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Growing up in the San Francisco Bay area, Megan O鈥機onnor saw firsthand how difficult it was for her mother, a public school teacher, to single-handedly make ends meet for her family.

Her mom took on a second job that allowed her to continue her love of teaching: private tutoring. While the extra $200 to $300 a week meant a lot to O鈥機onnor鈥檚 family, tutoring was time-consuming and sometimes frustrating when clients canceled at the last minute or forgot to pay their bills. It was the first time O鈥機onnor realized that the tutoring industry needed an assist.

So O鈥機onnor co-founded , a new app meant to manage tutoring administrative work and scale a growing industry. After competing on Apple鈥檚 program this year, Clark won $2 million in funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, the same group that funded Snapchat.

Clark completes tasks like scheduling with students, billing families for payments, and creating and sending progress reports. Tutors are the only ones who use the actual app dashboard, which then communicates all this information with parents via email and text message. The app inputs clients鈥� credit card numbers to automatically bill after every session so tutors don鈥檛 have to constantly badger parents for payments.

Although O鈥機onnor can鈥檛 control the abysmally low salaries some states give teachers, she hopes that her app can keep more teachers in the profession by providing an accessible second source of income that continues their passion for education. The income demand is significant: In 11 states, 20 percent of teachers rely on second jobs to stay financially stable, according to a report from the . Currently, half of Clark鈥檚 tutors are teachers and half are professional private tutors.

鈥淲e believe every teacher in America should be a tutor,鈥� O鈥機onnor in Clark鈥檚 Planet of the Apps presentation.

But the app isn鈥檛 just targeted at teachers 鈥� it鈥檚 meant to make the job easier for every type of tutor. The global private tutoring market was projected to grow nearly by 2020, and O鈥機onnor that parent demand for tutoring will increase by 28 percent each year.

鈥淔or a market growth rate, that鈥檚 remarkable: that means that it doubles every two years,鈥� Lightspeed Venture Partner鈥檚 Jeremy Liew said during the Clark presentation.

O鈥機onnor debuted the beta version of Clark with co-founder Sam Gimbel in May 2016, but the app will launch nationally the first week of October, during National Tutoring Week.

Josh Sohn has worked as a full-time private tutor in the New York area for 15 years, and began using Clark last year to manage his business. While not all his clients will agree to give their billing information to the system, many do, and he鈥檚 found communication has become a lot easier for the 40 kids he teaches each year.

鈥淚 wasn鈥檛 getting emails from hundreds of parents anymore,鈥� Sohn said.

To use Clark, tutors must agree to undergo a background check and use progress reports through the app to update families. Clark doesn鈥檛 charge for a tutor鈥檚 existing clients, but it does take 10 percent of transaction fees for new clients added to the app.

Private tutoring has long been out of reach of lower-income families, but O鈥機onnor hopes that expanding the number of tutors can make the market more affordable, in the way Uber made the private car accessible to people from a broader range of economic backgrounds. She said her team has plans around this for 2018, but couldn鈥檛 provide further details yet.

鈥淥ur long-term vision is to be able to subsidize tutoring sessions for kids who don鈥檛 have access to it,鈥� O鈥機onnor said.

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