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Revyze hit the iPhone top spot by teaching through short-form video – proving TikTok-native formats crack the engagement problem edtech never solved.
ENTRY ANGLES
Rebuild established services and marketplaces with short vertical video as default content format · Implement recommendation algorithm optimized for individual feed (not video walls) · Add native functionality for goal completion without leaving app (booking, quizzes, lessons)
VERTICALS
CAPABILITIES
Recommendation algorithm / feed engine development, Short-form vertical video content infrastructure, Native in-app functionality for user goals (transactions, quizzes, bookings)
REVYZE FOUNDER
“where are my friends right now”
Revyze built an app that lets students "learn by scrolling" – including preparing for school exams and college applications.
As the App Store description puts it: "In our app, you'll master in 2 minutes what you couldn't understand in 2 hours of class. Revyze will help you improve your exam scores in just 10 minutes a day, getting tips from students at elite colleges. Whether you're preparing for school exams or writing your college application essay, Revyze has everything you need to get into the school you've dreamed of. You can learn on the subway, in the car, or at home. This is how Gen Z studies!"
The core format is short video. College students share advice on what to expect and how to prepare for admissions at their specific schools – including how to write a strong application essay for a particular program. High schoolers, other students, and teachers break down exam problems and walk through tests step by step.
The platform's AI automatically generates quiz questions from explanatory videos, giving users a way to test their comprehension immediately after watching a clip.
Revyze is currently testing a feature called "capsules" – structured bundles of videos and quizzes on a single topic, rounded out with an AI-generated summary. This turns a capsule into something close to a self-contained lesson on the subject.
Beyond lessons, the app includes a forum where users can interact with each other, celebrate wins, or ask for advice.
The app is currently free. The founders plan to introduce paid access to premium content – including capsules – with creators receiving a revenue share from Revyze.
Revyze launched in France in summer 2022, where most of its users are today. The startup is already running pilot experiments in the US and plans a full entry in 2025. Registered users crossed 1 million three months ago.
Growth accelerated sharply starting this past spring. During exam season and college application season, Revyze climbs to the No. 1 spot among free apps in the French App Store – ahead of Temu, Google, and TikTok. A co-founder claims that during the most recent exam period, more than a third of all French ninth-graders taking their end-of-middle-school exams were using the app.
On the back of that growth, Revyze raised €5.5M in new funding, adding to the €2M it had raised before launch.
French media has started calling Revyze "the TikTok of education" – the headline from a recent TV interview with the co-founder.
There's plenty of educational short-form video on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels. What's pulling students toward Revyze anyway is focus: the app contains only content relevant to learning, and it layers quizzes and structured lessons on top of the videos, making it a more functional study tool. But it delivers all of that in the format students already find natural – just scroll when you have a free minute.
"Gen Z" isn't just a demographic label. It's a design signal. These users grew up with TikTok's interface as a reference point, and that has real implications for how any content-driven product for them should be built.
Some startups have already caught on.
Unravel ([covered here](/review/ne-vylozhil-fotochki-schitaj-ne-otdohnul)) raised $1.85M for a travel booking marketplace organized as a short-video feed, with creator partners earning commissions on completed bookings. Travly ([covered here](/review/ljudi-stali-vybirat-glazami)) built a similar travel-booking app where user-generated clips earn the creators 5% of any booking they drive. Atmosfy ([covered here](/review/giganty-pokazali-nam-sposob-zarabotat)) raised $23M for a short-video local discovery app for restaurants, clubs, and hotels – and recently added in-app booking and a "where are my friends right now" feature.
Perhaps the most inventive application so far came from Y Combinator-backed Mica ([covered here](/review/chto-obshhego-mezhdu-tiktokom-i-b2b-prodazhami)), which built an AI tool that clips short videos from long B2B sales call recordings. The idea: the "internal champion" at a potential client company can distribute these clips internally to convince other decision-makers to approve a purchase. Short videos, it turns out, work better than documents and slide decks.
The direction is obvious: rebuild established services and marketplaces in popular categories so that short vertical video becomes their default content format. Two things determine whether that works. The recommendation algorithm comes first – experts consistently credit TikTok's dominance to its individual feed engine, which makes the format sticky. Without it, you have video walls, not feeds. The other piece is native functionality that lets users accomplish their actual goals without leaving the app: in-app booking for travel apps, quizzes and lesson bundles for Revyze. These features need to be almost invisibly simple – frictionless enough to match the effortless experience of scrolling itself.
The vertical that's ready for its own TikTok moment is the one with a large existing audience, underserved search intent, and content that benefits from showing rather than telling. Pick that vertical, solve the algorithm and native-feature problems, and you have a real shot at category ownership.
Revyze managed to hit No. 1 in an app store with a subject – exam prep – that could not be less inherently exciting. Which "boring" vertical will you pick?