# Oleve (Quizard AI and Unstuck AI)

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/oleve/ · added 2026-11-05 · updated 2026-11-05

**In short.** Oleve (Quizard AI and Unstuck AI) (Portfolio of consumer AI study apps: a photo homework solver and a lecture note taker, United States): US$6M a year run rate, June 2025. Evidence grade C: the founder's own figures, not verified by anyone else. Team: 3 co-founders from a college dorm room in 2023; 4 people at the US$6M figure in June 2025 by the founder's talk, 6 by Latka's July 2025 interview; 9 employees in Latka's database by August 2026. Launched 26 January 2023; still running.

Portfolio of consumer AI study apps: a photo homework solver and a lecture note taker · United States · AI-native · team of 2 to 10 · still running · group: Learning and study

- Outcome: US$6M a year run rate, June 2025 (evidence grade of the headline number: C; headline in US dollars: 6000000)
- Launch: 26 January 2023; months from launch to the outcome: 29
- Team: 3 co-founders from a college dorm room in 2023; 4 people at the US$6M figure in June 2025 by the founder's talk, 6 by Latka's July 2025 interview; 9 employees in Latka's database by August 2026
- Outside funding: Neo accelerator and an angel round, amount not published by the company (the Lean AI Leaderboard lists US$600,000 in total, grade D)
- Main factor: Distribution
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 1, copyable pattern 2, capital needed 1
- Tags: AI-native, Small team, Funded, Running, B2C, Education

Links:

- Visit oleve.co: https://www.oleve.co/
- App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1667996582
- App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6714484560
- Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aihomework

**The product.** Two iPhone apps for students, sold by weekly or yearly subscription. Quizard AI: take a photo of a homework or test question and the app gives the answer with an explanation. Unstuck AI: record a lecture or upload course files, and the app makes notes, transcripts, flashcards and quizzes. Oleve is the New York company that runs both and is building more apps on the same shared code.

**Why it worked.** Quizard launched in January 2023, weeks after ChatGPT, when an AI answer from a phone photo was still new. One TikTok video brought 10,000 users in about 30 hours, and the founders then repeated the same short-video playbook for each new app, with a paywall shown at sign-up and constant price tests.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; E = no revenue figure found, so the headline is a non-money fact and the other facts carry their own grades; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

Oleve is a small New York company that builds consumer apps, programs sold directly to individuals through the app stores, with a large language model inside. Its first app, Quizard AI, reads a photographed homework or test question and returns an answer with an explanation. Its second, Unstuck AI, turns recorded lectures and course files into notes, flashcards and quizzes. Both are paid by subscription, a payment that renews every week or every year until the user cancels.

Michael Giardino, Sidhant (Sid) Bendre and Achraf Golli launched Quizard from a University of Rochester dorm room on 26 January 2023. A TikTok video with the hook "ChatGPT and Photomath had a baby" brought about 10,000 users in under 30 hours. After graduating they moved to New York, joined the Neo accelerator, and, by Bendre's account, reached US$1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR, the yearly value of the subscriptions active at one moment) and profitability within nine months. In June 2025, on stage at the AI Engineer World's Fair, Bendre said Oleve made US$6 million in ARR, profitably, with four people. In a July 2025 Latka interview he gave the same US$6 million, about US$500,000 a month, with six people.

Every revenue figure on this page comes from the founder, grade C; the numbers agree across February, June and July 2025, but no payment processor or filing confirms them. The company is named on the page because the business is the whole portfolio: one of its two apps, Quizard, is a homework solver sold to students, which some readers will see as academic help that can be used to cheat. That is described neutrally under "Things to watch".

## Pricing

Oleve prices in November 2026, read from the in-app purchase lists of the two App Store pages (grade C). The apps show their paywalls inside the app, so which price a user sees is not public.

