Paul Miller, founder of School of Everything, is making school cool again

Everybody wants to learn something new in September, says Paul Miller, founder and CEO of School of Everything. "It is our busiest time. September and the beginning of January—it's a New Year's resolution thing." It's Miller's job to help connect those who want to learn with teachers through the School of Everything website, which launched a year ago. "We're growing pretty fast," he says. "We spend almost nothing on marketing. We don't buy traffic and we don't buy glossy adverts. It's all organic growth."

The idea first hit the founding team of Miller, Peter Brownell and Dougald Hine after they read an article about Free-U, a group of 1960s Stanford University students who decided to set up their own school because they were frustrated with the Stanford curriculum. Students simply noted the subjects they wanted to teach at the top of a noticeboard. "The story goes that at its peak it grew to be 300 courses a week and 50,000 students. We thought, 'why just do it in one place? Use the Net to scale it up and do it anywhere'."

Miller says the company had a problem with revenues early on, since student/teacher arrangements are often cash-in-hand. Taking a percentage of the teaching fee relies on the teachers using the School of Everything invoicing system. Better, says Miller, to charge for the introduction. "Students get their first lesson half-price and that goes as an introduction fee to us. After that it's up to them."

Miller hopes to break even by Christmas. In the meantime, he says his site serves as an interesting indicator of social trends: "Photography is a big one. For some reason there are an awful lot of people with digital cameras who don't know how to use them."