Building Accessible Tutoring Solutions with Chuck Cohn, Founder of Nerdy & Varsity Tutors
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Chuck Cohn) is the Founder, Chairman & CEO of Nerdy) (parent company of** Varsity Tutors**)). Chuck founded the company in 2007 during his junior year of college after experiencing frustration finding the personalized help he needed for a calculus course. He spent his early career working in energy & power investment banking at Wells Fargo Securities (Wachovia) and healthcare private equity at Ascension Ventures, an $800M AUM private equity fund. Chuck bootstrapped Nerdy before leaving his private equity role to focus on growing Nerdy full-time at the end of 2011.💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• How Varsity Tutors scaled from a startup to a public company and the evolving business model for reaching individual and institutional customers.
• The critical role of “high-dosage tutoring” in overcoming learning loss and why regular, personalized sessions outperform on-demand solutions.
• How AI tools are enhancing personalized education by creating adaptive lesson plans and optimizing tutor-student matching.
• The challenges and strategies in transitioning from direct-to-consumer to B2B in the K-12 education sector.
• The future of AI in tutoring, including real-time translation and adaptive content, and how it’s reshaping the role of human tutors.

✨ Episode Highlights:[00:03:07] Chuck’s founding story of Nerdy and his vision for accessible tutoring**[00:05:20]** Scaling Varsity Tutors from individual tutoring to institutional partnerships.[00:07:27] Early entrepreneurial lessons from bootstrapping and finance**[00:13:17]** Ensuring quality through effective tutor-student matching.[00:16:45] Why high-dosage, relationship-based tutoring drives better outcomes**[00:24:10]** Balancing logistics with personalization in tutoring.[00:30:46] Chuck’s outlook on sustainable tutoring post-ESSER funding**[00:35:00]** How AI enhances personalization and tutor matching at Varsity Tutors**[00:41:03]** Consistent tutoring's impact on improving school attendance**[00:50:06]** The promise of real-time language translation for ELL students.😎 Stay updated with Edtech Insiders! 

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🎉 Presenting Sponsor:

This season of Edtech Insiders is once again brought to you by Tuck Advisors, the M&A firm for EdTech companies. Run by serial entrepreneurs with over 25 years of experience founding, investing in, and selling companies, Tuck believes you deserve M&A advisors who work as hard as you do.