pay a thousand bucks and hour to have your kid tutored in rocket science. At the moment, $5-800 of that, every hour, is landing into the hands of an agency that doesn’t let you keep in contact with other customers. Need a tutor for a new subject? You have to start your process of locating one all over again.

A simple, straightforward site fixes every problem that has been mentioned thus far. Students and parents can visit the Tutorspree site, find a tutor at their school for the subject that they need, then hire the tutor via the site itself. Whether the experience is good or bad, feedback can be given and the Tutorspree team pays attention to keep only the best of the best working through the site.

After having just graduated from a Y Combinator class, Harris and team are doing the exact opposite of what we normally see — they’re moving back home to New York. Over the summer, the team is hoping to hire even more (they’re looking for a Design Lead, if you’re interested) and execute the vision that they have before the Fall semester begins.

So whether you’re in the market now, will be later, or know someone who is, Tutorspree is worth your visit. At present, it only services schools in San Francisco and New York, but the idea is to expand more as the hiring continues.