Quiznext
Pivot Strategy, Asset Maximization
Project type
Like a Phoenix
When the company has failed to sell, and failed to raise, finding a next strategy is hard. Creating Quiznext, a spin-off of Vidyanext, was a phoenix moment — creating value out of the ashes of a different idea.
Sometimes in finding product market fit you find that the business model doesn’t work.
Of note
How can you solve product market fit issues?
For Vidyanext, a tutoring company out of Bangalore, the issue was the product required tutors to teach in person, that had a bulky and long onboarding process for the tutors, too long to retain student’s interest.
Like many two-sided marketplaces, this is a chicken and egg problem. We needed good tutor density, to generate tutoring demand. But without enough volume of students, it was hard to onboard and retain tutors.
For tutors, we iterated through a series in-person trainings, to understand how to assess the tutors and provide them with the resources they need. Once we had that understanding, we built an online training tool which could scale for tutor volume more effectively than a physical solution.
For students, we built a free quizzing tool they could use to compete with their friends, which would also capture information about their school and lead info.
To solve this, we changed the onboarding for both groups — tutors and students.
These initiatives were ultimately not enough to keep Vidyanext afloat, but the quizzing initiative was a dramatic success. We saw strong adoption throughout India with two particular highlights: (1), high student engagement, and (2), data on the gaps in student’s knowledge.
Additionally, these were high quality leads that could be followed up and converted at a lower cost and a personalized offering.
Once we knew that Vidyanext was no longer going to stay in operation, we helped the team realize that there was a potential in the quizzing tool. Over several iterations we transformed the tool into a free standing product, Quiznext.
The two outputs — practice problems and learning data — seemed to be strong enough to warrant a paid option, perhaps even a freemium model, with a paid version being sold to school to have access to their students’ data or to parents as a supplement to their regular tuitions.
What do you do when its time to wind down a company?
With this in mind we decided to spin out the Quiznext product as its own company. To bring the board on board(pun not intended), we worked with them to come with a plan to mitigate risks and maximize the potential for return.
First, we embarked on a sales process for the parent company, Vidyanext, speaking to all of the major competitors and potential investors in a 2-3 month period. That direction was not fruitful, but having tried the path, the board was more amiable to trying to returns for their investment, agreeing to the spinoff.
At this point, the product needed further iterations around strategies for packaging the freemium offering to find something sustainably priced for the market — and a small team to do nimble, fast iteration.