Develop product strategy

Tutorly: 12-Month Strategy Board paper, for decision

The problem Bookings have grown 8% while tutor supply grew 60%. We are not short of tutors or students. We are failing to connect them. Students say their top problem is finding the right tutor. Tutors say they lack students, and 70% get no bookings in a typical month. Once a student books twice, 64% keep booking, so the product works when a match happens. The leak is in the first match.

Why not paid student acquisition The board's instinct is to buy more students. I recommend against it for now: - Paid students would arrive at the same broken search and matching flow that already frustrates them. We would be paying to acquire customers we are likely to lose before their second booking. - Our tutor base is already larger than our demand. More students would mainly bring more tutors into the same competition for the few bookings available. - Acquisition spend scales with cost. Matching improvements scale with use.

The bet: fix first-match conversion (£1.2m) Over 12 months we will build a guided matching system and test it against the current search:

1. Structured intake (Months 1–4). Students give subject, exam board, year group, goals, budget, and availability. Required before search.
2. Curated shortlists (Months 2–6). Within one hour, students receive three ranked tutors with a free 15-minute intro call. A small concierge team handles hard cases such as niche subjects and last-minute exam prep.
3. Ranking that rewards fit and responsiveness (Months 3–8). Ranking weighs subject expertise, response time, and student outcomes. New tutors get guaranteed early exposure so that supply does not stall at the bottom.
4. Tutor activation (Months 4–12). Tutors with zero bookings in 30 days receive coaching on profile quality and availability, plus targeted introductions.

Budget (£1.2m) - Product and engineering: £600k - Concierge matching team: £300k - Tutor activation and targeted student tests: £200k - Measurement and contingency: £100k

Targets (12 months) - Bookings: 4,000 → 5,500 per month - Students with a first booking within 7 days of intake: baseline in Month 1, target +50% - Share of tutors with at least one booking per month: ~30% → 45% - Repeat rate (second booking): hold at or above 64%

Decision gates - Month 3: Intake and shortlist live for a test cohort. Confirm the conversion baseline and the uplift. - Month 6: If first-match conversion has not improved by at least 20% against control, stop further build and move remaining funds to a small, controlled paid-acquisition test. If it has, scale the concierge model and begin targeted acquisition in segments where our supply is deepest. - Month 9: Review unit economics. Each booking should contribute enough commission to cover concierge cost.

Runway This plan spends £1.2m over 12 months and leaves about six months of runway for the gates above. If the Month 6 gate fails, we retain the option to pivot without running out of cash.

What we are asking the board to approve 1. Fund the £1.2m matching-led plan. 2. Approve the Month 6 gate and the reallocation rule if it fails. 3. Defer paid student acquisition until conversion data supports it.

The board's instinct is right that growth needs more students. But we already have more tutors than we can match, and the evidence points to the match as the bottleneck. Fixing that first makes every future pound of acquisition work harder.

Tutorly 12-Month Strategy: Fix Matching, Then Scale

Recommendation

Put the £1.2m behind one bet: guided matching with a first-lesson guarantee. Paid acquisition comes second, released in stages once the funnel converts.

Why not paid acquisition first

Tutor supply is up 60% and bookings only 8%, so the constraint is not volume. Seventy percent of tutors get no bookings, and students say their biggest problem is finding the right tutor. Tutors say "not enough students," but that is a symptom of poor discovery, not a shortage of demand alone.

The economics are also tight. At an average £37.50 lesson and 20% commission, we earn about £7.50 per booking. A £50 acquisition cost needs roughly seven bookings from a student just to break even. Our best evidence of retention is that 64% of students who book twice book again, but we don't yet know how many get to a second booking. Paying to send more students into a search experience they find frustrating risks buying churn.

The bet

1. Guided matching (about £600k). Replace browse-and-search with a short intake (subject, exam board, grade target, learning needs, availability, budget) that returns three ranked tutors. Add structured tutor profiles and quality signals such as response time, outcomes and reviews. Route new demand to under-booked tutors who fit well, rather than only to the top few.

2. First-lesson guarantee (about £300k). If the first lesson isn't right, the student is rematched and the lesson is free, funded by us. This targets the drop-off before the second booking, which is where the strong repeat behaviour begins.

3. Supply curation (about £100k). Stop passive tutor onboarding. Admit tutors by subject-level demand, and give inactive tutors coaching or profile support, or deprioritise them.

4. Gated acquisition reserve (£200k). Held back and released only when the gates below are met.

Gates for releasing acquisition spend

Two consecutive months of: - first-to-second booking conversion up at least 10 points from baseline; - median time to first booking under 48 hours; - modelled payback on acquisition inside 6 months.

Until then, test small paid channels only to measure cost per matched student.

Targets (month 12)

• Bookings: 4,000 → 6,000+ per month
• Tutors with at least one booking a month: 30% → 50%
• Students reaching a second booking: +10 points
• Student satisfaction after first lesson: tracked from launch

Timeline

• Months 1–2: Instrument the funnel (search → enquiry → first lesson → second lesson). Establish the baseline. Interview 30 students and 30 tutors.
• Months 3–6: Launch matching to one or two high-demand subjects, such as GCSE maths and sciences. Run against a control group.
• Months 7–9: Roll out across all subjects, and launch the guarantee if the pilot shows it pays back.
• Months 10–12: Release acquisition spend if the gates are met. Report to the board.

Risks

• Matching doesn't lift conversion. Pilots with control groups will show this by month 6, leaving 12 months of runway to change course.
• Guarantee costs exceed benefit. We cap exposure per student and monitor abuse.
• Tutor churn from curation. We prioritise communication and coaching before any deprioritisation.

Ask of the board

Approve the matching bet and the staged acquisition gate. If the board is not willing to defer scaled paid acquisition, the fallback is a capped £150k test with cost per second booking as the success measure.