- The Covid-19 pandemic has made face-to-face tutoring sessions nearly impossible, and parents are now more open to online teaching
- Snapask founder and CEO Timothy Yu explains what makes the app thrive – ‘What we do is offer you an option to make it better, make it easier and make your lives happier’
Timothy Yu, founder and CEO of Snapask. Photo: SCMPMobile tutoring app Snapask began thanks to one university student’s disbelief in the traditional education model.
Founder and CEO Timothy Yu worked as a tutor during university but soon became sceptical about how he was teaching, saying that travelling to different students’ homes and repeatedly teaching the same material was tedious and ineffective. “I realised that I could do everything on video, so I made tutorial videos on Facebook and answered students’ questions in the comments. It went quite well. Eventually, I [decided] I should charge them for answering.”
So in 2015, Yu created an online tutoring platform, recruiting university students as potential tutors. At first, people around him thought he was crazy, and it was tough to launch the business: “There were so many different issues happening every day. But I think this created a high pressure and stressful atmosphere for us to grow,” said Yu.
Yu’s team also had difficulty convincing parents that online education is trustworthy since they were not digital natives like their teens.
But then the Covid-19 pandemic happened, and more parents warmed up to online education as in-person lessons were suspended.
The app uses machine learning algorithms to analyse students’ learning patterns. Students can ask questions and receive responses from online tutors and are only charged for their questions. This makes the service more affordable than traditional tuition centres, which charge more since students have to bear the costs of renting the building or office and pay their travel expenses.
A new frontier
When Yu first launched Snapask, the field of online educational services was still fairly unexplored.
“We were fortunate that when we started the business, we were pretty much in the blue ocean,” he said. Since its launch, Snapask has expanded to cover nine regions with more than four million users. Although they have more competitors now, Yu believes that the quality of content and teachers and the instantaneous responses students can receive are the keys to remaining relevant in the market.
Snapask’s mission is to help students solve problems and learn efficiently. “Students do not have to spend hours going to school; they can figure out the answer from 3-minute short videos,” Yu said.
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He also praised tutorial schools for getting straight to the point in lessons. “Tutorial schools are great. Tutors want to use a short period to equip you [with the knowledge you need]. They have this kind of promise.”
In addition, Yu wanted to avoid the typical spoon-feeding mode of education in Hong Kong, which can mar student creativity and critical thinking. “Snapask is never about just giving the answers, but pointing [the user] in the right direction and providing step-by-step guidance.”
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‘Life will never give you a deadline’
Yu said he does not define himself as successful, explaining: “One thing I have learned is that there’s no definition of success. Become micro-ambitious, but you don’t have to have success every day”.
He also offered some advice for successfully studying for exams.
“Be realistic in how you prepare for the exam. Achieving high marks in all subjects is a tough goal to reach. Learn to be an expert in time management … life will not give you a deadline.”
This article was written as part of the Wharf Project Write WeCan Programme.