Tutoring is in Adam Shlomi’s blood.
In high school, the South Florida native and recent Georgetown grad taught others the secrets of the SAT and continued to do so on the side for years.
So it’s not surprising that when Shlomi suffered an injury in college that left him bored and bedridden for months, he made it his business (literally) to start the online service SoFlo SAT Tutoring.
At first, it was just him
But as positive early reviews poured in from his strong network of students and parents, Shlomi found himself setting up QuickBooks and hiring 100 tutors to keep up with demand.
Today, Shlomi told The Hustle, his goal is to “develop new client acquisition funnels to power growth.” One funnel leads to Shlomi’s cell, where he talks to potential clients directly.
Ironically, if SoFlo does its job, customers leave
So Shlomi makes their short lifetime value worthwhile by keeping customer retention high with charismatic tutors and by experimenting with new products and services.
A 30% dip in demand for SAT prep brought on by COVID could prove challenging, but the company’s growth doesn’t seem to reflect that: Revenue and profit grew by 600% in 2020 and Shlomi is expecting to 3x that in 2021.
And don’t worry about Shlomi solving a challenging problem — he scored a 1570 on the SAT.
Founder: Adam Shlomi
Number of Employees: 3 administrators and 100 tutors
Year of launch: 2019
Cost to launch: $1k
Funding methods: Boot-strapped
1st-year revenue: $150k
Current annual revenue: $1m
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