"I've always been an entrepreneur my entire life," says Donny Ouyang, "I started when I was 12."
Like many young entrepreneurs, he quickly found himself more intrigued by his extracurricular activities than anything in the classroom. "Because of that I didn't spend a lot of time learning," Ouyang says. And then, after a pause: "School... wasn't my thing."
It's perhaps especially fitting then that Ouyang has just launched what he describes as the world's first market-driven tutoring platform, called
Rayku. He's hoping not only to find success with his startup, but to help students like him who have had bad experiences both at school and with traditional tutoring.
Rayku's idea is simple: tutors sign up to provide online assistance to students via the site's whiteboard and other digitial services, and are rated by their students as they go. The higher they rank—in theory, the more effective they are—the more they can charge.
Currently Rayku is focused on high school and first year univerisity students who need help with math. Ouyang plans to expand in a number of directions: first to other areas of the curriculum (science, essay writing), then to other levels of complexity, and then to a broader range of subjects—everything from standardized test preparation services to financial advising.
The startup has raised $400,000 of investment so far, and is "hiring aggressively," says Ouyang. He hopes to add two business development positions and two engineers to Rayku's staff by January.
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Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Donny Ouyang, Founder & CEO, Rayku