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quizard, Unlimited answers weekly |  | 6.99 a week or 9.99 a week | unlimited answers |
| Quizard Pro, monthly |  | 17.99 or 19.99 | Pro features |
| Quizard Pro, 6 months | 6.67 |  | 39.99 every 6 months |
| Quizard Pro, yearly | 2.50 to 6.67 |  | 29.99, 39.99, 59.99, 69.99 or 79.99 a year |
| Unstuck, weekly subscription |  | 9.99 a week | Pro features |
| Unstuck, yearly | 6.67 |  | 79.99 a year; Unstuck Pro also listed at 99.99 and 129.99 |
| Unstuck Pro, other listed prices |  | 9.99 or 19.99 | period not shown on the store page |

The App Store lists several prices for the same plan, which matches the founder's account of constant paywall price tests. Weekly plans are shown as "a week". Yearly plans are shown per month (the yearly price divided by 12). Users pay through Apple; Oleve's reply to a refund request on the Quizard page says Apple manages all billing.

## How much revenue does Oleve (Quizard AI and Unstuck AI) make? The numbers, graded

Two study apps, a founder-reported US$6 million ARR in mid-2025 with four to six people, and nine employees a year later

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Annual recurring revenue, June 2025 | US$6 million | C | Sid Bendre's talk "The New Lean Startup" at the AI Engineer World's Fair, 3 to 5 June 2025, as written up by AI Engineer: "Oleve reached $6 million in annual recurring revenue, operated profitably, and generated more than half a billion social media views with four people." | [1, 3, 13] |
| Revenue per month, July 2025 | about US$500,000 | C | Bendre on the Latka podcast, episode published 15 July 2025, as summarized by Latka's blog. The same summary gives US$6 million ARR. | [2] |
| Monthly revenue times 12 | US$6 million a year | calc | Calculated: US$500,000 times 12 is US$6,000,000, so the July 2025 monthly figure agrees with the June 2025 ARR. | [2] |
| Revenue listed in February 2025 | US$6 million a year, 4 employees, profitable | D | Lean AI Leaderboard row with snapshot "Feb 2025", which cites a LinkedIn post that this page could not read. Read in the published leaderboard sheet on 5 November 2026. | [12] |
| First US$1 million ARR | within nine months, with profitability | C | Bendre's talk: "Oleve reached its first $1 million ARR and profitability within nine months of operating." The talk does not give the month. | [1, 3] |
| Profit margin, mid-2025 | 10% to 30% | C | Latka's episode notes, as quoted by Latka's blog. Startup Spells, July 2025, gives 20% to 30%. A wide, self-reported band. | [2, 4] |
| Revenue per person, mid-2025 | US$1.5 million with 4 people; US$1 million with 6 | calc | Calculated: US$6,000,000 divided by 4 and by 6. The two headcounts come from two sources (see the team row). | [1, 2] |
| Team at the US$6 million figure | 4 people (June 2025 talk) or 6 (July 2025 interview) | C | The talk write-up says "four people"; Latka's blog says "a team of six". Startup Spells uses both numbers in one article. The founding team was three co-founders. | [1, 2, 4] |
| Team in August 2026 | 9 employees | D | Latka's company database, last update 10 August 2026, as reported on Latka's blog. Quizard's own About page shows nine people, including interns. | [2, 6] |
| Launch of Quizard AI | 26 January 2023, from a college dorm room | C | Talk write-up gives the date. Quizard's About page: "Quizard was launched from our college dorm room in January 2023." | [1, 6] |
| First viral video | about 10,000 users in under 30 hours | C | Bendre's account. The talk write-up says one million views; Latka's blog and Startup Spells say about 2.3 million views overnight. | [1, 2, 4] |
| Funding | Neo accelerator and angel investors; amount not published by the company | C | Quizard's About page: "backed by world-class investors such as Neo" and several named angels. The Lean AI Leaderboard lists US$600,000 total funding and a US$10 million valuation (grade D, one source). | [6, 12] |
| Quizard ratings | 59,000 ratings, 4.7 stars, age rating 4+ | C | App Store page read on 5 November 2026. Seller: Quizard AI, Inc. The home page claims 2,000,000+ students and 50,000,000+ questions answered. | [7, 8] |
| Unstuck ratings | 2,700 ratings, 4.7 stars, age rating 4+ | C | App Store page read on 5 November 2026, same seller. The home page says "Trusted by 2M+ students". | [9, 10] |
| Unstuck early growth | 1 million users in under 9 weeks, or 8 million | C | The talk write-up says one million users in under nine weeks; Startup Spells says 8 million users in 9 weeks. Latka's blog flags the conflict and endorses neither. | [1, 2, 4] |
| Downloads across the portfolio | about 4 million (mid-2025); more than 8 million (2025 retrospective) | C | Latka's blog for the mid-2025 figure; AI Engineer's Oleve page for Bendre's 2025 retrospective. | [2, 5] |
| Third product | outside education, built in three weeks, more than 1,000 users | C | Bendre's talk, June 2025. Its name was not public then and this page could not identify it. | [1] |
| Time from launch to the June 2025 figure | 29 months | calc | Calculated: January 2023 to June 2025. | [1] |

