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.
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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 Education Entrepreneurs. Founded by serial entrepreneurs with over 25 years of experience founding, investing in, and selling companies, Tuck believes you deserve M&A advisors who work just as hard as you do.

فصول

1. Building Accessible Tutoring Solutions with Chuck Cohn, Founder of Nerdy & Varsity Tutors (00:00:00)

2. Chuck’s founding story of Nerdy and his vision for accessible tutoring. (00:03:29)

3. Scaling Varsity Tutors from individual tutoring to institutional partnerships. (00:05:42)

4. Early entrepreneurial lessons from bootstrapping and finance. (00:07:49)

5. Ensuring quality through effective tutor-student matching. (00:13:39)

6. Why high-dosage, relationship-based tutoring drives better outcomes. (00:17:07)

7. Balancing logistics with personalization in tutoring. (00:24:32)

8. Chuck’s outlook on sustainable tutoring post-ESSER funding. (00:31:08)

9. How AI enhances personalization and tutor matching at Varsity Tutors. (00:35:46)

10. Consistent tutoring's impact on improving school attendance. (00:41:49)

11. The promise of real-time language translation for ELL students. (00:50:52)