Building Yup for Schools
Eighteen months ago, I sat in a classroom at Synergy Quantum Academy (SQA) in South Central Los Angeles with Mr. Kim, one of the school’s algebra teachers. I was showing him transcripts of tutoring sessions and was a bit nervous. SQA was our first school client and I was unsure how he would react. “A two hour session, are you sure this is Jessica’s?” he asked. Jessica was one of his most introverted students — never asked questions or participated in class — and here she was engaging for hours with a tutor she had never met, proclaiming, “I feel smart! :) Let’s try another.” Next we looked at Andrew. Far from an introvert, he preferred to make the class laugh when he was confused. “Thanks Ms. Price, I get it now. You’re good at explaining and verry patient” he said. Mr. Kim was impressed. I was ecstatic!
I’ve always been passionate about education. As a high school senior, I spent 6 weeks volunteering full-time at St. Odilia School in South Central LA, just a few blocks from Synergy. I loved working directly with students and felt first-hand the differences between my schooling at Loyola, a top-tier college prep school, and the educational challenges facing both students and teachers in underserved communities, where systemic poverty plays a strong factor. I will never forget my frustration trying to convince Julian, one of my brightest students, to apply to Loyola, only two miles away. I filled out the application and paid the fees for him, but he never showed up for his interview. He later admitted that he didn’t feel confident enough to walk onto Loyola’s daunting gothic campus. I felt helpless in that moment and pledged to one day help students like Julian develop the confidence that I had developed at his age. Eight years later, I joined Yup Technologies, an edtech startup out of Stanford University, to try and fulfill that pledge.
At its core, Yup is about helping students build confidence and learn. We are building the technology infrastructure to make quality 1:1 learning possible for today’s students and the future generation of leaders. Yup’s first product is a homework help mobile app, where students can connect to tutors, 24/7, to work through their problem and understand concepts. I love the team, the business potential, and the excitement of working in an early stage startup. However, the primary reason I joined is because I believe this is my best opportunity to help students like Jessica, Andrew, and Julian.
After getting buy-in from our CEO, I started Yup for Schools to ensure we were reaching students of all demographics, especially those that really needed support but couldn’t afford it. The idea was to expand the tutoring market to include financially constrained students through subsidized access for schools. Despite our early success with this model at SQA, the last 18 months were the most challenging of my career. From learning how to build out a sales process, to developing a holistic business model, to facing rejection — after rejection, after rejection — I had to figure it out on the go.
I’m the first to admit that we made a lot of mistakes along the way. First, we overpriced our product, then we underpriced; we confused and probably annoyed many of our first teachers. But we also helped a lot of students, many of whom had never had 1:1 support before and had never leveraged technology for learning. We still have plenty to learn but we’ve started to figure out the most important elements. We have a unique value proposition for schools, we have a service that genuinely impacts student performance and helps build confidence, we’ve figured out how to support both low-income and high-income schools, while generating revenue; and we’ve grown our team to focus on customer success. Most importantly, we’ve established great partnerships. We are fortunate to be working with some of the best organizations across the country including College Track, The Boys and Girls Club, KIPP, San Francisco Unified and leading private schools.
Yup has worked with over 1 million students of all demographics in all 50 states. If you’re a teacher, administrator, or just passionate about edtech, please reach out. We’re always looking to partner with more schools.
Stay tuned for more posts spotlighting some of our students’ inspirational stories, insights from the wealth of data we’ve analyzed, and a unique perspective on edtech.
Michael