https://drive.google.com/file/d/15QgctssG-kRDP9vN91Ss_InD1becxssF/view?usp=sharing, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cedTnQAlLss5zrXJnzhSspSM28KIel3o/view?usp=sharing

Online marketplace to connect parents and teachers

Parents struggle to find both academic and non-academic classes for their children that fit into their busy lives. Current websites provide an enquiry form that requires the teacher to call back to discuss on availability. Parents typically shortlist 5 or more teachers and that is time-consuming and inefficient. Lesson Plan allows parents to find, instantly book, and pay for highly-rated offline and online classes at times and locations that work for them.

On the other side, teachers struggle to reach students and fill their vacant slots. Once they find students, it’s difficult to collect fees on time and keep track of the business. Lesson Plan is a marketing platform for teachers to help them fill their slots combined with a mini-ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) that gets them paid up-front, every month.

Singapore

Hanrong and I have been working together setting up a swim school for the past 10 years. We met Mike in 2019 where we engaged his services to help run digital advertising for the swim school.

Hanrong and I have been working together setting up a swim school for the past 10 years. We met Mike in 2019 where we engaged his services to help run digital advertising for the swim school.

We meet regularly on a weekly basis in person.

We have just reached the MVP stage and have launched a platform that is processing real transactions since January 2022. There are 200 teachers (teachers and schools) on the platform listing more than 2000 available timings. So far, 90 students have registered and paid for classes on LessonPlan.

We started working on the idea in Dec 2020 and commissioned development in June 2021. I have been working on it full-time since then while Hanrong and Mike are each working on it 50% of their time, while continuing their current businesses. If we are accepted to YC and/or raise the next round of funding, they will also convert to full-time on Lesson Plan.

We have 90 students on the platform. We charge a 10% transaction fee. We make the most revenue when students join private (1 to 1) lessons due to the higher class fees (AVG $236 USD /month). The private lesson segment has been growing since the pandemic due to the smaller class size and safe distancing measures.

Most students will have more than 1 enrichment class, the same student will also be interested to enrol in other subjects. As LessonPlan continues to increase the breadth of subjects we offer, there is a strong likelihood that they will be able to find other suitable classes on the platform.

Currently, most teachers join LessonPlan without bringing in their current students because they have not had the chance to use the features on the platform. We believe this will change with time as the teachers get more touchpoints with the features that can help them to be more efficient.

As we grow in users over time, there will be a tipping point where teachers have most of their students on LessonPlan. It will then make sense for them to bring the rest of their students onboard LessonPlan to manage in a single platform.

Furthermore, once we acquire the sufficient percentage of teachers from one industry, we expect more remaining teachers in the subject to join LessonPlan organically and at lower cost.

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We recently enrolled in AWS edstart and Engenesis Venture Building Start-Up Program.

Hanrong has been a swim coach since 2007 and built his school to 60 students found through word-of-mouth. I was introduced to him through a mutual friend. As my side gig, I worked with him to establish Ace Dolphin Swimming School, recruited coaches, built a website using my limited coding skills, printed some flyers, set up online payments, and tried to do some promotion on Facebook. We grew it to 500 students in 5 years. About 3 years ago, we were introduced to Mike, who runs his own online marketing agency and hired him to run some online marketing campaigns. With this, we added 500 more students in 6 months.

It blew our minds how quickly a well-executed online marketing presence could build the business. But we also knew that the whole experience could be better if parents could instantly identify available classes at the time and place they want and could instantly book them. This would help teachers fill all of their empty slots and grow their businesses.

We want all teachers to benefit from the kind of growth we experienced - so we founded LessonPlan.

Many parents see this as a problem, as they experience it in finding classes for their kids; however, they do not understand the school and teacher side of the equation. Mike and Danny experienced these first hand as recently became parents to new borns in 2019. Our intimate understanding of the coaching side allows us to create a unique project that can not only link parents and teachers together - but allows teachers to run their businesses effectively.

On the other side, ERP platforms tailored to teachers do exist, but they do not link to marketplaces. Similarly, there are marketplaces that offer selling opportunities for teachers, but they do not address operational problems a teachers face.

The gap of how to help teachers get students remains unfilled. Only LessonPlan brings both parents and teachers together.

Additionally, the LessonPlan founders are well positioned to solve the coach challenges (Hanrong), market LessonPlan to the parents (Mike) and Scale the business (Danny).

We make money by charging a transaction fee on the initial and recurring billing of courses (10% of course value). Through our initial market research, teachers have confirmed that they are willing to pay this, as their current costs of acquiring new students are often higher (through agencies, etc…) and/or they don’t know how to market themselves.

The global private tutoring market (both academic and non-academic) is forecast to reach over $200B by 2026, up from $123B today (https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/private-tutoring-market-104753). Capturing 10% of this market ($20B) could generate $2B in transaction fees. Beyond transaction fee revenue, we see additional potential revenue lines in platform promotion, premium placement, landing page and other marketing-related products. Finally, the platform once established in its core private tutoring market could be applied in other place/ time sensitive applications.

Lesson Plan Pte. Ltd (a Singapore Private Limited company) was incorporated in December 2020.

Danny Heng - 31.16%
Huang Hanrong - 29.64%
Mike Lim - 15.2%
Ace Dolphin Pte Ltd - 8%
NIcholas Stipp - 8%
Colin Pereira - 8%

Ace Dolphin Pte Ltd, $100,000 SGD invested, at $950,000 SGD premoney valuation. Stock 1053

NIcholas Stipp, $100,000 SGD invested, at $950,000 SGD premoney valuation. Stock 1053

Colin Pereira, $100,000 SGD invested, at $950,000 SGD premoney valuation. Stock 1053

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No.

We have outsourced the development of our platform, as none of the founding teams are high-skill coders. We have full ownership over the code and IP associated with it. Mike, who has experience in building products and booking platforms using outsourced teams through his own business, is currently fronting the product development and directing the outsourced teams.

With the next round of funding, one of our first hires will be a Head of Engineering with coding skills and we would leave it to him to hire a few junior in-house engineers that could continue to be supplemented by outsourced teams for now.

Currently, this is not a high-complexity product technologically, so the team chose to leverage its expertise in selling and marketing courses and teaching to direct the initial MVP.

No.

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We believe there’s no better platform globally to help scale a start-up. We also see many companies that we admire or use as benchmarks, like Airbnb and Outschool, who have been hugely successful following the program.

It’s hard not to be familiar with YC, but our founders and advisors are also engaged with a few SE Asia - based YC companies, including Spenmo, Aspire, and Xendit.