Tutoring Marketplace Preply Is Going back to the US Market
Brighton, MA (USA), March 2015 - The American-Ukrainian startup Preply.com is going back to the US market with an updated product marketplace for local and online language tutoring. Back in October 2012, Preply launched their marketplace in Boston for online tutoring only. Backed by famous Semyon Dukach, currently director of TechStars Boston, and a group of business angels, Preply was looking for a business model for six months. The team experienced huge competition from mature players. That's why the young co-founders decided to build their product and gain a critical mass of clients in the much smaller, but growing, Eastern Europe market.
"It was tough for team and investors, but we felt that it was the right decision. By bootstrapping the product in Eastern Europe, we have learned our key competitive advantages and growth engines to compete here in the US," says Kirill Bigai, CEO of Preply.
In April 2013, Preply launched their current product, focusing on language tutors for local and online classes. The platform gained significant improvement with rich tutor reviews and ranking algorithms, an internal learning cabinet, and a messaging system. The local class option enlarged the group of target users and helped educate the market about online tutoring. In a short period of time, supported by a number of native speakers from the US, English tutoring by Skype became Preply’s most popular class. It proved the hypothesis that online education needs a boarding process and highly skilled tutors from around the world.
Since pivoting, Preply was scaled to five countries and fifty cities in Eastern Europe. In December 2014, Preply successfully launched in Poland, the first non-Russian-speaking country after the US to be targeted. Again, online English tutoring became the most popular class at the beginning.
"Looking good. Maybe Preply has to come back and give Boston another try. Your team doesn't strike me as people who ever give up on anything," wrote Semyon Dukach in his email after learning of the rapid growth in Poland.
Now Preply has officially started acquiring tutors in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia. Any teacher can register and become a member of Preply's growing community.
Understanding almost everything in building and scaling tutor marketplaces, the company is going to raise another $2M to launch in major US cities. And as everyone understands now it's just the beginning.
