How StudyFetch Used Creator-Led Growth to Hit $10M+ ARR in 3 Years

So originally before we started study fetch we started this small little essay writing company and we were like hey like is this something I want to do long term? Is this a sustainable business and morally do you want to help students basically like cheat their way through life and the answer was no to all of those things. So we scrapped the business entirely and in September 23 launched study fetch which was basically the opposite of that. Chachi BT is very much a productivity tool and it's designed to give you the answer as soon as possible or designed to help you get through a task as soon as possible.

That's not how you learn. That's actually quite the opposite and you need to be guided and need to be taught over time and need to be showcased the right things that will reach the aha moment as you keep on learning and progressing through difficult topics. And I think that everyone will basically have accessibility to their own mini school. You know the their ability to have their own teacher, their ability to have that content that's that's been provided to them from A to Z. Welcome to Subversive, a podcast dedicated to sharing stories from the best consumer subscription apps in the world. We'll bring you lessons for how to grow your consumer subscription business, including insights and inflection points that led to exponential growth from leaders at category defining companies and innovative startups.

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My guest today is Essen Dani, co-founder and CEO of Study Fetch, an AI native learning platform that is already used by over 7 million students worldwide. In this episode, I talked to Essen about how Studyfetch found initial product market fit with an AI tutor that actually helps students learn rather than giving them easy answers, about the specific strategies and tactics the company has used to power its student creator program which has already generated over 2 billion social media views to date. And about its recent bet on Honen, a B2B skill building platform that it launched with Nvidia as a flagship partner. All right, welcome Essen to the Subversive podcast. really excited to have you on today to talk about study fetch which is an AI powered study platform for students and one of the fastest growing edtech companies in the country right now. Um so before we jump into your background tell us a

little bit more about what study fetch is for those who don't already know. >> Yeah so I guess to put it very simply study fetch is a platform for college students where you upload your course materials then transfer that into any sort of piece of information or content that you want to turn it into. So whether that's practice tests, flashcards, tutoring sessions, or all of that in one place, you can have that whole learning ecosystem in one one environment for yourself.

>> Awesome. Well, as somebody who spent almost four years leading the product growth team at Quizlet, this is a space I know quite well. And so I'm I'm very excited to get into the discussion with you today. Before we get to Study Fetch,

let's talk a little bit more about your background. So before you became a tech entrepreneur, you're a musician. You spent many years as a drummer and did hundreds of live shows. What was that experience like and and what led you from being a musician into becoming an entrepreneur? >> Yeah, it's so crazy. It was so long ago. It almost feels like a double life at this point. But I think there was a couple interesting learnings that that I came out of that um from that experience. I think the first thing is understanding that there's two different types of viewers when it comes to uh who you're performing for. Uh performance is a big part of that that kind of experience that I learned through. But the main thing was there's the people that you're playing with and then there's also the audience that you're playing for. Very similarly to when you're working with it in a team environment or you're working with uh

are you're trying to connect to college students specifically. There's two very different types of audience that you're that you're catering for. And in that you have to understand specific things like how do I simplify this for the average person or for the average audience that I'm catering towards and then vice versa how do I make sure that I'm connecting with the team that I'm working with or like the band members that I'm playing alongside. So I think from that experience I learned that there's multiple different like angles to to performance.

>> Yeah, that's a great insight. And I feel like students in particular are a fickle audience. You know, they have often times they're very busy. They can have short attention spans. And so really just understanding your audience and how to connect with them has been a huge part of your success, which we'll talk more about on the episode today. Um, so

you and your co-founder Ryan reconnected in college after going to middle school together many years ago. And from what I understand, you tried a number of different ideas that failed before you came across study fetch. So what was it about study fetch that ultimately helped you to break through and and what did that origin story look like? >> Yeah, I mean I will say going through those trials and tribulations of of creating a bunch of side projects here and there was was a huge part of of you know where we've ended up today. I think in absence of that there would have been a lot more learnings that would have came out on the other side you know more recently but but having that experience is super helpful in developing study fetch. But like a little bit of context as to when we first started and why we started study fetch was while I was in college at the time uh you know writing essays was a big part about you know

being in college and and basically like every other week you'd have to write essays. When GPD3's API came out I started using that within my you know within my class and I realized oh my god this is going to like absolutely change the world. So originally before we started study fetch, we' started this small little essay writing company which was quite literally you type in a topic and then it spits out an essay for you basically. And uh when we launched that we had actually marketed on TikTok a little bit. It was it was a little bit before G uh Chad PT came out actually.

