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mfrank

mfrank on Hacker News

Re:The Worst Part of YC on Thursday April 17, 2014 @06:28AM (#7602813)
Interesting that this is pretty different than what other VCs say is the worst part of their job: http://www.quora.com/Venture-Capital/What-is-the-worst-part-...
Re:Bad Skype Calls Suck and How We Make Sure They Don’t Happen on Monday October 28, 2013 @01:01PM (#6628121)
ha. that is pretty fair. So at a high level, the way that we actually assure tutor's Skype reliability is tests around speed and reliability (stuff like speedtest and ping test) with reliability being more important. Then we also do a number of test full length lessons using students from different parts of the U.S. / the world at different times of day.

For us because online tutoring is so dependent on a connection, we also try to make sure there are solid contingencies in place in case something extreme like a power outage happens which is rare but more frequent in certain parts of the developing world than in the U.S..

Re:Show HN: Learned By Me - $15 Spanish tutoring sessions with top pr... on Monday October 14, 2013 @02:28PM (#6548784)
Yep - everyone has different goals and reasons for learning spanish so having a one-on-one who can create lessons that are customized to your needs has been a real differentiator so far.
Re:Show HN: Learned By Me - $15 Spanish tutoring sessions with top pr... on Monday October 14, 2013 @02:26PM (#6548776)
Good feedback. Ya, we ended up alpha testing our site with both Spanish and Chinese but ended up launching with just Spanish because its easier to try to initially build up a marketplace with only one subject as you point out (to avoid the ghost town feel).

Maybe gearing towards language tutoring at this point makes sense

Re:Show HN: Learned By Me - $15 Spanish tutoring sessions with top pr... on Monday October 14, 2013 @02:24PM (#6548764)
Thanks - all good feedback and we'll work on it!

Show HN: Learned By Me - $15 Spanish tutoring sessions with top professionals

Posted by mfrank on Monday October 07, 2013 @01:27PM
from the show-hn dept.

We recently started Learned By Me (www.learnedbyme.com), a company that connects terrific experienced Spanish professors and immersion school teachers from South America with students and learners from around the world for Skype tutoring sessions for $15 / 45 minute session.Your feedback would be much appreciated! We can discount your first lesson to $1 if anyone would like to give a lesson a...

( Read More... | 7 comments | 6 points | on HN )
Re:Watsi (YC W13) raises $1.2M first-of-its-kind 'philanthropic seed r... on Thursday July 25, 2013 @01:57PM (#6103829)
This is great news but I'm pretty sure this it is not a "first of its kind" occurrence as there are a number of vehicles (e.g. New Profit in Boston) that specialize in these types of strategic venture-like philanthropy investments.