Kursguru creates an online community for offline courses

Founded just three months ago, Kursguru (translated “course guru”) is a new startup in Berlin’s Mitte District looking to centralize your search for offline educational courses. The current platform (at the moment only available in German) allows you to browse and book yoga, cooking, and first aid classes. Kursguru’s Co-founder Felix Baer plans to add more categories to the website. His mission is to make Kursguru a localized resource and community for city residents to discover and book educational classes.

He was happy to tell us that people are already booking courses everyday through Kursguru. However, getting website visitors to actually click the buy button still remains the team’s biggest challenge. “At the beginning, people are skeptical. They don’t know us yet. They call us and want to know if their money is safe,” explains Baer. Acquiring partners on the website was not as difficult as the co-founders anticipated, but Baer clarified that not just any business is allowed on Kursguru. To this Baer says, “We have a every simple rule: We only take people on our platform where we would advise a friend to go.”

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As you may have expected, there are already many centralized course search websites to choose from. Baer explains to us that Kursguru differentiates itself from other such websites by showcasing clearly who its partners are while also making the platform personal. “There are websites that don’t care if their customers are satisfied or come back. They are more transactional platforms. We are trying to build a community and inspire people to take classes,” says Baer.

At the moment, the team consists of Baer and his Co-founder Andi Bauer (pictured above). Although both are from Munich, they saw value in starting their business in Berlin, since Berlin has a “more vibrant education market”. They also believe it will be easier to find young people to work with them once they are ready to grow Kursguru.

Baer is currently concentrating on the Berlin market and plans to take Kursguru nationwide and even international in the future. To make this a reality, the team is currently looking for financing and hopes to secure a funding round in the next 3-6 months.

This story originally appeared on VentureVillage. Copyright 2014