- VIPKid is an online education platform that connects Chinese students with English teachers from North America.
- The platform offers one-on-one, 25-minute live classes with highly selective teachers.
- The curriculum is developed by a team of professionals and covers a range of subjects.
- VIPKid currently has over 200,000 students, mostly from China, but also from other countries.
- The program motivates students through engaging content, personalized learning, and gamified experiences.
- The company looks for teachers who have a love for children and a passion for teaching.

- The company is looking for teachers who have a love for kids and are motivated to help them learn and grow.
- Qualifications and experience, such as a bachelor's degree and teaching certificates, are important for potential teachers.
- Teaching online is different from teaching in a classroom, so the ability to learn quickly is necessary.
- The company is working on better empowering their teachers and improving their interview process.
- The first year and a half of the company's launch was challenging, with few people believing in the idea of online learning.
- Referrals and demonstrations were key in finding teachers and students.
- The company focuses on efficacy and ensuring that students enjoy and benefit from the program.
- The company officially launched in March 2015 and has seen success since then.

- VIPKID is a platform that connects Chinese students with American teachers for online English lessons.
- The company has grown rapidly, with over 20,000 teachers and 200,000 students.
- The team started small but has now expanded to over 3,000 people, mostly based in Beijing.
- The company focuses on building a strong community and relies on referrals and teacher evangelists to recruit new teachers.
- The goal of VIPKID is to provide quality education to children worldwide and inspire and empower every child for the future.
- The company is also exploring the use of AI and working with experts in learning science to improve their platform.

- VIPKID's vision with AI is to personalize students' learning and empower teachers in their work.
- They process a large amount of data to figure out what motivates students, how teachers work best, and how to match students and teachers.
- AI can make teachers' work easier and more efficient, allowing them to focus on what they're best at and potentially earn more income.
- Parents can also benefit from AI by being able to see how their children are doing.
- VIPKID sees a lot of potential in AI and believes it can bring benefits to everyone involved.

- VIPKid is an online education platform connecting Chinese students with English teachers from North America.
- The platform offers one-on-one, 25-minute live classes with selective teachers.
- VIPKid has over 200,000 students, mostly from China, and focuses on engaging content and personalized learning.
- Qualifications and experience are important for potential teachers, and the company is working on improving their interview process.
- The company initially faced challenges, but has grown rapidly and aims to provide quality education worldwide.
- VIPKid is exploring the use of AI to personalize learning, empower teachers, and benefit students and parents.

Cindy Mi - https://twitter.com/wenjuan_mi - is the founder and CEO of VIPKID. VIPKID is a 1-on-1 teaching platform where children in China learn english from North American teachers - https://t.vipkid.com.cn/

Anu Hariharan is a Partner here at YC - https://twitter.com/anuhariharan

We are actually here for a private YC event, the Global Growth Conference, which has growth stage founders coming from US and China.

And I know Cindy, you're talking at the event.

So thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us before the event.

Why don't we start off with, you know, can you tell us a little more about yourself and what really motivated you to start VIPKid?

So I started teaching young kids English when I was 15 years old.

And what really motivated me to start VIPKid is the possibility of inspiring and empowering every child for the future.

And just think about how we can connect the world of the best teachers, best content, and the most innovative learning experiences online is just amazing.

So I, you know, throughout all these years teaching young kids English, I figured the pain point for parents today is for their kids to be able to learn from the best teachers.

And then the curriculum they learn nowadays are mostly out of date, and they really want something fun and content-based.

So when we started VIPKID, it changed everything for the parents and the kids.

Now that many children in China are able to learn with the best instructors from North America, learning content-based knowledge based on Common Core state standards and children having so much fun.

And it's a great thing for the teachers as well.

And This just fulfills my dream of making learning so different for the kids today.

And we're still working on it to build something even more amazing for the future.

I remember when I visited you in Beijing, I had heard about VIPKids, but I didn't realize that you pretty much built a global marketplace from day 1.

You know, I didn't realize that a lot of your English teachers were from the US, right?

And especially, you know, before you talk about that, also give some idea for the audience on what is the platform, what is the product?

Do you provide the curriculum and how does it work?