And when Chad PT came out like people actually started believing that this is a technology that was that was real and realistic. and we had blown up uh for a little bit and we're bootstrap and profitable like small little business but we had actually scrapped that business entirely and we took a step back and we were like hey like is this something I want to do longterm is this a sustainable business and morally do you want to help students >> basically like cheat their way through life and the answer was no to all of those things so we scrapped the business entirely and in September of 23 launched study fetch um which was basically the opposite of that and one thing to note about that as well is we were a little bit concerned going into that it the notion of, hey, is are college students actually going to care about this type of technology? You know, is this something that they're going to resonate

with? And luckily, the answer was yes. And, you know, basically the second video we ever posted about study fetch, you know, blew up on social media. So, um, which I can get into later, but that's kind of like the origin story of why we started study fetch. Yeah. Well, good for you for having the guts to abandon the initial essay writing concept. I feel like a lot of college students would have just said, "Hey, this is a great side project. I can make a little bit of beer money doing this."

and they would have just stayed at it. But sounded like you guys, number one, you wanted to be true to your mission of helping college students learn and not just help them cheat. And two, you saw a much bigger opportunity to build something bigger and better. And I think that's a great transition into the core topic for today. So let's start by just

talking about how study fetch found its initial product market fit. Um, when you guys started, the obvious move would have been to build another answer engine like CHEG or Course Hero or one of these other legacy edtech companies that typically had been not necessarily about helping students cheat, but helping them get answers and get help on homework assignments. Um, but you build an AI tutor that actually refused to hand over easy answers to students and instead really forced them to learn. So, what was the insight that gave you confidence that that was the right bet? Yeah. So, when we first started, before we even launched the product, we talked to I would I want to say over like 120 to 150 college students and interviewed them directly to try to get insights on what was missing specifically from their education and how like AI can actually like fit that gap because it was so new to everyone that people didn't actually

recognize that this technology would help them in so many different ways. I think through those insights, we came to the other side of the conclusion of understanding, hey, it's not actually only just about saving time for students. It's also about helping them understand concepts that would have they would have otherwise not understood in the way that the materials presented to them. So a big learning that we came out of it was students are being you know fed so many large pieces of course materials. They're being fed like thousandpage textbooks and and how can we process that in a way that they will actually understand it because you know >> how you learned 150 years ago is not how you learn today. and content and materials are just constantly changing so much that >> students need to keep up otherwise they'll be behind in the future.

>> Yeah, I think that's a really key point and I know you and I have talked about this a little bit outside of the context of this podcast just the fact that the game used to be as a student. How do I get the best grades in the shortest amount of time so that I can graduate with a high enough GPA that somebody will come along and hire me? whether it's, you know, going into med school or or joining a law firm or going into business, you just needed to get that first job. And that was largely dependent on grades. But I feel like more and more with AI progressing as fast as it is. And so many of these entry- level jobs getting eliminated, it's not about grades anymore. Like you have to graduate with real skills, which means you really have to learn something. You can't just get a bunch of easy A's and and call it a day. And so you guys have built an entire suite of products and features that help students

do this. You have your core arutor, but then you also have study plans, flashcards, quizzes, practice tests, you've got arcade, you've got tutor, you have all these different features. So,

how do you manage to maintain such a rapid pace of of product development? The evolution of the product is a is a big part of how we're thinking about it. So, when we first started, we were very much features driven. So, really trying to cater towards is this use case going to be very helpful to a student and will it will it blow up on social media basically. And starting off that way was super helpful in our growth. But as you progress over time, as you mentioned, there's so many features in the product.

How do you make sure that students understand, hey, is this the right place to go? There's so many different things to choose from. Like where do I start? Right? Over time, we developed a a learning experience basically built around this this concept of a study plan, which is how do I take all these different suite of tools that I'm learning through and putting it in a in a certain order that I could actually understand. I'm mastering through these topics by creating a study plan.

Basically showcasing, okay, I'm up I upload this material, then I'm going to do a practice test first, then I'm gonna do three flashcard sessions next, then I'm going to do a tutoring session or whatever the order might be for you. Um, we developed this thing called the learn engine, which is basically understanding how to progress through topics in the fastest possible way to reach learning mastery. For example, uh we can understand through a thousand students that took supply and demand on study fetch, what were the best possible ways and different modalities of learning that actually led to success for a student and then surface that to the next student in in the best possible way. And I think especially for consumer product, it's so important to to actually show the user the value instead of them trying to pull it out of you.

Um, so that's the biggest thing that'll be working on over time is is especially in education too, like making sure that you're guiding students and not just setting them up for failure by having this suite of tools that no one understands how to use. >> Yeah, I think the point you made around personalization there is so important because if you think about how the last wave of edtech companies made their money, we talked a little bit about it before. It was largely about providing answers, right? providing textbook solutions, helping students get unstuck on homework assignments, helping them study for exams to a degree, but it was all about content. And so, Czech was one of the very first edtech companies, although their legacy business was was actually offline textbook rentals and then they pivoted around 2015 into online textbook solutions. But as time has gone on and particularly with Chachi

and AI now, like the content has become commoditized. You can find answers to textbook solutions or homework assignments in in many places. And so more and more the value is coming not from the content but from personalized study plans and study strategies to help students actually learn the subjects they're studying. And it sounds like all of these different features you've built provide different tools in the toolkit of a student to get to those learnings, but then also you're increasingly using ad to personalize their individual experience with those features. Do I have that right? And h how are you finding that different students are using study fetch in different ways to ultimately get the learning they need?

