The Details & Back-story:
InstaEDU, which launched recently in beta, allows students to find "top university students" for 1:1 live, video chat-based instruction. Tutors are listed by subject area, which include the following: Finance, Math, Language, Liberal Arts and Test Prep. These top-level categories are then broken down into subcategories such "Microeconomics help."

Led by CEO Alison Johnston and COO Dan Johnston, the San Francisco, CA-based InstaEDU team is a small but professionally diverse group, with experience ranging from trampoline warehouse management to product marketing at Google. It will be interesting to see whether or not they can successfully add video-based tutoring to their CV's!

Unique Point-of-difference:
The breadth of subjects covered seems to be an interesting differentiation in an otherwise flooded online tutoring market. Additionally, the platform is exceedingly easy to navigate and explore.

EdLab Relevance:
Live video chat and streaming capabilities are features we have considered for the EdLab's asynchronous video discussion platform, Vialogues. However, despite the many benefits of a "live" tutoring session, there are many negatives including cost and timing. What are some additional drawbacks? How could we use the current Vialogues platform for subject-specific tutoring?

Our Takeaway:
InstaEDU impresses with an easy-to-use, subject-packed platform for 1:1 video-based tutoring.