Exiting to the University they Studied at with Yuxin Zhu

The Exit - Presented By Flippa

Technology

5 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on The Exit: In freshman year, Yuxin wanted to improve his grades with new classes, but he soon realized finding the right ones through his uni’s system was a painful process. That’s when he and a friend decided to build a better class search system. It wasn’t easy, but once they finalized the system, the website took off. After 2 years they were generating over 1M sessions annually, so they monetized the site and watched profit coming in. The site was so successful, it was covering their university fees. With such a winning model, it’s no surprise that the university they were studying at wanted to acquire the business… Listen to find out how their exit went down. Yuxin Zhu co-founded a company as a computer science major in college by creating a search engine that allowed students at their college to audit potential course discovery and information about their college path like never before, which was acquired by the University of California in 2015. Yuxin currently is the Co-founder of Replo, a company that provides web page building tools for ecommerce companies wanting a better solution to building a unique website. Website - https://www.replo.app/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuxinzhu/ Twitter @Replohq - https://twitter.com/replohq -- The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You’ll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, and welcome to the exit presented by Flipup, the world's largest marketplace to buy and sell online businesses and startups.
0:06.5	The exit is a 30-minute podcast featuring amazing entrepreneurs who have been there and they have done it.
0:11.5	The exit talks to operators who have bought and sold businesses of all different sizes.
0:15.5	You'll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits.
0:20.0	It's a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many.
0:25.0	Down this episode, I sit down with Yushan Zoo.
0:28.0	He's a really great entrepreneur who walks through his story of starting a company with his friend in college as a computer science major,
0:37.0	and literally they were paying their tuition with the revenue that they generated.
0:42.0	They created a search engine to allow people to learn how the most effective choosing, of course, in their whole college career would impact their career.
0:54.0	It was a really impressive story as to how he got started, how he found his co-founders, and what they're working on today,
1:02.0	where they're helping e-commerce companies really supercharge their ability to spin up pages without any development.
1:09.0	One of the key parts to this story is that when we talk through him exiting his business,
1:17.0	he actually exited it to the university, which is a really powerful loop of starting a company at Berkeley for students to the point where he was sitting in his class,
1:29.0	and there would be five laptop screens that he could see from the back of the classroom, and all five would have his website showing on there,
1:37.0	with students searching through, and he'd get a notification on his phone when they had made a purchase.
1:44.0	Not only were they generating revenue from ads and the content that they were making, but through affiliates.
1:50.0	A lot of listeners here understand the power of affiliates through things like Amazon, but they were generating not only the links through to books,
2:01.0	and things that resources of these courses that the students were making their schedules with, and determining which classes to take,
2:07.0	but they were generating revenue off of the purchases across the board on Amazon, which is brilliant.
2:14.0	Amazon, of course, being the powerhouse of affiliates, college students spending thousands and thousands of dollars in that first few weeks of each semester.
2:24.0	It's just a really great story of how they went through the process of paying their tuition so much through this revenue,
2:31.0	and selling it to the university afterwards as the university was upgrading their systems.
	...

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