Find­ing a tutor is tough, a good one even tougher, and you might as well throw in the tow­el if it has to hap­pen on short notice. Math­Crunch is try­ing to change all that, they want to offer on-demand tutor­ing for stu­dents at a low price point. In try­ing to make this a real­i­ty the com­pa­ny has mus­tered up $3.5 mil­lion in seed fund­ing so far in order to reach out and find new users.

Math­Crunch is attempt­ing to con­nect stu­dents in dire need of assis­tance with their math prob­lems with the right tutor to teach users how to solve them. So the key strengths for this plat­form is mobile mes­sag­ing and the abil­i­ty to enable on-demand con­nec­tions with tutors who have spe­cial­ized knowl­edge and spare time on their hands.

So Math­Crunch is look­ing to find uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents and teach­ers with knowl­edge of var­i­ous dif­fer­ent math sub­jects — like alge­bra, cal­cu­lus, geom­e­try, and the like — and pair­ing them with peo­ple who need help with spe­cif­ic prob­lem sets. The way it works is a stu­dent takes a pho­to of the math prob­lem and then sub­mit it up through the mobile app, when a tutor logs in and sees the prob­lem, they then set up a chat ses­sion to help the stu­dent work through the prob­lem and find a solution.

The stu­dent is charged by the minute, they can either pur­chase min­utes or accu­mu­late earned min­utes by refer­ring friends or shar­ing the app with their friends from their social media feeds.
By cre­at­ing this type of sys­tem Math­Crunch is cre­at­ing its own viral media expan­sion that brings new users to the plat­form on top of the fact that stu­dents get free or cheap tutoring.

The cost to stu­dents start at $12 for 30 min­utes of tutor­ing, $22 for 60 min­utes, or $40 for 120 min­utes of tutor­ing help. The tutors are paid by the minute for the help they pro­vide and can make them­selves avail­able at any time. If you have aspi­ra­tions of becom­ing a tutor you bet­ter be ready to take a math test and then hav­ing a 30-minute chat ses­sion with a senior tutor. If you do get in, you’ll also get rat­ings from those you helped so you bet­ter be polite I guess.

Although the com­pa­ny is pret­ty green, they’ve already man­aged to achieve over 100,000 suc­cess­ful tutor­ing ses­sions, their hopes are to add new ser­vices and poten­tial­ly new pric­ing mod­els, includ­ing a sub­scrip­tion ser­vice that would pro­vide users with an unlim­it­ed num­ber of chat ses­sions for a lim­it­ed amount of time. If you are some­one who is look­ing to use their media skills to change the world, def­i­nite­ly con­sid­er try­ing to work with Math­Crunch (jobs at Math­Crunch). I would but I’m ter­ri­ble at Math.