>> Yeah, totally. And I think going back to the point of you know legacy edtech products the the biggest thing that AI exposed was yes the fact that content is now a commodity but also the fact that that use case is very superficial for students. It's not really solving a profound problem that that is the underlying issue of learning because learning is very difficult to teach and learning is a very difficult thing to do. So I think what AI's allowed to unlock is making it more engaging, making it more fun, making it easier for learners to actually get on the platform and start from scratch. I think one thing when I was in college that I that I kept on going back on was I don't even want to start learning this material.

There's so much to learn from and so much to start with that I don't even I don't even know where to start. So I think quite literally just taking all that information and and putting it into study fetch and and having a place to start is makes such a big difference in the first place. Um, and I think when it comes to the the breakdown of the features, we've made sure that we've created a suite of tools that people actually want to use. And when they're visually shown those features, they they know where to start and and they have a place that they're they have a preference to where to start.

>> Yeah. I mean, I guess that's true of so many things. It's like just taking the first step is often the hardest part. And particularly as a college freshman, it can be so overwhelming when week one you have all these different courses. You've got this these syllabi with a very long list of textbooks and other materials that you have to consume in a short period of time. And it can just be overwhelming. And and I think a lot of students never really get out of the gate with that. And so having AI sort of break it down into parts and help you manage the process of just taking one step at a time. I think that alone is really valuable. So you claim that 92%

of active students on Study Fetch report improved grades and then on average they're reducing their study time by up to 30%. So how is Study Fetch achieving those results and do you see those results continuing to get better and better over time as the product evolves? >> Yeah, I think going back to that exact point around having a place to start makes such a big difference. you know, uh I there's been so many use cases around around specifically med students who have seen success with study fetch.

And when I think about the content that's being provided to them and the things that they have to do, that's kind of like the most extreme version of what a student needs to accomplish. That's why med students are are very much gravitating towards study fetch as a platform that that they find is like their hub and their main place to learn. There's actually a case study that we have around a student that actually failed out of med school and through the progression over time of of understanding through their friends like hey like what study tools should I use uh she eventually came around to to study fetch and study fetch specifically was a platform that she was able to find her version of learning that worked for her and going back to the idea of having a place to start. The issue with with how education is set up right now is that there isn't a place for people to to necessarily um learn that information

in a way that that they can grasp internally. I I think a reasoning for for why students are seeing better grades is simply because they're finding their home. They're finding their location. They're finding their place and they're finding their learning tools that work for them internally and works for their mind. >> Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, a lot has been written about different types of learners. And you've got visual learners and auditory learners and textual learners and uh applied learners who just want to get out into the world and experience it for themselves. And I happen to be somebody who worked pretty well within the standard classroom environment and taking standardized tests and that sort of thing. But that's not for everyone.

And and often times the people who are most successful in life are people who struggle in school because, you know, they're very practical and they're very actionoriented, but they don't want to just sit in a classroom and and learn from a professor all day. And so it does feel like all of these different products and features you've built really do help to adapt any subject to an individual student and help them learn in the way that feels right for them. And in fact, there have been a

number of case studies that have found that study fetch most benefits the students with learning differences and and helps to raise the lowest grades in a class which effectively compresses this achievement gap that that you often see. So why do you think that is and what sort of implications might that have on the future of education? >> Yeah, for sure. I I think going back to the idea that people have different learning styles, it's been a controversial topic actually in the in the education space as to whether that's that's like a true fact or not that people actually have different learning styles. And I think there is there's some truth to it and there's also other nuances to it. So for example on study fetch, you're not necessarily only if you're a visual learner, you're not only learning things visually, you're also getting questions through the tutor.

You're also finding ways to learn with memorization via flashcards. So, I think going back to like having a place to start, uh, if you feel like you're a visual learner, that helps you engage and actually start progressing and start using the material and start actually like learning over time. Having the the ability to have uh an experience that feels like you're almost like talking with a human basically captures like a new dimension of learning. It feels like, you know, almost like 4D instead of 3D kind of a thing or 4D instead of 2D. Yeah, I like that a lot. And uh it's I feel like there's a lot of concerns right now that AI is going to leave people behind. And so seeing an application of AI like this that's actually helping the people who are most behind catch up and close those gaps is really encouraging. So let's get a little bit more tactical. This podcast is all about growth and so we like to

talk about inflection points that drive a company's growth. And you all have been particularly successful with this innovative student creator program you have uh where you are tapping into real populations of student influencers and creators on channels like Tik Tok or Instagram to spread the word of study fetch and get it into the hands of more than 7 million registered students at this point. Let's just start with how

important has this creator program been and what percentage of your user acquisition is driven by that creator program right now. I mean, I guess I'll just get into the progression of how how we developed a marketing engine over time, starting with the with the with the seed that was planted to actually create this creator program, which was posting videos ourselves internally. So, when we first started Study Fetch, we launched it and a couple days after started started posting videos directly on social media internally. Our CMO Kieran would quite literally pull out his phone, go to a lecture hall, and start recording what Study Fetch looks like in a classroom setting. And when we first started that, you know, um we had gone viral right away because we understood our user and understood the exact use case that people needed. Um and I think when it comes to going viral on social media, the the underlying

