Being an entrepreneur in the Bay Area is not a concept that is totally unheard of. Although most Bay Area innovators are usually found in the tech industry, not all of them choose to excel in this one sector. Two MVHS juniors, Sassan Hashemi and Itay Golan, decided to enter the world of business and help out their fellow students at the same time by creating a privately funded tutoring business called Monta Vista Tutors.
Monta Vista Tutors is setup like a traditional tutoring business, where they go out and hire students to teach a wide array of subjects, with the company simply acting as the middleman in this exchange.
“Towards the end of the summer, we started talking to who we thought would be the best tutors in this school,” Hashemi said, “and we put the word out and at the beginning of the school year students started to sign up.”
The key word here, however, is hire. Study Buddy Society is a program that already exists at MVHS, and they too use student tutors to teach other students. But unlike MVT, Study Buddy Society is a school run program that does not pay its tutors. So what sets these two MVHS founded, peer to peer, and multiple subject tutoring services apart?
Ultimately, it’s the goals of each organization. SBS is designed to help out students that aren’t on track to pass their classes, while MVT is for anyone who wants tutoring.
“The main goal of Study Buddies is to make sure students graduate on time,” SBS advisor Carole Newman said. “There are some people that have a C and want to get an A, so then they wouldn’t necessarily qualify for this program.”
According to the SBS website on the MVHS home page, students can only qualify if they have either a D or F in any class, or if they are a senior who does not meet graduation requirements. On the other hand, MVT is a program that is open to anyone whether they are failing the class or whether they just want that extra push to get an A.
“Our main focus is for students who want to succeed in their classes,” Hashemi said. “Whether they’re failing or not, anyone can join our service.”
As of Oct. 2015, Hashemi and Golan have around four tutors and six customers, with the customers ranging from the elementary and middle school levels to students at MVHS. According to an article by the Mercury News about their fledgling business, their lowest rate is $24 per hour for a session at the Cupertino library, which is a big difference from the free service SBS offers. According to Hashemi however, upwards of $10 go towards their tutors, and the rest is planned to be donated to charity or towards the costs of maintaining their website, payment services, and other expenditures. Ultimately, MVT mainly focuses on helping out their community, rather than standing as the last line of defense for students in academic need like SBS.
