Tesi da Lode: Fondazione della startup "Teach Me"

5 FORCES OF PORTER ANALYSIS

2. Buyers power - Low

This force deals with the ability customers have to drive prices down.

Tutors (Low)

They are many and not organized, can’t compete on price with us (subscription plan) but only among themselves.

But we must select adequate pricing or provide different subscription plans. Also, word-of-mouth is free for tutors, so we must keep that in mind. We can estimate additional profit for tutor if he will start using our service.

Integration (Low)

Not possible from buyer side, possible from our side. We can make professional tutors our partners.

3. Rivalry - Medium

The importance of this force is the number of competitors and their ability to threaten a company

Companies (Medium)

Corporations which provide only the basic service of tutoring cause a Medium threat due to their position as incumbent. They might have shown the effectiveness of their services. They possess no competitive advantage.

Number of competitors (Medium)

There are few

international players and some small national player. There are no big companies at national level, a Swiss strong firm focusing university students.

No transparency on tutor's ability (Low)

We offer such service. If a company decides to copy all our service and to compete on its scale (local/cantonal level since there are no national players) then rivalry might turn to Medium/High.

Exit barriers (Low)

Fixed costs: Online platform

Product differences (Low)

Either professional or generic tutors/students

Firms differences (Low)

Competitors not very diversified (online or face-to-face)

No switching costs (High)

To use other tutoring sites/services

4. Threat of Substitutes - Medium

Competitor substitutions that can be used in place of a company's products or services pose a threat

Student-to-student tutoring (Medium)

Performed through word-of-mouth / billboards adv.

Trustworthy is the key problem when evaluating a tutor, which is why word-of-mouth is the first tool used to find a tutor. Can

Existing Websites and Apps (Medium)

Make it easier to find people and to reach a broad audience, so it is very appealing to use such service both for students and tutors, especially when the site is crowded. Prices and quality can range.

Professional tutoring (Low)

High prices for a potential high quality but not always tailored for the particular university course. Basically, we diversify from traditional tutoring and focus on up-to-date exam problems for students.

E-learning (High)

MOOC, videos (YouTube), learning sites. NOTE: these tools have been out for decades but students are reluctant to use them - Potential substitute

Switching costs (High)

Non existent

Propensity to substitute (Low)

As soon as the match/knowledge is not sufficient, change is made. Also if an exam is failed, substitution takes place - Low

Price Elasticity (Low)

If quality is shown & goals are reached, prices can be overcome (prices are anyway high)

Threat of New

Entrants

The individual company's power is affected by the force of new entrants into its market.

Competitive advantage (Low)

First mover advantage and network creation can make it harder for other companies to enter.

Tutoring service (High threat)

Switching costs for customers - Low (No cost for students. For tutors, they might lose subscription if activated)

Entry Barriers (Medium)

Financial need (Low): website, app, marketing, infrastructure, support

Economies of Scale (High): Online service: Cost advantage through scaling, scaling is cheap (via internet + gathering data about universities). Off-line tutoring: High

SWOT

The SWOT analysis is an organized list of your business's greatest strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. As a start-up, I perform the SWOT analysis as a part of the planning and evaluation process of our business concept. In the SWOT, strengths and weaknesses are factors internal to the company (e.g. reputation, patents, location, team). The company who

Makes the analysis can evaluate what are the resources they have, how to best use them for developing the business strategy and change them to adapt to new market conditions. The other part of the SWOT is composed of opportunities and threats which are external factors (e.g. suppliers, competitors, prices), happening out in the market which influence your business. There are no actions that can be taken against them. SWOT analysis can be used to assess a changing environment and respond proactively.

Strengths

Concept

• Something "new" in the tutoring business
• Concept which addresses a permanent need
• Focus on disciplines, rather than generic
• Cross-selling opportunity (tutoring, university books, studying notes, etc.)
• Focus on a well-known need of students

Team

• Great skills in the core needs for the service development (IT, Business)
• Entrepreneurial mindset, international experience
• Close understanding of our customers

1. Opportunities
• There seems to be a consistent market for this.
• Bring niche offer and demand in one platform.
• International scalability
• Possibility of adding online learning (developed by tutors themselves) for adapting to international trend
• Leveraging the platform to meet high-school student market
• The lack of an existing similar solutions
• Few competitors à
• Underestimated market revenues No companies focus on students (they are usually considered broken)
• New concept of students support. No all in one service platform
2. Weaknesses
• Niche market
• Can be easily copied à
• For Switzerland, languages Need to enlarge the team accordingly or hiring with frequency translators
• Customers with limited financial resources.
3. Service
• Lack of an innovative solution to support student's need.
4. Team
• No high financial

business at universityon google by using the words "tutoring" and "schoollevel. The research was mainly performedsupport" in the different Swiss languages. The main sites considered are 7.

• Tutor24.ch
• Buddyschool.com
• Universitytutor.com
• Apprentus.com
• Eliteib.ch
• Gethelp.ch
• Tutorplus.com

The main characteristics evaluated are:

• Operating area (International referring to world wide service, Europe or Switzerland)
• Direct competitors (do they target university students or are they all around?)
• Intermediary (Yes if they do provide the tutors after contacting them. No if you can reach atutor on your own)
• Type of tutoring service available
• face-to-face
• Online
• Rating (Is it possible to see the feedback from previous students experiences?)

These are the results for each of them

Graph 5.1: Tutoring semantic scale of competitors 32

From a general overview, the main page of these sites is characterized by the experience andknowledge of tutors.

A tutor is paid to achieve results and the first step is depending on the tutor's knowledge. For this reasons, sites try to highlight this quality as soon as the consumer gets in touch with them, so that they can be reassured on the site reliability. Interesting enough, most of this sites do not allow the consumer to perform a public evaluation. In fact, 6 sites over 7 don't have a system such as "rating stars" displayed, and makes me assume the cause is a possible negative evaluation from dissatisfied customers.

Graph 5.2: Tutoring semantic scale of competitors

It is possible that such system was implemented but negative experiences damaged the sites, which led them to remove such functionality. This is important for two reasons. First, if we want to launch our service we must provide a rating system and ensure it is reliable in its evaluation to avoid fake "dislikes" (competitors could perform such move). Second, early student tutor's adopters should