MeetTutors.com

Our mission is to connect people by creating an online community that facilitates educational and cultural exchanges among local residents and also with newcomers, and provide services that would enlighten and benefit all residents of Canada.

The Business Challenge

How to connect students who need extra help with tutors who are willing and able to give help? Until recently, the answer has been to rip a little piece of paper with a phone number on it off of a university bulletin board or bus stop ad and phone a complete stranger.

The Vision

Jenny Yu tutored when she was going through university, and she knows how difficult it is to connect with other students. After graduating and working in finance for several years where her job was to find and promote win-win situations for businesses, Jenny had a great idea.

Why not find a way for students to meet tutors and tutors to meet students online in a safe and secure manner? Why not provide the means for students and tutors to match their needs, skills and personalities in order to find a good match? Great idea! … Now how does Jenny, with no web development experience, get this up and running?

The Learning Process

Jenny knew that she had to write up a business plan, which she admits was one of the most difficult parts of starting MeetTutors.com. Once she had her ideas on paper she decided to educate herself in website development so that she could deal with web service providers in an intelligent and thoughtful way.

With business plan in hand Jenny visited eBC. She spoke with the eBC consultants about her ideas, attended almost all of the eBC seminars and utilized the one-on-one consulting services while developing her website.

The Solution

By no means an expert, but armed with enough information to know what needed to get done and what her options were, Jenny began looking for a web developer to create her site.

By this time, Jenny had a very good idea of what she wanted her website to look like and what kind of features she wanted. She went as far as creating PowerPoint slides of her vision.

Using a Request for Proposal form which outlined her needs, Jenny contacted 10 to 20 web development companies until she found one that she trusted and had the skills and resources to produce her website.

As well, knowing that her particular service opened her up to certain legal issues, she was wise in consulting with lawyers, university professors and other professionals. This enabled her to ensure that she and her clients were safe from moral and legal risks.

Together with her web developer, DPG Associates Web Design, Jenny has turned her great idea into a reality. MeetTutors.com is an amazing website that has the ability to connect tutors and students in a safe and easy way. Her service is very young but she already has over 100 users and was featured in the Metro daily newspaper.

That's Not All

Jenny was kind enough to allow us to share her story with other "dreamers" out there. She also wrote up a great step-by-step guide for overcoming the challenges that she has faced in building MeetTutors.com.

Please follow this link to read Jenny's Step-by-step guide for dreamers.