thing that makes a product go viral is is it actually useful to people? If they don't find it useful, you're never going to go viral. If you're trying to market something that doesn't work, then you you don't really have a chance. >> So, I think that that was a great place to start. And uh in that like filming those lecture hall videos, we actually had one video get over 76 million views on on one specific video organically on Instagram. Um so that kind of started this this uh confidence that we had around hey like if we're able to scale this exact strategy across multiple people. We're basically just like showcasing our UK use case to as many people as possible. So then we progressed over that next school year to to scale it to from one person to five people and from five people to 20 people, then from 20 people to to 400 people, right? And obviously there's a limitation to uh how many creators and

and like balancing the creators and quality and making sure that the videos that are going out is exactly what we we want to represent from a branding perspective. But um yeah, I mean the creator program has been a has been a very strong driver of our growth. The the biggest the biggest thing about the creator program is it's definitely a combination between performance marketing and brand marketing. I would say more on the brand marketing side because the idea is that you want to be everywhere all at once. Basically, the benefit of having a creator program is that you're posting videos that consistently are driving views over time. So even if you don't post for, you know, 3 months, you're still going to get the results of those views that were those videos that were posted a few months earlier.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think this relates to this army of creators or army of accounts concept that I've heard you and the team talk about at Study Fetch, which is you got hundreds of creators now who are posting over a 100 short form videos a day in many cases across Tik Tok and Instagram. And more and more I am hearing that the best companies are exercising a similar strategy where it really is about volume on Tik Tok in particular because with Tik Tok it's so algorithmically driven which means that you can have nine nine videos completely bust but then the 10th one will go viral and it will make up for the failures of the first nine. And so how did you guys

determine that that volume strategy was the right way to go? Was that something you saw other companies like Calai doing or did you just empirically come to your own conclusion that that was what you needed to do to be successful on these platforms? >> We've tested a lot of things over time and especially understanding a strategy like this back in 2023 when it wasn't really as well known as it is now. I think we just fell on our face a lot of a lot of the times and eventually came to the right solution, you know. Um, and the great thing about social media is that the feedback loop is so quick. So your ability to understand whether is this product resonating with my audience? Is this video style resonating with my audience? That feedback loop quite literally happens within 24 hours because you understand the engagement on your videos. You don't need to see like oh did this video get a million views or

not to see success. You can quite literally look at the engagement rate. You know what is the rates of likes to to views that you're seeing? How many comments did you get? Uh what is the sentiment of of the product that you're showcasing? You know if you get a million views, how many comments are about the actual product itself? So, there's a lot of different ways to get that feedback loop going. And I think what we've learned over time is you just have to be very very close to the video um from top down. Like you really have to make sure that you know the the leadership team is really spending time.

Um because the more that you spend time on it, the the more that you're going to like be able to look through that feed feedback loop and find those results. Yeah. Cuz you're just extracting the learnings about what's working and then being really insightful about what the next set of videos should look like. I

guess one of the things I've heard is that the biggest challenge to managing these large creator programs is simply all of the time and energy that goes into managing hundreds of human beings and then also knowing which content is performing well and which content isn't so that you can double down on your winners and divest from your losers. So, how do you all do that? Do you have any particular tools you're using like third party SAS tools for creator management and or have you built some of your own custom software to help you handle that?

a combination of both. So all of all of the tracking that we do from a from a performance perspective is all internal using Tik Tok's API to to basically understand like views, engagement, all of that over time. Uh we have our own internal spreadsheets and internal tools that we've built. When it comes to the management of creators, we use a sauna for example for like tracking and making sure that people are posting on time. We actually review every single video before it gets posted. So to your point about, you know, managing that many people, it's actually even more intense here. And we we really try to make sure that every single video is going out is is approved by us. Managing that relationship with creators over time is really important because creative fatigue is definitely a real thing. Uh as people keep on posting, you know, day by day eventually at some point, you know, creators are going to feel feel a

little bit fatigued and and might start running out of content ideas. So it's really important that the team internally at Study Fetch is is is actually building relationships with creators and helping them uh you know succeed themselves. This episode is brought to you by Paddle. Today's fastest growing apps are multi-channel. They use web monetization to reach new audiences, improve attribution, and boost margins. But selling on the web gets complicated fast. Managing currencies, taxes, fraud, and disputes gets increasingly difficult as companies scale. Paddle solves this. As the merchant of record for thousands of apps, including Runna, Goodnotes, Codeway, and HubX. They take on the complexity of web monetization so you can focus on growing your business.

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The competition for attracting top creators to work on your product and pitch your brand has gotten pretty fierce. Like people have figured this strategy out and so more and more consumer apps are using it. You all have positioned Study Fetch's creator program almost as a consulting service that will help these creators build their online brands, learn best practices, expand their own influencer businesses. What exactly does that look like? And how has that helped you in the war for talent in terms of attracting the best creators to your platform?

