Student mentor wanted from elite US university? Hong Kong start-up has you covered
IvySpace seeks to link up students from Hong Kong and mainland China with Western counterparts for tutoring and advice
On the other side of an unassuming doorway in Hong Kong’s busy downtown district of Sheung Wan, a team of people work tirelessly to bring together young people from different corners of the world.
Founded by two Yale University alumni who met during their time on campus, IvySpace is an online tutoring platform that provides students with a mentor from an elite American university.
“We want to bring academic subject tutoring, exam guidance and university application advice to the fingertips of students in Hong Kong and China in an affordable, accessible manner,” said co-founder Timothy Amson Kau. “You shouldn’t have to be in the top 1 per cent to get top-flight tutoring from respectable teachers.”
Initially, the start-up focused on mentoring students in Hong Kong and the mainland, but with the upcoming launch of IvySpace 2.0 – a revamped website and new mobile app – the company is going global.
“There’s this perfect storm within China in terms of opacity and need,” said co-founder Christopher Chau Lyong-hwa. “There’s this idea in China right now about being a global citizen, and we are the vehicle to help make this aspiration come to fruition.”
After investigating the state of tutoring services in mainland China, Chau and Kau quit their respective jobs in finance. They were inspired by both the inaccessibility of reliable tutorial and advice platforms, and by the “bizarreness” of the fact that people were being taught by teachers who lacked first-hand exposure or even native English abilities.