Middle and excessive schoolers are each the best and most tough viewers. If you’re creating a neat little online game, likelihood is they’re keen to obtain it immediately. But if, just like the group behind Revyze, you’re engaged on a studying app, good luck pitching them.
And but, the French startup has defied the percentages 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 Store.
One-third of all ninth graders in France turned to Revyze for some last-minute schoolwork earlier than the nationwide center college examination. Around 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 trade charges) led by Speedinvest and Moonfire.
Motier Ventures, Station F (the place the startup is at the moment 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
Yet it hasn’t been such a clean and simple journey for Revyze over within the U.S.
When we first coated the startup its pitch was easy: to construct the TikTok of schooling. While there are some nice studying movies on TikTok, customers’ feeds are diluted with real-time true crime tales and, er, a bunch of all the things (think about this author waving his hand within the air).
In 2023, the group determined to launch the app within the U.S. TikTok has numerous challenges out there, with many U.S. mother and father having issues about content material points and native lawmakers additionally going after TikTok over nationwide safety issues. So Revyze’s positioning as a substitute — education-focused — platform may work. At least on paper.
“I moved to the U.S. precisely one yr in the past and I spent 4 months there,” co-founder Guillaume Perrot instructed TechCrunch. “The intention was to duplicate what we’d finished in France, to construct the corporate round these intervals of stress and exams within the U.S., which is the SAT [the main college admissions test].”
But they discovered that doesn’t essentially result in sturdy and constant person development. Maybe there wasn’t sufficient content material or it wasn’t particular sufficient for SAT checks. “What we truly realized was that we needed to rework the product earlier than we may attempt to broaden to the U.S.” he added.
In specific, whereas the app labored nicely proper earlier than a hectic examination, U.S. customers didn’t open it throughout the remainder of the yr. So they went again to the drafting board to search out methods to create extra constant engagement.
The Revyze group 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 means to be able to dip into the app in a extra laid again means 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 individuals to make use of the app each week for his or her checks,” Perrot stated.
Capsules are designed by Revyze’s high content material creators round a single matter. It’s a set of movies, quizzes and abstract sheets. It 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 if you end a capsule.
There are additionally some gamification options round capsules. “You unlock a capsule with cash that you just earn by coming again daily — a bit like on Duolingo with the streak flame — and by doing quizzes daily,” co-founder Florent Sciberras instructed TechCrunch.
“[Capsules] additionally permit 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 can 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 stated.
While all the things continues to be free, Revyze plans to monetize its app in some unspecified time in the future by including paid entry to additional options, resembling customized analytics and social options, and letting customers pay to unlock content material extra shortly.
Right 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 numerous. There are some, top-performing youngsters that wish to give again and share information but in addition some academics who wish to attain a wider viewers.
It’s significantly seen when the startup invitations its creator neighborhood to Station F. “You’ve obtained the tenth-grader rubbing shoulders with the 45-year-old historical past trainer from Agen,” Sciberras stated. “And they’re all right here along with one aim in thoughts: serving to college students be taught otherwise.”