>> The biggest thing is is is when when we found out the strategy in the first place, there wasn't that many companies doing it. Typically, what we see is if there's a strategy employed that you know the larger corporate companies are are starting to implement, then you know that the strategy is kind of saturated at that point. So realistically, the bar wasn't that high for attracting good talent at the time. So, we made sure to really capitalize on that opportunity, especially like this past uh school year, um to make sure that we're capturing that creator market, basically like the people that would resonate with our audience. Um so, I think a big part of it was just timing, but the other part of it when it comes to that that consulting section of that is kind of back to that relationship basis, like making sure that creators who are posting such a high volume of videos are seeing a benefit to to working with us

and and actually like, you know, having a mutual a beneficial relationship. It's it's a unique type of relationship uh having creators post 20 30 videos a month that that wasn't really the the typical um you know influencer strategy that that has existed for all these years. Typically it was you have one creator that you go reach out to they post one video you send them a content brief and then they just read off a script. But when you're when you're when you're working with you know 20 30 people it's a completely different relationship. And even when we first started it was actually we actually noticed that some creators were were a bit startled by the idea of doing something like this because it was so like unfamiliar to them. Um so helping them educate through through that was also a big part of it. So last question I want to ask before we get on to Honen which is your B2B bet is around what

makes a great creator in 2026. You guys work with hundreds of them. So I imagine you must have seen some patterns in terms of who's most successful and I also imagine it might look a little bit different across channels. So depending on whether you're on Tik Tok versus Instagram versus YouTube, it might look a little bit different. But what have you seen in terms of the characteristics that are most predictive of success for these influencer creators?

>> I would say there's two different types of segments of creators and then there's there's more segments under that. But to simplify, there's two different types of creators. There's more of the influencer types and there's more of the the typical like performance creator driven types. So when you look at the performance driven creator types, those are ones who you're working very closely with that are representing the product more specifically. So thinking through, you know, performance-driven marketing metrics, thinking through, hi, how do I make sure that this person is like putting this specific call to action in the video, etc., etc. So for that type of person, you want someone who is, you know, very motivated, someone who is very creative themselves, and someone who is willing to be, you know, a thought partner with us and and really work together with us and and be open to a lot of suggestions and a lot of

different implementations. Um, the flip side to it, which is more of an influencer style style creator, is someone that you're someone that you're representing uh the brand, someone that's representing your brand. And the goal for that is not necessarily to drive conversions, but to have someone that's consistently posting about the product or consistently posting about your company um and is a great representation of who you want to represent. So when a college student sees you, they might not necessarily be thinking about the product, but they've heard of study fetch before. Um and eventually when they do see those performance creator driven videos, okay, like I've heard about this before from someone else. Now I'm more interested in like diving in more. So let make sure I understood this because I think our audience is going to really love this.

Everybody's trying to figure out these UGC driven strategies on TikTok and getting this right is so important. What I hear you saying is archetype one is the influencer who has their own following already. Could be larger, could be more mediumsized, but they've got at the very least tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands or more followers on on a platform like Tik Tok. And so as a result, you're giving them a little bit more leeway to sort of be authentic, to tell the story of your brand in the way that feels right to them and their audience. And their job is to create the halo of like understanding what study fetch is and why it matters. And then you have the I'm guessing larger volume of more performance-driven creators and they maybe don't have as large of a following, but they are very responsive.

They're very motivated and you're giving them a little bit more direction on how to best showcase your product to just convert people who've already heard of study fetch through the influencers who are creating the halo. Is that right? Is that the right way to think about it? >> Correct. And I think uh you know to whoever is listening to this, the way that I would think about it is think about what your current marketing function entirely is doing. uh creative program is is is a very important part of our business, but it is a section of of our marketing channel or our entire like marketing engine as as a company.

When you think about how how does the strategy fit into the overall strategy of marketing, I would challenge people to really help understand if I'm a viewer on TikTok and I'm seeing, you know, these creator program style videos, how does this relate to the other assets of marketing that that is happening across like my my company in general? I've seen um I've seen a couple more like larger companies start start implementing creator programs and the issue is that I what I would assume that they do is they contract someone who understands how to market as a creator program but they don't understand what's happening at the rest of the other departments of of the marketing function. So what you end up seeing is you see a disconnected version of of what is happening with social media versus what you might see on a billboard or what you might see on like their main account. So, I think like making sure

that those two are interconnected, that it makes sense is is super important. >> Yeah, makes sense. And I'm sure there are a lot of people out there are going to be grateful for this advice because as I said, there's so much upside to it right now. It is one of the few places in consumer apps where you can find almost uncapped alpha in terms of user acquisition opportunity and uh finding companies that have really done it well is hard and you're one of those companies. So, appreciate the thoughts.

Let's move on to Hon. So this is the new B2B bet that you all are making that sort of expands beyond the original vision for study fetch which is helping college students learn and get better grades in college to helping people and these these could be recent graduates. It could also be existing professionals who are just trying to upskill in their existing careers learn the skills they need to be successful on the job. And so you recently partnered with Nvidia and you've launched this B2B training platform called Honin last month in May.

