You spaced out during class and you have no clue how to do your homework. You’ve tried Youtube and you don’t want to listen to a 30-minute speech on the off chance that it will answer your very specific question. Where should you turn? To LOOPi. The platform that connects you with classmates and tutors exists to make sure that getting stuck on a problem wont take as long as it used to. Instead, you’ll become connected to a personalized tutor that will work with you efficiently so that you can get back to binge watching Netflix shows.
LOOPi tells us about their plan of expansion to different college networks as well as all the upsides to taking advantage of all of their resources.
Tell us about the product or service.
LOOPi is an on-demand knowledge sharing community. The platform facilitates crowdsource tutoring by connecting students seeking immediate assistance with dozens of classmates that can instantly assist. LOOPi works by allowing students to form course-specific communities, where each can submit a studying help request detailing what they need and how much they would like to pay (homework tutorial, study-guide, class notes, etc.). The platform then loops in classmates and professional tutors who begin to upload and bid their customized tutorials and strive to be the one getting purchase at the end. All that is left for the struggling student to do is simply purchase the content that matches his needs based on rating and reviews.
How is it different?
LOOPi differentiates its self from the various MOOC (YouTube or Khan Academy) and search engines, by making the learning experience much more efficient, effective, and collaborative while at the same time – personalized. By creating an online cooperative classroom community, students will have the ability to tap into study resources and tutorials which were created specifically for their needs. The unique content which is being created by fellow class peers (per demand) goes above and beyond than what can be found on Google. In addition, attributable to our on-demand service, students are able to eliminate the wasted time spent on watching videos explaining the same concept they were already taught in class, and instead receive an instant answer for their course-specific questions by leveraging their classroom collective knowledge.
What market are you attacking and how big is it?
We are attacking the E-learning market. More specifically our market comprises of nearly 17 million students from nearly 4,400 universities in the United States. The closest market to our product is the Learning management system market which is approximately reach 8 billion dollars in 2018. We are a study resources sharing platform with social network components that resemble certain features of learning management platform. However, we are not targeting institutions rather the students who attend these universities. We will be focusing primarily in the Northeast region and launch our product initially at CUNY universities which comprises 24 colleges with 550,000 students enrolled.
What is the business model?
LOOPi will retain 15% of each transaction from both the content provider and the content consumer. Future revenue stream will be used study-book market place and professor ratings.
What are the milestones that you plan to achieve within six months?
LOOPi is currently running a limited beta testing in five different MBA courses at Baruch College. However, starting 2016 Spring semester we are planning to fully launch our platform in four different CUNY colleges (5% stake holder), where we will mainly focus on subject-matter courses such as calculus, accounting, physics and the different science courses. Our goal is to continue improving and developing the platform, and most importantly increase traction. After winning cash prizes from several startup competitions, our next milestone is to get accepted to a reputable national accelerator to help guide us through our journey and put us in touch and in front the right investors.
If you could be put in touch with one investor in the New York community who would it be and why?
Elad Gil – Elad is an inspirational serial entrepreneur and investor/advisor to some of the most successful private companies such as AirBnB, Pinterest, Square, Stripe.
Why did you launch in New York?
In our opinion, New York City is the best city in the world to launch LOOPi. New York is enormous, yet it is so well linked by public transportation which makes it very easy and seamless for service provider to execute their logistics. New York also has an incredibly diverse group of people, and most importantly for us – dozens of colleges! This assortment provides us with an opportunity to get feedback about our service from all different types of people. This is very helpful as we look to advance our service and platform.
Where is your favorite place to visit in the area in the fall?
As obvious as one might find it, my favorite place to visit in the fall is Central Park; something about those colors. Recommended spots: The Pond, The Ramble, and The Reservoir.