How to read this table: a grade C value is a statement by the founder (a conference talk, an interview) or by the company's own pages. A grade D value is a third-party list or estimate with no second source. A "calc" value was computed on this page. No value is grade A or B.

## When did Oleve (Quizard AI and Unstuck AI) launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From a viral TikTok video in a college dorm room to a four-person, US$6 million portfolio in 29 months. Each entry carries its grade.

- **26 January 2023** (grade C [1, 6]): Quizard AI launches from a University of Rochester dorm room with a TikTok video that goes viral overnight; about 10,000 users in under 30 hours.
- **Early 2023** (grade C [1, 4]): The free beta runs on OpenAI's Codex model through several accounts; the team moves to GPT-3.5 when Codex is shut down in March 2023. A weekly subscription follows within weeks.
- **Fall 2023** (grade C [1, 4]): After graduating, the founders move to New York, join the Neo accelerator and run a back-to-school campaign of street interviews at US colleges.
- **Within nine months** (grade C [1, 3]): By Bendre's account, US$1 million ARR and profitability.
- **Spring 2024** (grade C [1]): A second campaign takes Quizard to number six in an education chart, by Bendre's report.
- **After spring 2024** (grade C [1, 4]): Unstuck AI, a study app, launches and reaches one million users in under nine weeks by Bendre's account. Startup Spells dates the launch to August 2023 instead; the sources disagree.
- **February 2025** (grade D [12]): The Lean AI Leaderboard lists Oleve at US$6 million revenue with 4 employees.
- **3 to 5 June 2025** (grade C [1, 13]): Bendre tells the AI Engineer World's Fair that Oleve makes US$6 million ARR, profitably, with four people, and has a third product outside education.
- **15 July 2025** (grade C [2]): The Latka podcast publishes Bendre's interview: US$6 million ARR, about US$500,000 a month, six people.
- **2025** (grade C [5]): The business rebrands from Quizard to Oleve.
- **August 2026** (grade D [2]): Latka's database still lists US$6 million revenue, now with nine employees.

## Why did Oleve (Quizard AI and Unstuck AI) work?

### Short videos first

Each app starts with a planned TikTok campaign: a hook video for Quizard, street interviews at colleges, then handwritten sticky notes and trending sounds for Unstuck. Bendre reports more than 250 million social views for Unstuck in one month. Paid acquisition is small by the founders' account.

### Weekly price, paywall at sign-up

The founders tried a free app with paid queue-skipping, then coins and credits. The version that worked was a weekly subscription around US$9.99, shown at sign-up. Several prices for the same plan on the App Store pages show that the tests continue.

### Reuse everything

Model integrations, experiment tools, notification code and product templates move from one app to the next. Bendre says the third product took three weeks to build because of this prepared code.

### Few people, clear ownership

Product engineers ("harvesters") each own one app's metrics and experiments; platform engineers ("cultivators") build shared automation. The company prefers an empty seat to a weaker hire and uses AI tools for scripts, campaign analysis and code.

## How it was built

These details come from Bendre's talk, his interviews as summarized by Latka and Startup Spells, and the App Store pages. They are grade C.