What is Honen for those who don't know and what inspired you to build it? I think just starting off with with what Studyfetch represents and and how Honen fits into that picture. Education is fundamentally changing significantly and content is consistently changing significantly as well. stuff that was taught, you know, last month is already changing today and in college, people are being taught on information that was taught like 10 years ago. So, people are already set up for for failure going into the workforce. And I think when it comes to the workforce itself, there's so many different things, training docs, you know, company materials that are consistently changing even more so than what's happening from an educational perspective. So, I think it's it became very important to us to to actually train and help people um you know, teach in the workforce in a world where the world is changing. so quickly. Um but

Honen specifically is is I guess to put it very simply a course creation platform that allows head of L & D departments um internal training uh people who are teaching internal training at companies to create courses in the easiest possible way and provide that course to to as many of of their teammates that that they need in the fastest possible way. Um and a course that's consistently updated and training um with specific individuals over time um and adapting with those individuals as well. So, let's talk a little bit

more about the NVIDIA partnership because NVIDIA recently committed $25 million to K through2 AI education and they chose you all to get 250,000 plus high schoolers on a path what we'll call AI literacy to to having the requisite AI skill set to be able to be productive in the AI economy. What does that partnership look like? Why is it so important to Study Fetch and to the product you're building with Honen? And then why do you think they chose you over all of the other competitors out there including a number of companies that have been in edtech much longer than you all have?

>> I think to start off like companies like Nvidia recognize how much is going to change over time and they want to be on the forefront of helping be a part of this change. So why they chose us specifically was simply down to the fact that we know how to engage college students and we know to engage students in general. We know to engage the consumer. Right now, there are a lot of K- through2 products, uh, AI education products on the market right now, but they're more or less targeted towards educators and administrators, but there has never been so far a successful product that has been able to engage the end user, which is the learner. Um, and that's something that we've done very well and something that we've always prioritized as a business. So, I think from that perspective, they really trust us to make sure that we're actually engaging the learners and getting in the hands of learners to actually see real

impact. And what are some of the things you're doing with Nvidia out of the gate to just lay the foundation for this partnership over time? >> Yeah, so for example, the uh K through2, you know, section of of of that partnership is only one of the many things that we're doing with them. But for example, what we're going to be doing for the K through2 section is co-creating and building a course with them on AI literacy and then providing that directly to districts or directly to students um and help them understand and help them train on on the future and understand like what AI literacy is as well as CUDA software anything that's related towards you know what Nvidia wants them to to understand for for when they do enter the workforce. So it's a very much like a long-term like a longtail strategy. Um and we're making sure that we're providing the courses that are going to resonate in 10 years

from now, you know, not just what's going to happen in the next, you know, few months. Got it. So let's talk a

little bit more about the technology. Study Fetch and Hon are both using the same underlying AI powered learning engine, but you decided to launch them as separate products and brands. So tell me a little bit more about how you're able to apply the same learning engine that you're using for study fetch for course creation under hone and then why even though it it has shared technology you've decided to to launch them under two different websites two different names two different products >> to put it pretty simply study fetch is designed to teach other people's content while honeen is designed to teach new content and content that is created within hon so how the learn engine uh you know is synergized with with both products is the underlying idea of adapting over time and and finding the best possible uh path to mastery.

Another way to look at it is how for example like optimizing for conversions on meta ads for example right when you when you have meta ads that are running you have content and you have data that's coming in and then you are understanding over time which is the best possible ad that is that is seeing the highest conversion. Very similarly, kind of going back to that supply and demand example I gave, helping people understand uh specific topics that are actually leading to learning mastery is kind of that that direction into understanding optimization over time, but specifically for learning outcomes.

Um the biggest thing that that differentiates us from a horizontal LLM is how we are optimizing for for learning outcomes and not optimizing for productivity. For example, uh chatbt is very much a productivity tool and it's designed to give you the answer as soon as possible or designed to help you get through a task as soon as possible. Whereas that's not how you learn. That's actually quite the opposite and you need to be guided and need to be taught over time and need to be showcased the right things that will reach the aha moment as you keep on learning and progressing through difficult topics. When I think about how study fetch and how Honeen both have the learning engine helps each other is the underlying idea that concepts and topics that are being taught are going to continuously get better and better and better via the learning engine and teaching that information is going to always get

better as content adapts and as we learn more about how people are taking courses or on study fetch how people are progressing through certain topics um you know for through a textbook or whatever it is. Got it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And the thing you said around how so many AI tools are really designed to get you the best answer as quickly as possible kind of relates back to what we were talking before in the context of companies like CHEG or Course Hero that made a lot of money helping students get answers. But your point is to really learn something requires struggle. It requires going through exercise after exercise after exercise and making some mistakes and learning from those mistakes and building real muscle around how to solve a difficult problem. And so you're you're needing to design AI to solve for a very different use case, which is not just getting the student to an answer quickly because

that's not driving learning. It may help with grades, but it's not driving real learning. and instead helping them work through that difficult process of truly mastering a subject. So, let's talk

about who are the early adopters for Hone and I. I know you guys just launched it publicly last month, so it's it's very early, but are you finding that there are particular industries or particular uh types of professionals who are gravitating to Honeen first and and how do you see them using it? Yeah, I mean the great thing about hone in is how horizontal it is and how many different use cases can apply to different businesses or different people. One specific thing that we're seeing very interestingly is the trades. Trades is actually something that we're getting a lot of traction in specifically with unions. Um, so for example, like servicing servicing to plumbers unions and I think the reasoning for that is they've been an underserved community from from a tools perspective and us being able to come in and say, "Hey, we can train your information in a much more advanced way and in a way that will

