It’s been suggested for years that standardized test scores are far more predictive of income than intelligence—so much so that commentators have come to jokingly refer to the SAT as the Student Affluence Test. There’s no doubt that education has a massive problem when it comes to income inequality. Wealthy families, it would seem, just have better access, whether it’s to top-notch schools or high-priced tutors—which, at $80-90 for an hour of a tutor’s time, can be insanely expensive.
The gentlemen of Aquillous are here to bring quality tutoring to those who couldn’t otherwise afford it.
“We saw no reason why we couldn’t get it down to $20-30 an hour,” said Kane Thomas, an Aquillous co-founder.
Thomas and his co-founder, Alex Williams, hail from Fredericksburg, VA and have just finished their first year at the University of Virginia. Recently out of high school themselves, they know the ins and outs of the college prep industry from a student’s perspective.
Thomas says the idea for Aquillous came out of his own experience and observations of test prep just a few years earlier. Having had access to tutoring at a local center through a family connection, he noticed first and foremost the ridiculously high price of tutoring, and secondly the “overqualified” nature of the tutors, some of whom had advanced degrees in the subjects they were coaching. He began to wonder if there was a better, cheaper way to serve students and their families, and that question formed the seed that—given some watering in the fertile soil of U.Va—would grow into Aquillous.
“We knew coming into U.Va we’d have abundantly more resources than we did in high school,” said Thomas. “Asking local celebrities [back home] we’d get responses like ‘that’s cute.’ … ‘I’m a U.Va student’ gets a different response.”
“We walked around the entire activities fair trying to find an entrepreneurship group,” said Williams of their first month at the University, adding that they found HackCville but were ultimately confused about what it did. It wasn’t until they met Alex Zorychta that they found the Works in Progress, a network of real, motivated student-entrepreneurs that would become a shaping community for them.
“It’s been really good for us,” said Thomas of the Works in Progress group, elaborating that the “community effect” had really helped them develop their venture, as well as provide the support of others trying to balance school and entrepreneurial pursuits.
“School really got in the way of just trying to do the venture,” he said, describing their first semester in college. The two commerce school hopefuls focused heavily on grades in the beginning of their college careers, but have since been developing a more balanced sense of where to put their energy.
“You just have to be a go-getter, honestly,” added Williams. He explained that having a group like Works in Progress, which “manifests and co-creates all the time,” helped inspire them to keep going when things were difficult.
Now, as they face their first big sales cycle with fall’s first scheduled tests in October, they’re working to validate their model, which focuses on matching tutors who scored in the top 1% to clients looking to increase their scores. Their goal is to have average score increases of 200 points or more.
“If we can beat [other tutoring companies] while also having a fraction of the cost, we think that can be our main selling point,” said Thomas, who’s hopeful about the possibility of those big score increases. Their first client, whose scores they recently received, had a score increase of 270 points.
This summer, with the help of Jasper Cornett’s design expertise, they’ve been working on their marketing and hope to receive enough client referrals to keep validating their MVP this fall. (They will, by the way, pay $50 to anyone who brings them a new customer.)
“We’re so close,” Thomas said, “we just want to sink or swim as soon as possible.”