A hot app from France is bringing in an injection of funding as it seeks to engage with students around the world. Revyze, which looks to revolutionize education by adding TikTok-style videos to the test prep experience, has raised a €5.5 million ($6 million) seed round led by Speedinvest and Moonfire.
The last time we checked in with Revyze was in 2022, when the then-new app picked up a $2 million pre-seed round. The startup arrived with a simple goal: Making learning more fun and interactive by using short-form videos as study aids.
In the two years since Revyze’s pre-seed round, the app has taken off — especially in France. TechCrunch noted that Revyze has reached one million users and has become one of the most downloaded free offerings on the Apple App Store. 2,000 content creators have published 40,000 videos and quizzes on Revyze, pulling in 150 million views in the process.
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But even bigger things are on the horizon for Revyze. Data suggests that viewership on education channels like Crash Course spikes during exam season, and Revyze has seen that phenomenon first-hand. One-third of French 9th graders used the app before their national middle school exam, according to TechCrunch.
Apps like Duolingo have shown how startups can revolutionize education by breaking large concepts into bite-sized pieces. Revyze’s attempt at a similar format could pay off in a big way. The test prep industry is a multi-billion dollar market that only keeps growing, and by turning adding fun and interactive elements to the homework experience, Revyze is set up to make test prep accessible to the masses.
But that mission has already produced some growing pains. Revyze Co-Founder Guillaume Perrot traveled to the U.S. to oversee Revyze’s launch as an SAT prep service, but he was greeted with slow growth among American users, with many U.S. students leaving the app as soon as their exams were over and done with. “What we actually learned was that we had to rework the product before we could try and expand to the U.S.” Perrot told TechCrunch.
Revyze’s solution to that problem is a product called Capsules — daily lessons that resemble the incremental language instruction on Duolingo. Capsules also provide a form of creator monetization, with the top 5% of virtual instructors in each “universe” (i.e. each state-specific or regional exam category) earning payouts.
Can these gamified elements and revenue streams help Revyze recreate its domestic growth spurt across the globe? The app is adapting favored features from the leaders in its industry, and it now has a sizable war chest it can put to work within its cram sessions. That sounds like the recipe for a passing grade.