actually lead to certifications and completion rates is is what they're looking for." And it's something that's been a challenge, especially med gas certification specifically in plumbing. Um, so being able to target a very specific use case and helping them solve that problem um has has been has been successful for us so far. >> That's fascinating. And and my wife Ashley is somebody who spent the better part of her career on youth apprenticeships and work workforce development. So, basically helping students who don't have the interest or the means to go to a 4-year college or university instead get real workforce training and build real skills while they're still in high school by apprenticing with other companies. And in some cases, those are apprentices who are engaging with the trades. And so I can see how a tool like this would be really helpful for that type of business to just train up their workforce uh in

ways that you know hasn't historically been very accessible to them because most of the other software companies out there are building for white collar companies and not necessarily for uh trades or crafts. Um so that's really cool that that's that's where you're finding some of your early adoption. How

do you think honein evolves over the next 3 to 5 years as AI continues to progress and what do you think your growth and monetization strategy will look like for that part of the business? >> Yeah. So I think right now we're definitely focused on people that can see the immediate use case and need for Hone, but I think over time the thing that we want to start developing is the idea that you can have your own internal L & D team as a 10erson startup or as a 20 person startup. Um and how we're developing that over time is internally as a startup we're using honed for every single thing that we do. For example, one use case as to how we applied it in our own internal training is cold calling. We actually had one of our one of our marketing members who doesn't really have any sales experience at all or knows anything about unions um take a hon calling which took her probably I want to say an hour and an hour and a half to

finish. By the end of the course, she was able to start taking calls and and start right away. Um, not only on understanding what Hon is, but also understanding how to do cold calling and then also how to how to market to unions. The breakdown of that course was very much applied learning and very much interactive. So, for example, getting an understanding of what unions are and then after having an actual like simulated uh voicetovoice experience with what a cold call might be like. Um, there's actually a feature in there where if you ramble for too long or you keep on talking too much about something that they're not interested in, it'll actually just automatically hang up on you and be like, "I'm not interested."

And then you'll get a grade and you'll get a feedback uh saying, "Hey, you you messed up here, here, here. Let's try it again." And you'll just keep on going until you get it right until you get that call, basically. >> Yeah. Well, that's so cool that you're dog fooding your own product and that it sounds like it's having real value for your for your own sales team in this

case. Well, let's get into our lightning round. I'm just going to ask you a series of rapid fire questions. You give me quick one or two sentence answers. I always ask the same question first, which is what is the best part about working at Study Fetch? What truly separates your culture or your working environment versus other tech companies? And then what's thing what's one thing that you would change or that you're actively trying to change as the co-founder and CEO of the business?

>> Yeah, I think the the first thing that that you know we really try to prioritize at Study Fetch is making sure that everybody has a say in in what is happening in the business. And I think what makes it so exciting to work at Study Fetch is how fast we're moving, but also how profound the the the goal and the outcome of of what we're trying to do is. I think a lot of the times um there's some companies that tend to move a little bit slower that are are that are more like morally driven, but I would say what makes us so so exciting is having both of those things combined.

I would say the one thing that I personally want to get better at as as a CEO is making sure that everyone from a communications perspective is in the loop because things are moving so quickly, especially with conversations that I'm having with my co-founder Ryan at like 2 in the morning um that you know might change a lot of the things that are happening at at one point but you know some people that are actually involved in that process might be out of the loop. So I think in the future making sure that everyone is in the loop and and having a scaled way to to to scale information um while context is is consistently changing um a great use case of that is actually hone in. So maybe we start using that for for more internal communications more well that's very wise as a young founder CEO to recognize that communication is only going to become increasingly important as you scale and obviously much easier

said than done. I've never seen a company do it perfectly, but there's certainly companies that do it better than others. And so I'm glad you're already thinking about that as a priority. Um, what was your favorite subject in school and why? Not many. Um, to be honest though, I um I had a lot of fun with physiology, specifically practical human physiology. And the funny thing with that is is uh you know when we started study fetch in 2023 while I was still at NYU uh dog fooding the product was actually a big part of the features that we were developing and I was basically the guinea pig for is this product going to be successful or not is actually going to lead to better grades and I was using um I was using uh study fetch specifically for my physiology class and I remember uh not studying uh that much at all uh going into my first midterm and I got like a really bad grade and then started implementing study fetch my

own studies for the final and I had basically gotten like a 40% increase on my grade or something like that. So that gave that gave us a lot of conviction for um for really diving in into the product. >> Yeah, that's incredible and it's a testament to how much impact AI can have if you apply it in the right place when it comes to learning. And I I've seen this we we work with a number of edtech companies uh with my consulting business as you know and some some perform better than others but um quite consistently they show real improvement in in grades and and that's encouraging.

