How ZINCH Connected 3.5 Million Students with the Right School

Cache Merrill -

PROJECT INFORMATION

Background

Zinch is yet another company in the education technology space that we’ve loved working with. Zinch provides high school students with the resources they need to get into the college of their dreams by connecting them with college recruiters. Zinch worked with several teams both internally and using offshore developers to get its product built. Unfortunately, these teams were not hitting the mark.

Challenge

As a startup, Zinch knew that hiring the right talent was important, as custom software development tends to be expensive. Zinch tested several different channels while looking for developer talent but found none that were meeting expectations. The team tried to utilize local freelancers and engineers, but they were costly to employ for extended engagements. Zinch also tried working with other direct international developers from Ukraine and Vietnam and but had difficulty nailing down effectiveness with these outsourced teams. With investor funding and timeline dwindling, Zinch needed to get its product built quickly and done right the first time.

Goals

The overall goal for Zinch was to create an online portal for students to showcase themselves to admissions officers. This would lead to connections being made and scholarships being offered.

Solution

Having worked with international teams who stifled progress, Zinch knew that it needed to find the right developers to augment its team and get the product built quickly. After two weeks of Zibtek’s developer progress on the Zinch product, the team knew they had finally found the right tech partner. This new model allowing the Zinch team to communicate in clear English with a US-based tech lead was the piece that was missing in earlier partnerships.

Outcome

The Zinch product gained 3.5 million users before its acquisition by Chegg. This acquisition had lead to a huge expansion for Chegg by tripling its user base, increasing scholarship amounts to $1.9 billion, and adding over 5,000 school profiles to its existing list. Because quick product iterations were made for Zinch, it was able to find the perfect product market fit.