What’s the story behind SimpleStudy—what inspired you to build it, how did it start, and what’s the mission today?

SimpleStudy is the result of different experiences that my co-founder, Phillip Mckenna, and I have had in education. 

For my part, I grew up watching many of my smart friends burn out in long classes they struggled to sit through. School seemed to be killing their creativity and curiosity, and from news reports I understood that the problem had, if anything, become worse in the time since I left school. This frustrated me.

At the same time, technology and gamified learning experiences were starting to emerge as real solutions.A recent survey of ours showed that 88% of students now use alternative platforms like TikTok to revise. And, Ofcom data shows one in five children aged three or four have a phone, and by age eleven, it is nine out of ten. This is the world kids live in today. Rather than banning phones or resisting it, we wanted to empower students to use technology to make learning fun so revision could excite rather than exhaust them.

Phillip, an old school friend of mine, shared these feelings and beliefs. I was lucky to have access to incredible teachers in school who inspired me to learn, which has been one of the great joys in my life. SimpleStudy was, and still is, our way of helping others find that same magic.

What makes SimpleStudy different from other revision tools—what’s your unique edge in the crowded EdTech space?

SimpleStudy is a truly unique product that differs in a multitude of ways from other revision products and services available to students.

While other digital educational tools use gamification as a means of encouraging students to study, none are designed to meet such a broad range of specific curricula as SimpleStudy. Our content is tailored to each student’s subjects and exam boards, including GCSEs, A-Levels, and SQA. 

Likewise, while other educational tools now use AI to personalise their content, SimpleStudy uses real, top-class human teachers to inform the materials available on its platform.

It’s a comprehensive, all-in-one exam revision platform, and our results speak for themselves. 98% of users report improved grades, which has attracted almost half a million students to use it since we launched in 2020.

What has growth looked like so far—and how have you navigated the tension between rapid scale and maintaining quality?

Since launching in 2022, almost half a million students have used SimpleStudy across more than 26 countries. In some, like Ireland, over a quarter of the entire secondary school student population are using the platform. And this growth compounds when we enter new markets like South Africa, where 40,000 students joined the platform within the first 30 days of launch.

While our current focus is to expand access to the product, we only turned our attention to this once we were certain that the product worked…

What is the biggest challenges have you faced, and how did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge was learning how to get started without any investors, any customers, or really anyone believing in us. We had to bootstrap the vision from scratch — building product, talking to students, and pushing forward when there was no proof it could work. At the time, it was just an idea that most people thought was too ambitious. Fast-forward, and that same vision is now serving hundreds of thousands of students in over 25 countries on the path to a million users. That early challenge of starting with nothing forced us to be resourceful and relentless, and it still shapes how we run the company today.

What comes next? What’s your roadmap for growth, product innovation, and global expansion?

Our product works. We know that because our users, who achieve results 22% higher than their national averages, have told us.

Now, our focus is to make SimpleStudy accessible to more people. That involves expanding into new markets like Brazil and raising broader awareness of its benefits, including through formal partnerships with schools.

You can expect announcements about developments in these areas in the near future.

Oisin Devoy is the cofounder of SimpleStudy.