Hi! Thanks for the note, I hadn't seen this website before. Having said this, it's really not the same for a couple of reasons:
- The interface is different. Le Geek is SMS-based. The UX is therefore much simpler.
- The product is different. Studypool is focused on academics (ie. you're paying tutors to help out on an assignment). Le Geek offers many more services than just academic help. Services such as expert interviews (think GLG at a fraction of the cost), career advice (many users in Beta were asking for mock interviews), advertisement..etc.
- Geeks are grads from the top 3 MBA schools in Europe
Agreed but their product is mobile-first. They want to attract those people that spend 90% of their time on their smartphones. It's like asking why did Supercell / Clash of Clans not launch a web version first :)
It's very simple. 50bps of every transaction that you make. They will need MANY transactions to justify a $1B valuation :)
They're investing heavily now (at a loss) in marketing and in international expansion (note the recent US launch). Have you seen their recent marketing campaign in the UK? If you refer 3 paying users, you get £100 ($155) cash. Their cost of acquisition is therefore £33/user if not more. Assuming a 0.5% margin, they are therefore implying that each paying user will make at least £7,000 ($10,000) in transfers with them. And that's just to break even...
Recently talked to one of their shareholders. Sounds like they're not focused on monetization right now. They're #1 aim is to acquire consumers (millenials preferably), gain scale, and then figure it out. Note that by acquiring millenials they're not gaining share from traditional brokers, they're more likely to expand the pie and get new people to trade. Hopefully these people are quite sticky, and will trade bigger and bigger amounts, by which point they'll be able to offer premium monetization options.
It's a long term play. They're going to be loss-making for a while. Their VC backers can handle it. It's like Transferwise (similar backers) who launched three years ago and who are still loss-making even though they've already processed >$1 billion in transactions...
Ha, it's not about the money at this stage. I'm willing to pay whatever is reasonable/necessary. I'm mainly interested in knowing what technical skills I should be looking out for.