A learning platform where sports enthusiasts are able to access and book coaches for local lessons – including sports like golf, tennis and pickleball – is gaining traction.
TeachMe.To, the San Diego-based online company formed in late 2021 that connects those who want to learn with those who want to teach, in September announced that it had raised $2 million in seed round funding and about $2.5 million to date.
CEO
TeachMe.To
“We’re building the easy way to learn how to play – supporting both coach discovery as well as providing tools and support throughout the learning journey,” says founder Nick O’Brien, who formed TeachMe.To with Tyler Maloney.
TeachMe.To’s seed funding was led by 1984 Ventures and with participation from Common Metal and Alumni Ventures, as well as a syndicate of angel investors, including Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI; Ben Lauzier, former VP of Product & Growth at Thumbtack; Vivek Patel, former CPO at Yelp; and Brent Turner, president of Rover.
The funding will be used to accelerate growth and introduce new improvements that complete an end-to-end lesson experience.
Getting Started
O’Brien and Maloney founded the company after a search for a way to learn how to kiteboard led them down a lonesome road with few instructors and websites that lacked reviews, pricing and ways to book lessons online.
“It’s just not what you expect as a modern consumer, so we ended up not purchasing,” he said. “As we started looking at other lessons like golf, tennis and guitar, we realized this was a common problem across the board. We started to wonder: ‘How many more people would try something new if it was just a little easier to get started?’”
So TeachMe.To was born, and today continues to concentrate on helping students find and book a coach with relative ease as well as compare coaches across price, location and availability.
TeachMe.To also has a “Vet ’Em Video” that gives prospective students a chance to get to know a coach before booking.
“I believe in TeachMe.To because I believe in the good of humanity,” said Maloney, the company’s chairman and the founder of Faves, a mobile app with more than 200,000 users. “The world is full of people who want to learn and grow. We’re just making it a little easier to get started.”
Pickleball Tailwind
O’Brien says that big companies are built when founders accurately identify and ride a tailwind.
“In TeachMe.To’s case, there are a few interesting tailwinds,” O’Brien said. “Post-pandemic, there has been a surge of interest in outdoor activities. This included a surge for sports like golf — which boomed during COVID and has had sustained interest since — and also pickleball, which has become the fastest growing sport in the U.S.”
Pickleball has had a 159% growth rate over the last three years, with about nine million players, he said.
O’Brien said TeachMe.To instructors will take home over $2 million this year, its first full year in operation, and said that the company’s top instructors bring in more than $5,000 a month.
The company currently facilitates more than 100 lessons a day in nearly every state across America and has grown 400% in the last six months.
O’Brien said the company’s goal is to 10x the number of people who are able to pick up hobbies through TeachMe.To by making it easy to start with lessons, which he said he knows is not an entirely new concept.
eCommerce Experience
“There have been countless previous attempts to build a marketplace for sports lessons,” O’Brien said. “And yet, not one has stood the test of time. In order to be the first breakthrough company in the space, we had to create our own go-to-market playbook. This demanded that we challenge some key assumptions about how to start and grow a marketplace, which often involved spending a lot of money and tipping one city at a time. By expanding nationally and focusing on markets we could win quickly, we were able to scale to breakeven without burning much capital.”
Until now, O’Brien said no company has taken all the offline data that goes into choosing a coach and booking a lesson — the coach, locations, scheduling, pricing, payments, communication — and bundled it into a single, easy-to-use platform.
“The secret is years of product and process work to turn a high-friction, pen-and-paper experience into a seamless eCommerce experience that feels like shopping online,” he said.
O’Brien said the company carefully vets its instructors and works hard to provide a top-notch customer experience.
In the past 12 months, the service offering has expanded from just surfing in California to surfing, golf, tennis and pickleball across the nation. Its team has grown from five to 25 people. In just one year, the company has scaled to four sports in the top 100 U.S. cities.
The company has a few new skills in the testing phase, including fitness and dance and expects to start launching more skills, such as boxing and piano, in 2024.
TeachMe.To
FOUNDED: 2021
CEO: Nick O’Brien
HEADQUARTERS: San Diego
BUSINESS: Online marketplace
FUNDING: $2.5 million (Seed round)
EMPLOYEES: 25
WEBSITE: TeachMe.To
CONTACT: 650-900-3835 nick@teachme.to
SOCIAL IMPACT: TeachMe.To has provided coaches pro bono for volunteer organizations.
NOTABLE: Company has grown to more than 2,300 instructors (42 in San Diego County) in less than three years.