Absolutely, so in the world of learning, we have this after school tutoring space where children go learn after their schools.

So this is extremely important in Asian countries, particularly in China.

The parents in China spend 15% of our household income in after-school tutoring services.

That does not surprise me at all, given I come from India.

It is really important for the children, because then they can get a tutor on things that they really like or things they need to work on.

So for this space, we would usually have a brick and mortar tuning institutes operating across the country.

So those are usually 20, 40 people classrooms with children learning there after school for like 3 hours a week or times of 2 hours a week kind of thing.

But then what VIPKID provides nowadays are very, very different from the brick and mortar setting.

So we provide this live one-on-one, 25 minute classes with online tutors teaching live from the comfort of their homes.

So for children, they're not learning in a classroom set up with 20 other kids.

So this is very private lesson, one-on-one.

And then the teachers are the best we can find across the globe, because if you think about it, we're today working with over 20,000 teachers in the US, and they're the best we can find.

And everyone has to go through a very highly selective interview process.

We only admit 5% of the teacher applicants.

For the first time in their life, they can feel free to choose to work with teachers that they feel the best, help them learn, and we're able to match the best teachers to them in the system.

The second highlight of the IPKit product is that the content, the curriculum content, is developed by the IPKit curriculum team.

We've got over 200 professionals working on this.

So children really like it because it's based on common core.

It has like math, language and arts, science, social studies, all the content in it, so it's really fun.

And then when they learn these content, it's not just about the language, it's the content, it's a culture, it's a critical thinking, leadership, a lot of things behind it.

So children are having a great, great time.

And all these curriculum are designed for students out of the U.S., so don't speak English.

And then they're designed for online learning specifically.

So the way the things are sky-folded is so different from what would have learned in the classroom setup.

We have long-term, short-term assessment built all the way through.

So students also do a lot of project-based learning after their session time, and then they just present to the teachers the next session.

And lastly, learning experience is so different.

They have access to a learning portal at all times.

So they would usually take a 25 minute session 2 to 3 times a week, but then the rest of the time they would spend their time on their learning portal, reading books, doing practice sessions, working on a whole lot other things we provide for them.

So learning is consistent and we have all the data so we're able to do better learning analytics for the parents and also provide children with more personalized learning content.

That's fascinating because I think you touched on like at least 3 elements that make it different and I wanted to probe on 1 or 2 of them.

Because there are a lot of edtech online platforms but I think the scale that you have achieved truly makes it unique.

So you said you have 20,000 teachers, all from the US, is that right?

Up to date, we've got over 200,000 students who are learning with VIPKids.

They're mostly from China, and we have over 2% of our students coming from countries like Japan, Indonesia, Germany, Australia, and some of them in the US as well.

So 1 of the questions I had for you is, how long is this course or program?

Because it was interesting you mentioned that the session length is 25 minutes and the rest they're doing, you know, they have to do on

So what motivates them to stay on the platform?

So our student, the youngest are 3 and a half.

What motivates the kids is the learning interest that brought to them by lively, encouraging North American teachers, as well as the engaging content that is very personalized to their need, and also the gamified learning experiences on our learning portal.

So today, children make their own decisions of what they want to learn, what they do not want to learn.

Parents cannot really help changing their mind.

But it really has to become that intrinsic motivation that I personally believe is very, very important.

So if the child feels like he is empowered, encouraged by a tutor, encouraging him all the time, saying, great job, brilliant, wonderful, you're really great, the best student I've ever taught.

He felt so great about learning that the love of learning sticks there.

So it's really important that we build that within our kids so they're able to set out to learn and explore themselves in the future.

And second thing I think really important for the kid is we help them build competency for the future.

So by that I mean, very interesting class design, instruction designs or content that sky-folds very interestingly.

So for 1 class we had a question for the kid and asking them, if you have all these rice on the floor, how would you solve the problem?

So you would then have a chicken, you have the vacuum clean thing and a lot of other brooms, everything.

So children always want to go for the chicken because they think it's fun.

So it's like a lot of competency to help them through with their logic, thinking and everything else.

So children feel they're not just learning, they're having fun and also they're building different skills that they can in the future apply to other subject areas of their learnings.