>> Um so how did spending years as a serious musician influence your approach as an entrepreneur? I think the thing that I learned is that being with the right team is super important. And even just like having the right bandmates and band members around you, there's a huge difference between someone that you like really have strong chemistry with and someone that you don't. And it really does make that extra extra difference and and really does take you to that extra mile and makes you go from normal to extraordinary. And I think being in a startup, it's it's so competitive and it's so important to have that extra extra leap um that no one really tells you about. Like there isn't really like a playbook or or a blueprint that you can follow. But the one thing that you know I I try to keep in my mind as we continue to progress is always having the extraordinary element to it and being surrounded with extraordinary

people um and making sure that you guys are always in the same wavelength. So I think that's that's probably like the biggest takeaway. >> Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that. I I tell people often that people are leading indicator of success and if you follow great people around good things tend to happen. So I've made all of my biggest career decisions based on people and that served me very well. And it sounds like you're taking your own advice because Ryan was obviously a childhood friend of yours and you guys kept in touch and you prioritized that above everything else when you stud started study fetch and it seems to be working for you. A couple more here. You said your core operating principles are hope and agency. So what exactly does that mean and and how are you applying that uh as a founder at study fetch?

>> Yeah. So I think starting off with agency it's important for every team member to understand that that they feel like they have that and that they have the capabilities to to figure things out themselves. There's a lot of benefits in in being a founder and having the experience of being a founder in the sense of making something out of nothing and having the experience of seeing success doing that. For examp like a a great example of that is, you know, like cold DMing a bunch of people and DMing people that you might not expect will get a response, but if you end up getting a response from someone that you really look up to or someone that you know, you you felt like you thought you're never getting a response from, then you think, "Oh my god, I could start doing this." And then you develop that conference over time for more and more and more extraordinary things and you end up in a situation where, wow, I

could do all these different things that I never thought I was able to do. So that's what I think about when I think of agency. It's it's it's putting your first your best foot forward and and and seeing those results. Um and then hope is a result of that. Uh you know, being being at a startup, you know, you're you're finding new issues every single day and you wake up the next day and there's 50 problems that you've woken up with. And understanding that you can solve those problems, that you have the capabilities and the confidence to to go through that process um and end up on the other side in a successful way is is something we try to encourage in every single person. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and I think it relates back to what you said around Study Fetch's culture and and one of the things you love most about the company is that everybody has a voice. To me, that's very tied into a sense of agency and

autonomy. And there's been quite a bit of research that shows that one of the most important ingredients for human happiness and and thriving is autonomy. So, that feels really important. And then obviously if you have that then you have hope and and that leads to a positive attitude and a and a feeling that you can you can accomplish a lot even when obviously at at an early stage startup things can feel overwhelming at times. So let's wrap up with what is one profound change that you think AI is going to have on education over the next few years. I think that AI will allow people to 1,00x the speed of content being produced and and taught. So, for example, I don't think there's going to be a world where college is going to be the only uh way to actually develop and learn skills. I think it's going to come from many different capabilities and and and uh and platforms to learn from. And a great example of this is YouTube. You

know, like going on YouTube and finding, you know, finding very very profound and interesting videos that can actually lead to uh, you know, a new skill that you can develop yourself or insights that you've never gotten otherwise. Um, and the accessibility of of information is is I I think the the direction that we're heading and I think what AI allows us to to do is is harness that information in one place. And the platforms that are able to take that information from A to Z are going to be the the platforms that people will start using to to actually learn information in the fastest possible way that they would have never been able to learn before through college. I like that and it's a great note to end on because it sort of comes full full circle back to the point that you know edtech has really been around for about 25 years since people could study on the internet and a lot of the early edtech companies

made their money on content but a much more narrowly defined type of content that as we talked about really helped with homework solutions and getting unstuck on certain questions. What I hear you saying is it's now going to be possible to generate content at a thousandx faster speeds. And when you can generate that much content, one, you can help people solve and learn much more complex problems over a much broader range of subjects. But two, you can also start to personalize how they're learning that content. And that goes to some of the success you've already seen in terms of why a tool like Study Fetch can be so effective because you can really tailor it to each individual student. Well, this has been a really enjoyable discussion. I knew it would be. Um, any final thoughts for our audience before we wrap up?

>> I guess like wrapping up on the last point that, you know, we're discussing around around the future of education. I think that everyone will basically have accessibility to their own mini school, you know, the their ability to have their own teacher, their ability to have that content that's that's been provided to them from A to Z. So, um I don't know. I'm really excited for the future and I think as adoption happens more and more and more and people start seeing these these amazing things with technology um and AI, I think it's I think it's going to be a much better world in the future.

>> Me, too. I certainly hope you're right. I mean, there are a lot of doomers out there who talk about all of the bad things about AI, but as a father of two daughters, a nine and a six-year-old, I'm certainly rooting for companies like you that are going to make education easier for them when they get to college. Um, so thanks Essen. This was great. >> Amazing. Thanks so much, Phil. Thanks again to RevenueCat for sponsoring this episode. If you're building a subscription app, you can use RevenueCat to power purchases, optimize pay walls, offer discounts, handle refunds, manage customer data, run AP tests, generate insights, and unlock more revenue. I work with dozens of subscription apps, and most of them are already using RevenueCat to power their businesses.

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