Microsoft Innovation Center Brussels

Everybody has heard about e-learning, a very common subject for startups in 2014. QwerTeach is also about that, but not only, QwerTeach is about e-teaching.

There is no questioning the fact that our school system is not in a very good shape. As usual, September brought a lot of complaints, and it got worse when the latest PISA results were released. It is especially bad for the french speaking part of the country, which scored a lot lower than the Flemish. Although those tests aren’t an absolute measure of the quality of education, they’re still an indicator we can’t dismiss.

There is a growing trend among students and their parents: they are dissatisfied in the schools, and private lessons are becoming more and more common, as a way for families to cope.

Stéphane Panier and Aurélie Merckx, founders of QwerTeach, have both been working as private teachers for many years. They have first-hand experienced all the hurdles that come with teaching in those conditions. For example, all the time lost in transportation, on the teacher or the student’s part. But also the consequences: too long teaching sessions, tailored around transportation constraints and not around the student’s needs.

So they have imagined a system to solve this, a system where there is no time lost: with the internet, everybody is reachable in seconds, that’s why they decided to use it to build the website www.qwerteach.com.

On this website, a student can browse a large catalog of teachers, and select the one he wants, based on profile information and reviews from other students. Where the website is really revolutionary though, is with its virtual classroom. It is a space that opens up directly inside the web browser, in which teachers and students can see each other and talk via video-conference, draw in real time and exchange documents and pictures. All that with just one click, without the need to install anything. Only a mike is required, and a webcam is a bonus. In addition, all the lessons a student has can be recorded, for him to watch again later.

Despite the good formation Stéphane received in Solvay Business School, and Aurélie being an engineer, they knew they needed some extra help. That’s how the team expanded to a 3rd member, Sebastien de Beaufort, specialised in IT development. They also realised they could benefit from experts’ advices on startup development. So when they heard about the MIC’s program of startups coaching, the boostcamp, they jumped right in. With the help of expert speakers at MIC, and also fellow boostcampers, the project stepped from an idea to the actual business plan. Thanks to the quality of the program, they managed to launch a functional bêta version of the service at the beginning of March.
That’s where the big test has begun. So far, more than 10 students did benefit from lessons on the platform, all happy with how their learning - and grades - improved. Also, the company has been contacted by two non-profits that deal with youth who struggle with school. Partnerships are currently being developed to provide those students with the help they need, through QwerTeach.com.

The next steps involve the development of a system to enable students to pay for their lessons directly through the website. This can guarantee the quality of service that is important to the company: a lesson that doesn’t meet the requirements in quality can be signaled and its payment blocked. On the long run, the idea is also for QwerTeach to charge a fee of 15% on each transaction occurring through its system.

To all the entrepreneurs out there, whether you are contemplating the idea of kicking-off, or whether you have already started, here is the advice we’d have wished we had before we started:

• You are going to fail. It is normal, it is okay, and you better get used to it! Big fails, small ones, spectacular fails and other which will go unnoticed. Heck, some might even prove beneficiary to your business.
• Get all the help you can. Accelerators and coaching programs are not as useless as you might think.
• Do it! Stop with the excuses, the best time to make the leap is now.

Good luck