And I think, as you mentioned, the one-on-one interaction with the teacher and that motivation also keeps them going to try different projects on the platform.

I thought you mentioned 1 very interesting thing, which was you said, you're looking at North America for the teachers.

So my question there was, you started this company in China for customer, your students from China are the ones learning.

How did you go about building this great network of teachers and especially for someone coming from China to the US?

And related to that, like today you mentioned you're at a 5% acceptance rate.

So what is it that you really look for when you're selecting a teacher to the platform?

So, you know, we are looking into a few qualities that is really important to us for teachers that work with the APK.

1 of the most important being love of kids.

So you really have to wanting to help children learn and grow, you know, it's not an easy job, right?

You work with children who mostly barely do not speak English and you don't speak Mandarin or Japanese or Russian, and then you're there to help them learn.

3 and a half year old, this is fun, but at the same time, very, very challenging.

So that intrinsic motivation of the teachers is really, really important.

And secondly, qualifications and experiences.

We're looking for people with a bachelor's degree, people have a teaching certificate, it can be a TESOL, TEFL, ESL-based certificate, it can be a K-12 teaching certificate.

So you really have to have that experience of working with kids or students so that you know the best way to teach.

I mean, being able to speak a language and be able to teach is a very, very different skill, right?

Everybody speaks Mandarin, but very few can teach.

So if you think about it, it's really important that somebody who's been in the profession long enough that knows how to engage students' learning interests.

And lastly, we're looking for teachers who are able to learn really fast.

Not in a classroom, you have this little video camera, you navigate, and then, so it's really important that you learn fast.

But we're also, although we only have a 5% acceptance rate today, we're also thinking about how we can better empower our teachers because we think many of the teachers are really great.

It's just if they cannot figure out how to teach online really fast, they wouldn't pass our interview today.

But if we do more efforts and help them more, I think they have all the fundamentals that we need.

And being a teacher in North America is not an easy job.

You know, it's not exactly the highest paid position.

You spend many, many more hours out of the classroom.

You know, it's a ratio is significantly surprising, I think, right?

You just devote all your time and love to the kids.

And I think they all deserve the best opportunity teaching online and teach students across the globe.

So we would love to spend more time building, like, better empowerment tools so we can help them more.

That's very interesting because when, you know, before I was going to talk to you today, I just looked online in YouTube, and the first video that came up was from a teacher who said, I failed my first VIP kid interview, but here are the tips to, you know, pass the interview, or how should we become a better teacher?

It's almost 20,000 teacher-generated content.

If you search for any company in the world, you wouldn't find all these professionally made content from the supply side of the user for ourselves.

Yeah, so let's go back to when you launched the company.

Because you had to have a global marketplace from day 1.

You needed these teachers from North America and students from China.

So talk a little bit about the first year when you launched.

Yeah, that's great, the first part of your question.

So the first year and a half was very, very challenging.

And nobody bought the idea from both side of the marketplace.

Parents think it's just challenging for kids to learn online.

And then investors thought this is such a dumb idea that you can never find enough students and teachers.

But from the teacher side also, it took a lot of efforts to convince people.

So by the end of the first year and a half, we ended up with only 20 teachers and 200 students.

So bravo to all these people who believed in our mission.

But I think it's just if people don't see how it looks like, it's very hard for people to understand how it might work, right?

So we did spend the most time in our first year and a half talking to everyone.

Just sit down with them, explain, be very patient and have them understand how it will look like and then if necessary, demonstrate.

So I remember I think for the first 20 teachers, I think I talked to most of them.

For the first 10, I definitely did recruiting myself.

So we need to, on Skype, by then we didn't really have a system yet, demonstrate to the teachers how it could work.

Like, you could just, hi, to your students, right?

But if you think about it, for many people who do not speak Mandarin, and who thinks it's really the hardest language to learn mostly, it's scary to teach young kids who don't speak English.

So we just have to tell teachers it's really easy.

It's 50% of the communication is non-verbal, right?

So just be patient and explain to everyone, talk to the people, find out people who's willing to get on board at an early stage.

But by the end of the year and a half, we were able to figure out a few things.

1 is, how do we find teachers and students?

So the thing there we found is referrals.

