Center and excessive schoolers are each the best and most tough viewers. If you happen to’re creating a neat little online game, chances are high they’re keen to obtain it straight away. But when, just like the workforce behind Revyze, you’re engaged on a studying app, good luck pitching them.
And but, the French startup has defied the chances and attracted a million customers over the past two years. In June, the Revyze app even reached the coveted #1 spot without cost downloads in Apple’s App Retailer.
One-third of all ninth graders in France turned to Revyze for some last-minute schoolwork earlier than the nationwide center college examination. Round 2,000 content material creators have shared 40,000 movies and quizzes within the app. They’ve attracted 150 million views in complete.
All that traction has helped the startup’s fundraising pitch. On Monday Revyze introduced shut of a seed spherical of €5.5 million ($6 million at present change charges) led by Speedinvest and Moonfire.
Motier Ventures, Station F (the place the startup is at present headquartered), Supercell co-founder Illka Paananen, King co-founders Riccardo Zacconni and Sebastian Knusson, and Duolingo’s Nickey Skarstad additionally participated.
Revyze beforehand raised a €2 million pre-seed spherical (round $2.2 million) again in 2022.
Non-exam season
But it hasn’t been such a easy and straightforward trip for Revyze over within the U.S.
Once we first coated the startup its pitch was easy: to construct the TikTok of schooling. Whereas there are some nice studying movies on TikTok, customers’ feeds are diluted with real-time true crime tales and, er, a bunch of every part (think about this author waving his hand within the air).
In 2023, the workforce determined to launch the app within the U.S. TikTok has varied challenges out there, with many U.S. dad and mom having considerations about content material points and native lawmakers additionally going after TikTok over nationwide safety considerations. So Revyze’s positioning instead — education-focused — platform might work. No less than on paper.
“I moved to the U.S. precisely one 12 months in the past and I spent 4 months there,” co-founder Guillaume Perrot instructed TechCrunch. “The purpose was to duplicate what we’d finished in France, to construct the corporate round these durations of stress and exams within the U.S., which is the SAT [the main college admissions test].”
However they discovered that doesn’t essentially result in sturdy and constant person progress. Possibly there wasn’t sufficient content material or it wasn’t particular sufficient for SAT assessments. “What we really discovered was that we needed to rework the product earlier than we might try to broaden to the U.S.” he added.
Specifically, whereas the app labored properly proper earlier than a annoying examination, U.S. customers didn’t open it throughout the remainder of the 12 months. So that they went again to the drafting board to seek out methods to create extra constant engagement.
The Revyze workforce refined the app expertise in order that it’s not only a feed of vertical movies that push studying at people who find themselves pressured sufficient about their looming exams to spend each waking minute studying. Now, content material is curated in a approach so to dip into the app in a extra laid again approach or be extra targeted. In different phrases, it now attracts inspiration from each TikTok and Duolingo.
“We’ve launched a product known as capsules with the concept that we’ll attempt to get folks to make use of the app each week for his or her assessments,” Perrot mentioned.
Capsules are designed by Revyze’s high content material creators round a single subject. It’s a set of movies, quizzes and abstract sheets. It really works a bit like a lesson in Duolingo. There’s a starting, a center and an finish, which signifies that you get a way of feat once you end a capsule.
There are additionally some gamification options round capsules. “You unlock a capsule with cash that you simply earn by coming again day-after-day — a bit like on Duolingo with the streak flame — and by doing quizzes day-after-day,” co-founder Florent Sciberras instructed TechCrunch.
“[Capsules] additionally enable high creators to monetize their content material. We’ve launched a creator monetization program for our high 5% for every universe. Let’s say you reside in Michigan and also you’ve taken your math examination, which is a bit Michigan-specific. You may say, ‘I do know what they want, I can create the content material and I’ll earn a proportion of the cash which are spent on my capsule,’” Sciberras mentioned.
Whereas every part continues to be free, Revyze plans to monetize its app in some unspecified time in the future by including paid entry to additional options, reminiscent of customized analytics and social options, and letting customers pay to unlock content material extra shortly.
Proper now, Revyze continues to be very a lot targeted on discovering product-market match and rising its communities of customers and content material creators. The neighborhood of high creators is surprisingly various. There are some, top-performing youngsters that wish to give again and share data but additionally some lecturers who wish to attain a wider viewers.
It’s significantly seen when the startup invitations its creator neighborhood to Station F. “You’ve received the tenth-grader rubbing shoulders with the 45-year-old historical past trainer from Agen,” Sciberras mentioned. “And so they’re all right here along with one objective in thoughts: serving to college students be taught otherwise.”