Meet Eliza Morrison and M4 Andrew Nimmich, the CEOs of Tutor the People and Nerdly.

Both of today’s guests attended the College of Charleston in South Carolina where Eliza Morrison majored in French, Russian and Comparative Literature. Andrew Nimmich also attended the College of Charleston and CUNY Brooklyn College and majored in Pre-Medical Studies. He is currently an M4 at BU’s School of Medicine. They are both the co-founders and CEOs of Tutor the People (founded in 2012) and nerdly (founded in 2016).

Can you tell us a little about yourself? [1:33]

Eliza: I grew up in Charleston. I was always passionate about language and literature.

I started out at a small liberal arts school, Goucher College (in Baltimore) for one year, then transferred to the College of Charleston where I studied French and literature. I decided to add Russian since I’d studied French my whole life.

I also tutored French and Russian, which set the stage to pursue tutoring and education.

Andrew: I grew up in Charleston as well – we actually knew each other in high school. I started out at the University of Miami in Florida, then decided to transfer back home to the College of Charleston. I studied accounting. I’d considered medicine but I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do.

After graduating with a degree in accounting, I moved to New York City where I worked as a billing clerk in a legal office. I decided I wanted to go back to Charleston and study premed prereqs – that’s when Eliza and I started dating. We later went back to NY, where I took advanced science classes at CUNY while applying to med school. And I ended up at BU.

What’s the backstory to Tutor the People and Nerdly? [5:20]

Eliza: We moved to New York – I’d graduated and he’d just finished his postbac. He had experience studying for the MCAT and I had experience tutoring. We were both a little frustrated by the job opportunities. So we combined our experiences and started Tutor the People.

At the time we were living in Chinatown over a fish market – we were really inspired by our surroundings every day.

Andrew: I’d taken the MCAT and I’d done some of the more corporate courses, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the experience I’d had – it wasn’t individualized and felt very corporate. Our idea was to have really smart tutors and make it one-on-one that was comparable to the price of classroom. We also had this idea that for every hour that a student bought we did an hour of volunteer work – tutoring homework for kids with incarcerated parents. (As we’ve started to scale up that’s been hard to scale.)

What’s the difference between TTP and Nerdly? [10:10]

With TTP, there’s more administration – we do general academic advising, personal statement help, application guidance; we work with a lot of premed applicants.

Nerdly is a marketplace where students can connect directly with tutors.

There are a lot of tutoring platforms. What differentiates Nerdly? [11:25]

Andrew: You’re right, it’s a crowded market. What I like about Nerdly is that we put a lot of emphasis on user experience.

Our tagline is you can find and meet with a credible tutor in less than a minute. You can scan through 15 tutors in less than a minute and see the subjects they’re verified it – then go to an instant session in less than a minute.

I think once we roll out the final version in the next few months you’ll see it’...