If you have a great quality product, people will love to talk to their friends about it.

And if it's bringing them extra value for the student side, less expensive tuition, for the teacher side, more income.

Second thing is we figured out how do we build a content online.

It must be scaffolded very differently from it is in the board and motor classrooms, and also with teachers who do not speak children's first language.

And lastly, what are the system functions that parents and students and teachers need the most so we can start building something there.

We have a three-party kind of system there.

It's not just like share rights, writers and drivers, we have 1 more, so parents.

Yeah, and the parent is the customer that's paying for it.

Yes, and children makes decisions, so it's really important to keep them both happy.

And so how did, so on the teacher side, you said after a year and

And how did you do that on the student side?

So our first 4 students come from 1 of our most early investors, Sinovation Ventures.

And out of the 4 students, 3 comes from the company.

So we have the 2 children of their CFO and 1 child of the general counsel.

And then 1 more comes from Jesse, my co-founder's friend, so friend and family.

And then we started with these 4 kids, and you know, they love it.

But for the first few classes, we have to sit the child down in 1 of the conference rooms in Centervation Ventures offices.

We used to be incubated there, so it's like similar to this YC office.

And then teachers in the other classroom, like a conference room.

And then parents feels like they have to watch both sides and how they go.

It's really fun to see how they work together.

And we didn't know, like, we need to have a very solid backdrop of the wall.

And there was a really colorful painting that blurs the camera and the mask over there.

So we did a lot of experiences built up from those.

But then after the 4 students, we then had a lot of videos that we can show to other parents.

We're like, oh, see, this is what your child looks like when they learn online.

And particularly 1 thing was very impressive.

When we saw 1 of our very first student, Lily, I think she lived in France when she was really little and she was 7 by then, she hated English.

But then 1 day, the video camera turned off, teacher went away, Lily stayed in the classroom for like extra 10 minutes and just went back to see what's taught in the classroom.

And then she keeps saying, "'Teacher, come back, where are you?'

Very heartbreaking, but yes, she loved it.

So you see how the connections are built across the screen, and it's something that even beyond my imagination.

And today, of course, I hear stories all the time from our teachers saying, oh, these are my kids, you know, the country, you love them so much.

But then it's really very different when you see all these connections are built.

So well-connected world between the teachers and students.

Yes, we launched in, we officially launched the market March 2015.

So it's 2 years and a half ago, but we started October 2013.

So 1 of the things I've noticed even in the US marketplaces, right?

Marketplaces that are a long slog because it takes both sides to build liquidity.

I mean, Airbnb has talked about this quite a lot as well.

It took them quite some time to build that.

So a year and a half, you had 20 teachers, 200 students.

At what point did you really think this is going to work?

And also a few other little points along the way.

I think what we're really looking for is efficacy through that year and a half because for students, a learning outcome, that means the world, right?

You just have to be valuable to the kids.

Otherwise, why would you want to be building this company because it could be commercially successful but doesn't really last, right?

So efficacy is something we look for, and after a year and a half, we find our students love the program, high retention, enjoy it.

They are taking initiatives, asking their parents, say, can I have a class every day?

Their mom's like, make a little bit expensive.

It's always a mom saying, can you learn more?

And also on the other end of the equation, our teachers, we need to make sure that this works for them.

This is something that they relish and they feel comfortable doing.

And in 1 of the oldest Chinese saying, we have all the students across the globe, but they use fruits to metaphor it.

We're now bringing students across the globe to the teachers in the US.

I mean, teachers in North America are really great, motivated people.

I think they all love the kids, like themselves, right?

And also the extra income makes a lot of sense and it just helps the families so much in a way that I couldn't have imagined.

I visited a few very small cities in Utah or any, like quite a lot of other states.

And then there aren't a lot of local job opportunities.

I think even if teachers wanted to make extra income, where can they go except for, like, driving Uber or some other retail opportunities?

And now, today, many of the retail jobs are gone.

So I'm really happy that this provides all these great value for the teachers.

And then, so by that point, we figured, this is working.

I think then you have all these matrix that venture capital people would evaluate on.

See all Y Combinator transcripts on Youtube

Cindy Mi on Building VIPKID, the World's Largest English Learning Platform for Children