Late Night Facebook Chat with one of the founders of CaribbeanTutors.com

As a tech entrepreneur, late nights can be a staple especially when you’ve just started a new project.Last week I was up and Johnathan Francis, co-founder of CaribbeanTutors.com a Facebook friend popped up and we started to chat which I’ve edited and made into an interview for the blog. Have a read.

What is CaribbeanTutors.com?
Since June 2007, CaribbeanTutors.com (the region’s first online school) has taught over 530 students in 12 Caribbean nations, with the largest enrolments coming from Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Guyana. These students are primarily 15- to 18-year-olds studying any number of up to 13 CXC (Caribbean Examinations Council) subjects.

So the conversation begins like this.

CT: CaribbeanTutors.com is coming to Jamaica soon we have already established ourselves with JNBS and after our marketing campaign here in Trinidad we will be doing the same in Jamaica.
SC: You guys are Trinis?
CT: Correct, but we have teachers and students regionally and we are not working with any ‘funding’ strictly bootstrapping and working with our revenue.
CT: Got a moment to spare? I’m in a mood to ramble.
SC: Sure Shoot, I’m wide awake and working.

WHY WAIT ON FUNDING. JUST START

CT: I hate 2 things about Caribbean based ventures 1.) They believe in making money from advertising   2.) they want to sell PRODUCTS online those two are not and will never be our strong points. The major advantage of the Caribbean is cheap labor so our priority when doing internet based ventures is Services!
SC: hmmmm okok
CT: The cost of importing and then shipping to people throughout the Caribbean is sky high and you cannot target one island because individually they are too small but a service that can reach the region or even globally, is where we should be aiming
SC: I’m so with you on that.
CT: Do you know how long it took us to start generating revenue from islands outside of trinidad? … 2 weeks with a $0 budget.
SC: Wow really? and what was the value proposition?
CT: Our normal offering, $34US a month CXC lessons- See, Hear and Speak with your tutor live.
SC: So it’s a subscription business model.
CT: Correct, guaranteed monthly income.
SC: Do you revenue share with tutors?
CT: Yes they get paid per hour and student pay via credit card, western union, at Republic Bank trinidad, or JNBS Jamaica.
SC: Is that rate you pay teachers something that make underrated and underpaid teachers happy?
CT: Very… $14US per hour and teachers can teach as many classes as your schedule allows
CT: From june we want to have the entire Pre-Tertiary system under our belt  from GSAT to Common Entrance to SEA to CXC to CAPE. The secondary school market is the last untapped market worldwide.
SC: Sweet, success is yours. Do you do this full time?
CT: I have no time for anything else this is my dream my passion. It is able to support us full time yes.
SC: AHh yes, great!
CT: We have one other competitor worldwide, called tutorvista.com funded by sequoia, the VC that funded Google, Youtube etc. they make over $34M US a year… and they are just as old as we are of course we not making that cause they targeting US and Europe, but I have a plan. after we have the Caribbean under our belt, it’s off to Brazil.
SC: Damnn!  Brazil?
CT: Yes….they have no distance education system and they are just as centric about education as the Caribbean. They are perfect targets and they are almost as big as US.

SC: Yes they are booming there! I’m just about to launch reconnecttoday.info – Online Marketing Education for Caribbean Entrepreneurs and Caribbean Marketers…a model of speaking, coaching, training and workshops putting in place my payment mechanism now to officially launch end of March. Already have CARIMAC and Jamaica Trade and Invest in the fold and a few serious inquiries in Trinidad and Barbados too.
CT: That sounds like you’ve found a hit too. And that is another thing i found through experience online advertising for web based companies in the caribbean must be mixed with heavier offline ads.
SC: Because we’re not there yet in terms of connecting the dots fully?!
CT: Correct
SC: well hence why I’m in such demand now to help them connect the dots. lol
CT: lol great!
CT: Hey I would love to speak about really changing our focus when it comes to regional technology growth. So I dunno maybe at the next Kingston Beta .
SC: Yes you should come to the next one if you can in April 29th.

CT: Definitely and oh one last thing I want to share with you. I hate entrepreneurs crying for capital all the time.
SC: Me too, I hate it myself. Too much complaining about no bank wants to lend $ and ting.
CT: Yeah, I’m like really, how about just starting something first eh, the old fashion way. You have a product or service, people buy it you ban your belly for a while and use that money to grow.
SC: Yep
CT: The real trick should be becoming a master of all angles: sales,marketing,accounting etc in that way you don’t waste as much money. I say as much, because you are going to make mistakes.
SC: Ohhh yeah
CT: And boy oh boy did we make some big ones lol

THE BIGGEST MISTAKE

SC: lol..we all do. What was you biggest mistake?
CT: Getting all excited about advertising a free campaign. Doing that and not expecting 700 people to sign up in 2 days.
SC: Whoaa!! lol Missed all that revenue
CT: Not only that, made us look real bad too. Because people signed up and paid and we had to refund, and it was too many people on the old system we used so it crashed. Soo many things in a short period of time. But fortunately for us, every year a fresh batch of students take the CXC exams and we ready for them this time around.
SC: how did u advertise ? in mainstream media?
CT: 1 TV ad, 5 seconds long
SC: 5 seconds?
CT: Yes.  “Get CXC Lessons Online, CaribbeanTutors.com” that was the entire ad. I kid you not. We only had money to do it once and the guy at the tv station so believed in our idea he said it would work and he was right. This time we coming out really hard two full weeks and newspapers and facebook/google followed up by some billboards plastered all over the country after that… Jamaica.
SC: Well Jamaican market is super ripe
CT: So we have been told. Education is BIG business in the Caribbean. Western Union told us that. They want to be the sole payment agent for CaribbeanTutors.com
SC: hmmm great offer to have nonetheless.
CT: Yeah but in Trinidad early on, we had to wait for everyone to play catch up to broadband internet. Then we had to wait for people to become a bit more trusting of online offerings now,we think it is prime time

CaribbeanTutors Facebook Ad

ACCEPTING PAYMENTS ONLINE

SC: I  agree it IS prime time. What Online payment option do you use? Paypal?
CT: We use paypal, google checkout, but we just sticking with Paypal they pay faster.
SC: So u have the usual thing US address and stuff?
CT: Nope lol, there is a neat work around.
SC: How so?
CT: Originally, we used 2CO.com. They signed us up for a service called payoneer.com which gave us a debit card about a year ago, payoneer.com introduced a Virtual US account so we signed up for that. So we used that virtual US account to register with Paypal and told 2CO.com bye-bye!
SC: Wow, this is welcomed news thanks so much for sharing that.
CT: So now we have the cheapest, fastest and most trusted name in e-commerce.

Side Note: Johnathan Francis and his business partner Patrick Lawrence are only out of high school 6 years. They got a write up in Caribbean Beat, Read it at this link .