Does That Make Sense, an online service providing customized study guides for college students and developed by a Syracuse University alumnus, went public in September after two years of development.

Jonathan Kestenbaum, a 2009 political science alumnus from SU and member of Pi Kappa Alpha, created the service after he graduated from SU while studying law at Hofstra University.

Using money he earned from Familiar Threads, a clothing business he started at SU that created greek apparel for SU students, he partnered with Kamran Barelli, a technology consultant in New York City, to create a tutoring service like no other, Kestenbaum said.

‘We say we’re like eBay for tutoring,’ he said.

The service hires degree-holding tutors — called ‘nerds’ — who bid to accept assignments from students to create original study materials for almost any topic, Kestenbaum said. Prices depend on the number of tutors available for an assignment, their familiarity with the topic and the type of material students request, Kestenbaum said.

Since creating study material is less difficult for ‘nerds’ than it is for a newcomer to the topic, experts in a given subject need less time to create study guides and can then charge students less, he said.

A robust set of software algorithms that solve the business model’s most complicated problems is what makes the service unique, Kestenbaum said.

During the website’s two-year, invite-only beta phase, students would sometimes hire and pay a tutor who had no access to the necessary textbooks, Kestenbaum said. Barelli and Kestenbaum responded to this problem by developing a search algorithm that scours libraries near a tutor’s home for the textbooks they need to fulfill an assignment. If a tutor is unable to access the right textbooks, that tutor cannot agree to create that study guide.

The service also works with Turnitin, an anti-plagiarism website universities use to scan student essays, to prevent tutors from duplicating their work, he said. Every study guide is unique, Kestenbaum said, and students retain the rights to the guides that tutors create for them.

The website displays no ads but is already profitable because of a price markup that covers the cost of Turnitin verification and other costs of business, such as Web hosting and software development, Kestenbaum said.

After two years and $250,000 in software development, Kestenbaum’s service grew from a 100-student beta to a company with 225 tutors and more than 13,000 students, he said.

Jose Moreno, a sophomore broadcast journalism major, said a service like Does That Make Sense had crossed his mind before, but he has yet to see any marketing for it at SU.

‘If a faculty member or someone of that authority were to promote it, I’d be more likely to use it,’ he said.

After starting the business with a total of $250 in marketing, Kestenbaum said, he is appealing to students and faculty at several universities, including Pennsylvania State University and the University of Michigan, and he will come to SU within the next month.

‘Now we’re ready to start putting out the word,’ Kestenbaum said. ‘There’s no other service like this right now.’

Does That Make Sense is working with The Campus Socialite, a lifestyle blog for college students, on a 12-campus marketing tour that includes nerd mascots and vials of M&Ms candy, Kestenbaum said. To woo faculty, the business hosts free luncheons and raffles tickets to local attractions, such as Turning Stone Casino, he said.

For the next two years, Does That Make Sense will be Kestenbaum’s primary focus, though he sees a long list of possibilities for the service’s patented technology, he said. In the future, he said he hopes to apply its bidding system to real estate services and legal research. The service may someday fit the needs of younger students, especially those with disabilities, he said.

In the meantime, Kestenbaum said, finishing law school at Hofstra comes first.

‘I’ll have to develop some kind of exit strategy,’ he said. ‘It’s just really hard to do everything at once.’

geclarke@syr.edu 

Published on October 1, 2011 at 12:00 pm