- The first backend used Python, Flask, Notion and Excel, with completions from OpenAI's Codex and GPT models routed through ten API keys.
- Azure credits of US$2,000 grew to more than US$300,000, by Startup Spells' account; LaunchDarkly feature flags spread requests across several Azure OpenAI endpoints when quotas were tight.
- Unstuck passes uploaded files through a chain of outside document-ingestion services, and operators can change the order in LaunchDarkly when one fails.
- Paywall and onboarding experiments run on Superwall, with Mixpanel for analytics; six or seven A/B tests run at once on the main app, by Latka's summary.
- TRELLIS, the team's own method: group real user requests into intents, build a fixed workflow for each, and fix failures one workflow at a time.
- Both apps are sold on iPhone through Apple's in-app purchases; Quizard is also on Google Play and the Chrome Web Store.

Sources: [1, 4, 2, 7, 8]

## Who tried this before Oleve (Quizard AI and Unstuck AI), and why did they fail?

Five companies in our database of failed startups sold study help to students and failed. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### MathChat (2010 to 2013; funding US$1.2M; cause: No Market Need)

- Promise: A mobile app where students solve math problems together.
- Why it died: It bet on viral student growth without teachers, while broader chat tools took the niche.
- Record: 

### Flashnotes (2010 to 2016; funding US$1.47M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: A marketplace where college students sell their notes and study guides.
- Why it died: Course Hero and Chegg offered more, with better products and more money; note quality was uneven.
- Record: 

### Tutorspree (2011 to 2015; funding US$1.9M; cause: No Market Need)

- Promise: Find and hire a good tutor online.
- Why it died: Not enough tutors and students in each place for the marketplace to work.
- Record: 

### Grockit (2007 to 2015; funding US$44.4M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Social, game-like test preparation for the SAT, GMAT and similar exams.
- Why it died: Live group study was costly per user, and free platforms copied the ideas.
- Record: 

### Kno (2009 to 2014; funding US$73M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Interactive digital textbooks for students.
- Why it died: The big publishers made their own digital books faster and cheaper.
- Record: 

## What changed

The predecessors sold study help through marketplaces, schools or publishers, and each needed many people or partners before a student got value: tutors, note sellers, teachers, content licenses. Viral growth among students came and went with the school year.

Quizard and Unstuck need no second side. A language model answers the question or writes the flashcards, so one app serves the student alone, and a weekly price matches the way students use it, around tests. The founders also treated short-video distribution as a repeatable system rather than luck. The risk that remains is the one MathChat met: student attention is seasonal, and large companies sell the same answer apps (the founders name Photomath, Gauth and Question.AI as competitors).

## Can one person copy Oleve (Quizard AI and Unstuck AI) now?

**Verdict: The first wave, no. The method, partly.**

A photo-answer app in January 2023 was early; today the education charts are full of them, several owned by large companies. What one person can copy is the method: a short-video campaign planned before launch, a weekly paywall tested from day one, and shared code that makes each new app cheaper than the last.

1. Pick a job that students or another group repeat every week, and price it weekly.
2. Plan the launch video and its hook before writing the app.
3. Build experiments for paywall and onboarding into the first version.
4. Keep model access, analytics and paywall code in a shared library so the next app takes weeks, not months.

**What is still open.** Study tools that help learning rather than give answers (lecture notes, spaced-repetition flashcards, practice quizzes), and the same playbook outside education, which Oleve itself said it was trying in 2025.

## What could go wrong for Oleve (Quizard AI and Unstuck AI)?

- **Founder-reported, two headcounts.** The US$6 million figure is Sid Bendre's own, given on stage in June 2025 and in an interview in July 2025, and listed by the Lean AI Leaderboard from a LinkedIn post in February 2025. No payment processor, filing or buyer confirms it. The team at that figure is four people in the talk and six in the interview; Latka's database showed nine employees in August 2026.
- **Quizard is a homework solver sold to students.** The App Store page calls Quizard a "Homework & AI Answers Solver" and says students can "prepare for quizzes, tests, and exams, allowing you to confidently ace them"; the home page says "Take a picture, get an answer." The listing names high school as well as college students, and the age rating is 4+. Schools may treat submitted AI answers as cheating; the company's pages do not discuss this. Unstuck, the second app, makes notes and quizzes from the student's own course material.
- **Early model access and marketing tactics.** By Bendre's account in the talk, the free beta in early 2023 ran on OpenAI's Codex through ten friends' accounts, to avoid model charges. Startup Spells, summarizing his interviews, says the company's internal "creator agents" source influencers and generate "UGC-style campaigns". The sources do not say whether paid creators are disclosed as paid.
- **Conflicting growth numbers.** Unstuck's early users are one million in nine weeks in one source and eight million in another, and its launch is dated August 2023 in one source and after spring 2024 in another. The Unstuck App Store number (id6714484560) and its 2,700 ratings do not settle either question.
- **Crowded market and seasonal demand.** Photo-answer apps from TikTok's owner (Gauth), Google (Photomath) and Zuoyebang (Question.AI) compete for the same students. Bendre's own words in Startup Spells accept churn: "It's okay if someone uninstalls. We want them to remember the name."

