Ideally Students Pay $20/mo To Learn From Robots, $1,000,000 In Revenue in 2015, EP 263: Aditya Singhal

Aditya Singhal, an education technology entrepreneur who’s hoping to fully automate tutoring in the next five years. Aditya believes in low-cost, high-quality education for all. Tune in as he and Nathan talk automated education, subscription models, and why Silicon Valley is overrated. Famous 5 Favorite Book? – Growth Hacker Marketing What CEO do you follow? — Elon Musk What is your favorite online tool? — Twitter Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? —I wish I knew how to hack growth faster Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:25 – Nathan’s introduction 01:45 – Welcoming Aditya to the show 02:10 – There are 21 million college students in the states, looking for help 02:30 – Created TransTutors - an AI teaching assistant 02:50 – Subscription model: $20 each month, 30k customers 03:10 – Not a typical SaaS business model - uses humans assisted by code 04:05 – Revenue is $60-80k per month 04:20 – Business founded August 2014 04:30 – Revenue is 2015 around $1 million 04:50 – Initially self-funded; now raising investment from 500 Startups 05:00 – Hoping to raise $2.5 million by convertible note 05:30 – Making a trade-off: wants to learn from Silicon Valley 06:10 – Are tech hubs overrated? 06:30 – About 40% of customers (12k) are paying monthly 07:30 – In February 2016 had 3k active paying customers 08:05 – Users typically stay 4-6 months (one semester) 08:40 – Team of 10 people, including 8 in India 09:00 – A young engineer in India earns around $30k per year 10:00 – Aditya’s goal is to have a fully automated teaching system 10:20 – Would be happy to sell once he’s achieved his goal 10:50 – Equity split 50/50 between Aditya and his partner 11:30 – Connect with Aditya by email or twitter 14:50 – Famous Five 3 Key Points: Create the solution your market are looking for - even if they don’t know it yet Be clear about your business vision Focus on finding social marketing methods to grow your business explosively Resources Mentioned: Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts. Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible. Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+ Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books. Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives