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Two friends from middle school built a study app that makes more than ten million dollars a year. They were twenty, they'd quit college to run it and they started with seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars from investors.

In July twenty twenty-five, ChatGPT started teaching students for free.

Students kept paying the two founders about twenty dollars a month.

This week's Trends dot V C report mapped thirty-six apps that turn a topic or a student's notes into lessons and quizzes. The ones that make the most money are tied to a class or an exam the student has to pass. A founder who picks one exam can sell to that same student.

In class, Sarthak Dhawan had to choose between listening and writing. "I just couldn't both listen to the teacher and write at the same time," he told TechCrunch.

In high school he got GPT to write his flashcards, then imported them into Quizlet, a flashcard app.

He and Rudy Arora, a friend since middle school, decided to make flashcards from lectures and PDFs the same way. Earlier, the two friends built an app that let homeowners hire people to put up their Christmas lights.

Rudy went to Northwestern and Sarthak went to Duke.

Before TurboLearn, Sarthak built an advice app called UMax that reached number one on the App Store.

Rudy was good at social media posts that grow an audience fast.

In early twenty twenty-four they launched TurboLearn. A student records a lecture or uploads a PDF and the app writes the notes, flashcards and a quiz.

The student can let the app take the notes or write beside it. A chat assistant explains any term they get stuck on.

For the first two weeks, the only marketing they could afford was TikTok videos they filmed together. They posted more than forty. One went viral and got millions of views.

"Honestly, if it was three more weeks and nothing went viral, I would have just moved on to another idea," Rudy said later.

The sign-ups from those views paid for influencers to post about the app. Rudy credited a psychology class for how he made the videos: "A moderately funny video is more effective at converting customers than a very funny video."

By October twenty twenty-four, TurboLearn reached about half a million users.

Rudy pitched it to professors too. A professor could record a lecture, fix the transcript and send it to the class.

Copycats showed up too. Rudy told the campus paper he wanted TurboLearn to be "a tool that can be used for learning rather than cheating."

Both founders were sophomores. That year they won the hundred-thousand-dollar grand prize at Northwestern's student startup contest.

They raised their seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars before they had a lot of traction, in Rudy's words.

Then both left school. They said they saw a chance to build a business that would last.

On July twenty-ninth, twenty twenty-five, OpenAI added a study mode to ChatGPT.

It walks a student through a topic step by step and asks questions to check they understand. OpenAI built it around a worry: students who let ChatGPT do their homework learn less. It came with the free plan. Google added a study mode to Gemini a week later.

A student could now get lessons and quizzes from ChatGPT for free or pay TurboLearn each month.

In the six months to October, the app went from one million users to five million. Twenty thousand new users signed up each day.

By that October, the app made eight figures a year in recurring revenue. It turned a profit from day one, with a team of fifteen in Los Angeles.

The team markets to students at campuses like UCLA. It's also testing prices other than the twenty dollars a month.

They renamed it Turbo AI, dropping "learn" from the name.

Consultants, lawyers and doctors use it too, along with analysts at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. Some upload a long report and listen to it as a podcast on the commute.

Students mostly upload their PDFs, readings and YouTube videos now. Since a recording in a lecture hall picks up noise, a file gives the app cleaner material than a live lecture.

ChatGPT teaches whatever a student asks about. Turbo turns the student's course material into notes and quizzes for the class they have to pass.

When we mapped this market for Trends dot V C, the apps making the most money were tied to a class or an exam.

Apps for curious adults earned far less. NerdSip makes a five-minute course on any topic. It shows about seventeen thousand dollars in revenue over its last twelve months.

Knowt, a flashcard and practice-test app, sells to students taking AP exams.

The AP exams started on May fourth, twenty twenty-six. Two days later, Knowt moved practice features that used to be free behind a paywall.

MWM, an app tracker, estimates Knowt's daily revenue roughly doubled in a week. Students with a test that week paid.

Then the one-star reviews came.

One student wrote, "I don't know what's the point of advertising yourself as a free study tool." By May ninth, Knowt fell from fifth in its App Store ranking to sixty-first.

Anyone who pays in exam week can cancel the day after the test.

Picture a nursing student two months from the NCLEX, the licensing exam she has to pass to work as a nurse.

The student has a semester of slides and a free chatbot that explains anything she types. The chatbot waits for her question.

She pays for an app that knows her test date. That app tells her what to study tonight. It brings back the questions she missed on Tuesday, with a short lesson on the topic behind them.

Oncourse AI sells that plan for the USMLE, the NCLEX, the CFA and the bar exam.

It builds each day's work from your test date, your free hours and your weak spots. Miss a day and it reshuffles the rest. Its plans run about eight dollars a week or fifteen dollars a month.

Another app picked one profession in one country: medical students in Brazil.

A student there records a class in Portuguese and the app turns it into flashcards, practice exams and clinical cases. Then it plans what she studies next.

More than two thousand students have paid for it since February twenty twenty-five. In the past twelve months it made almost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Most of that was profit.

A founder can build that for one exam with a fixed date and a big crowd of test-takers, like AP Biology, the SAT, the NCLEX or a state real-estate license.

The founder turns the syllabus into a daily plan and a bank of practice questions. Each night the app brings back what each student got wrong.

TurboLearn found its first users with TikTok videos the two founders filmed together. A new app can start there too.

Knowt's one-star reviews came after it took free features away during the exams.

Charge from day one, so each student knows the price before exam week.

The app can sell itself with one line: "Tell us your exam date. We'll tell you what to study tonight."

ChatGPT made the lesson free.

Turbo makes more than ten million dollars a year.

The Brazilian medical app has more than a hundred and ten thousand registered accounts. Visit trends dot V C and join more than fifty thousand founders to get the next opportunity.