## Sources

1. AI Engineer: The New Lean Startup, talk by Sid Bendre at the AI Engineer World's Fair 2025, with written version — https://www.ai.engineer/talks/pQz-PgA1eJw-new-lean-startup (grade C). Read in full (the written version of the talk). Source for the US$6 million ARR with four people, the launch date, the first US$1 million, the chart positions and the team structure.
2. Latka blog: Oleve Revenue: Inside the $6M ARR Studio Behind Quizard AI, by Nathan Latka (16 June 2025, updated 31 August 2026) — https://getlatka.com/blog/oleave-revenue-ceo-quizard (grade C). Read in full. Summarizes Bendre's Latka podcast episode of 15 July 2025: US$500,000 a month, six people, margins, pricing history, tools; and Latka's August 2026 database entry.
3. AI Engineer: Sid Bendre speaker page — https://www.ai.engineer/speakers/sid-bendre (grade C). Read in full. Biography; confirms the US$1 million ARR in nine months and the four-person, US$6 million company at the 2025 World's Fair.
4. Startup Spells: How Oleve Built a $6M ARR AI Empire w/ 4 employees from a Homework App (30 July 2025) — https://startupspells.com/p/oleve-ai-app-studio-quizard-unstuck-6m-arr-5m-users-4-employees (grade C). Read the section on Oleve. A newsletter summary of Bendre's Latent Space and Latka interviews; source for the early stack, Azure credits, Unstuck campaign and angel investors.
5. AI Engineer: Oleve organization page — https://www.ai.engineer/orgs/oleve (grade C). Read in full. Ties Quizard and Unstuck to Oleve, names the three co-founders, the 2025 rebrand and the 8 million downloads in Bendre's 2025 retrospective.
6. Quizard AI: About Quizard — https://www.quizard.ai/about (grade C). Read in full. Company page: dorm-room launch in January 2023, NYC team, Neo and angel backing, team list.
7. Quizard AI home page — https://www.quizard.ai/ (grade C). Read in full. Product claims, student and question counts, store links.
8. App Store: Quizard AI: Homework Helper — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quizard-ai-scan-and-solve/id1667996582 (grade C). Read in full on 5 November 2026. Description, ratings, age rating, seller and in-app purchase prices.
9. Unstuck AI home page — https://unstuckstudy.com/ (grade C). Read in full. Features and user claim.
10. App Store: Unstuck AI Note Taker — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/unstuck-ai-note-taker/id6714484560 (grade C). Read in full on 5 November 2026. Description, ratings, seller and in-app purchase prices.
11. Oleve home page — https://www.oleve.co/ (grade C). The page loads its text by script; read the text in its page script: "a small, focused team in NYC" with "two products already serving millions of users".
12. Lean AI Leaderboard (published sheet, row for Oleve) — https://leanaileaderboard.com/ (grade D). Read the row for Oleve in the leaderboard's published CSV, downloaded 5 November 2026. It cites a LinkedIn post that this page could not open.
13. AI Engineer World's Fair 2025 event page — https://www.ai.engineer/worldsfair/2025 (grade C). Read the section with the dates: 3 to 5 June 2025, San Francisco.
14. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.

Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run Oleve (Quizard AI and Unstuck AI)? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: Oleve (Quizard AI and Unstuck AI)).