This Japanese startup lets you earn money by selling your old school notes

It is very similar to how Amazon recommends products, reports Tech in Asia

I spoke with Go Arai, CEO of Arcterus, a startup that is trying to help students learn more effectively. It is a platform that allows students to share their study notebooks with other students and then profit from it. 

How does your platform match students with notebooks? 

“The basic approach is that [we take into account] the background of the students and what kind of notebooks they have and what kind of textbook they use at school.

“[It’s] very similar to how Amazon recommends products. Someone who bought the product also bought this product.”

How are you appealing to users? 

“We directly communicate to our users. For example, in Japan, the only way we communicate to our users is only through Twitter and maybe through App Store and Google Play. We don’t do any paid marketing and we don’t do Facebook in Japan, as middle school and high school students in Japan don’t do Facebook, but are heavily on Twitter.

“Another important channel is word of mouth.”

Your customers are going to graduate and stop using your product. How do you combat that?

“The number of users goes down when they are getting to universities. Ideally, the longest term that the users will use [the platform] is six years (from seventh grade to twelfth). So, what we’re going to do is to provide subjects […] [that are not] very much focused to schools but other certificates like CPAs and certificates for lawyers that are very standardized throughout the country.”

What’s your approach in entering new markets?

“Clear started in Japan. We then went to Thailand, Taiwan, China, and [recently] we launched in Indonesia. In each country, we have part-time team members and we have a lot of university students in our marketing teams.”

This is an excerpt from the article published on Tech In Asia. You can read the full article here