Type Subsidiary Products Online Tutoring Founded November 2011 | Industry Education Website InstaEDU.com Parent organization Chegg | |
 | ||
Key people Alison Johnston, Dan Johnston, Joey Shurtleff (cofounders) | ||
Explore free college counseling with instaedu
InstaEDU (acquired in June 2014 by Chegg and rebranded as Chegg Tutors) is an online tutoring company that matches students who need help with online tutors. Students can receive help either on-demand or by scheduling a lesson.
Contents
History
InstaEDU was founded in 2011 and launched into public beta in May 2012. At that time, the company also announced that it had raised $1.1M in venture capital funding from The Social+Capital Partnership. Two of the company's cofounders had previously run an in-home tutoring company called Cardinal Scholars. After running Cardinal Scholars they got the idea for an online tutoring company—InstaEDU. In July 2012 they sold Cardinal Scholars to Course Hero. In August 2013, the service announced it had raised a $4 million Series A round of funding from Battery Ventures. At that time, the InstaEDU service also came out of beta.
On June 3, 2014, Chegg announced that it purchased InstaEDU for $30 million in cash, and that it plans to keep the InstaEDU service active as part of the purchase.
Services
Students can visit InstaEDU and get matched with a tutor on-demand. InstaEDU allows students to browse tutor profiles and schedule lessons with a specific tutor. The InstaEDU lesson space uses video chat, text chat, a white board, a document editor, code editor, screen sharing and a file uploader to allow students and tutors to work together. In April 2014, the site announced that it was mobile-friendly; the mobile site supports messaging, scheduling and written lessons.
Reception
InstaEDU has been featured on The Today Show as a great job for students over the summer and included in a write up in the Wall Street Journal on online tutoring. Mashable listed InstaEDU first in a write up of dependable sources for online tutoring. CEO and cofounder Alison Johnston Rue was named to Forbes 30 under 30 in Education in January 2014.