Meet Revyzea French startup developing a mobile app for iOS and android at the intersection of education and social. In many ways, Revyze is similar to TikTok. But it focuses specifically on educational content for teens.
“We spoke to kids who went to 30 or 35 different high schools,” co-founder Florent Sciberras told me. “We asked them, ‘What do you think about school and what is the best way to learn?’ And they told us no one had ever asked them those questions.”
In hindsight, the answer was quite simple and straightforward. They said they would rather learn from their friends than from their teachers. “They said ‘because they talk like us and they are like us,'” said Sciberras.
And that’s probably why educational videos are so popular on YouTube and TikTok – the hashtag #LearnOnTikTok, for example, is hugely popular.
But there is a problem with the mainstream social platforms. They are not specifically designed for education. If you watch an interesting video on TikTok, the social app may recommend something completely different when you move on to the next video. You eventually jump from math to dancing cat to physics to magic tricks…
Revyze aims to be the TikTok of education – a community powered app with a sharp focus on high school education. Essentially, Revyze wants to unbundle educational videos from TikTok – a very large social platform – so that they get the attention they deserve.
Initially, the Revyze team focused on the French baccalauréat, the exam you have to pass at the end of high school. They built a quick version of the app, put together a Discord community to spread the word, and shared a few videos on TikTok and Instagram.
In just a few weeks, Revyze managed to attract 35,000 downloads. They reached the #2 spot in the App Store’s top free apps – right behind Doctolib.
Image Credits: Revyze
This summer, Revyze raised a $2 million (€2 million) pre-seed round from over a hundred business angels, including Nate Blecharczyk, Jean-Charles Samuelian, Charles Gorintin, Mathilde Collin, Lenny Rachitzky, Thomas France, Julia Bijaoui, Roxanne Varza, Arion (fund of Jacques Attali), Olivier Dacourt, Varsha Rao and others. firstminute Capital, Kima Ventures, AirAngels, Nomad Capital and Ligature VC have also invested.
Now the company wants to turn this little experiment into a huge social/educational app. “Our goal is to reach 500,000 users by the end of the year and expand to the US within 6 to 12 months,” co-founder Guillaume Perrot told me.
Building the community behind the app
So what does Revyze feel like? When you open the app, you get a TikTok-like feed of videos. These videos fill the entire screen and you can skip to the next video with a simple swipe. There is a three minute limit on the length of the video.
The second tab allows you to explore the video library in more detail. You can select a topic, such as math or literature, and even select a chapter in the syllabus. Revyze started with French high school students in their senior year and gradually expanded to other classes.
And since we’re talking about educational content, Revyze pays close attention to the videos uploaded to the app. When a user submits a video, it is not immediately live on the platform.
“Videos are validated by us and by the community,” Perrot said. “We want to make sure it’s high-quality content, it’s accurate and it’s not off-topic. Eventually there will be a peer moderation system and then we will add a bit of machine learning.”
What do you get when you post on Revyze? A warm fuzzy feeling. In more technical terms, you collect reward points, just like with Stack Overflow. These reward points are called EDU. You get 20 points if you post a video, and you get a point if someone thanks you for the video.
Some teens post videos because explaining a concept is the best way to make sure they understand it very well. Others want to climb the leaderboard.
If web3 is more than just a fad in the long run, Revyze could also turn EDU into a currency to reward the community for their contributions. But that’s not the next item on the roadmap.
Revyze will then expand to more countries and more education systems. There are also plenty of options when it comes to personalizing the app for each user.
Revyze plans to algorithmically sort videos so they’re relevant to your level and your learning style — an algorithm that focuses on learning outcomes rather than watch time. This way, users will spend less time skipping videos to find relevant content.
“We’re not a social network,” Sciberras said. “Our goal is for you to spend as little time in the app as possible to learn as much as possible.”
Image Credits: Revyze