
Finding a VC Mentor - teacherjames

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teacherjames
I'm not sure how many people are in this position, but I have a start-up Web
2.0 company that's completely finished and is already generating enough
revenue to cover our operational costs after going live for one month and
signing up one company. However, we've used up all our capital to get here and
neither of the two founders are on salary. We need an additional $150-$250k
for expansion, advertising, and sales staff. But before I go out all gung-ho
seeking VC capital (since I have no experience seeking VC Capital), I know
that I need a Mentor/Advisor. Most people who get hooked up with Mentors are
introduced to them (meaning they have a contact somewhere). But how does
someone who just starts a company on their own and concentrates solely on
development of the start-up meet these contacts? I know we have something of
interest here. We have a finished product with gigantic growth margins
targeting the biggest upcoming market (China) in the world. Plus, we're on the
web so our overhead costs are minimal. But before I start slapping together an
amateur Business Plan to seek VC funding and maybe screw up the one or two
pitch opportunities I get, I would like to see if I could find a mentor or
advisor first. Any particular sites out there for these types of
introductions? Does "cold emailing" work if I just emailed Marc Andressen
straight off his blog? Or maybe someone on a lesser scale off of their blog?

Thanks in advance for any input.

Damon Chang www.teacherjames.com damon@teacherjames.com

FYI BACKGROUND: Our project is called Teacher James and we are targeting the
Chinese Education Market. We combine several Web 2.0 applications such as Live
Private Tutors based in the US teaching Asian students in China/Taiwan via
Webcam plus Social Networking apps where students select their own teachers
based on "Apple" rankings. Plus we have search engines to target specific
teacher qualifications and our teachers post 15 second Video Introduction
Profiles so students can immediately see their native accent. Futher, our
integrated Classroom Interface allows up to 10 students at a time with
whiteboards, screenshares, and automatic recordings that students can download
to portable players for reviewing the lesson. No other online company
currently has our combination of new Web applications in this $50 billion
dollar Asian market where most online companies are stuck selling Educational
DVDs online or have strict cirriculum based fees. The closest successful
competitor is MegaStudy of out Korean, an online English Tutorial site which
sells DVDs of English Teachers, not live tutors. It went public in 3.5 years.

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sharpshoot
Isn't Batiq one of your competitors. www.batiq.com

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teacherjames
Hi, I took a look at their website. While they are tapping into the East Asian
market with mentors from UK and US, they do not specifically target "Teaching
English". Instead they aim for lots of different types of mentoring. Also, you
have to enroll as a mentor, and on the student side parents pay for the
mentorship (I'm thinking similar to a tuition).

Our site is immediate registration, searchable teacher database, and no long
term commitments or tuitions. You negotiate each lesson directly with your
teacher.

I would not consider batiq.com as a competitor, but more as a company with
similar ideals.

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jsjenkins168
One quick tip:

You need to implement server-side thumb nail creation. You are resizing the
original images directly in the HTML which is wasting bandwidth and looks bad.
Some of those images are friggin huge!

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teacherjames
No, that is not normal at all. We have been trying to implement GOOGLE Adwords
on our site, and had some trouble with it. Maybe that's what is bugging it up.
I'm checking on it right now.

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gibsonf1
I tried your site: www.teacherjames.com and it took minutes to completely load
the first page. Is that normal?

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teacherjames
Ahhh...yep. I'm definitely doing that. Thanks for the suggestion.

