Cramster Inc. offers online study community

In these troubled economic times, it seems everyone's looking for a bargain - and Cramster Inc. may be one of the best around.

The Pasadena-based business (Cramster.com) includes a global, online community of students, teachers and other "subject enthusiasts" who help each other understand how to solve problems for math-based subjects like physics, calculus, statistics and chemistry.

Cramster offers two levels of subscription. The first is free, allowing users to ask one question per day. The second level costs $9.95 a month, and users get to ask five questions a day.

That's a pretty good deal.

It's a great business model and company founders Aaron Hawkey and Robert Angarita are already looking toward the future. The business initially catered primarily to students who needed help, but the two entrepreneurs are expanding that to include high school students as well.

In any given month, some 100,000 active users are tapping into the online service, and 30 percent of those are paying customers.

"We focus on math, science and engineering but we're looking to expand into economics, finance and accounting," Hawkey said. "We have students in thousands of univerities across the U.S. About 10 percent of them are international."