20-year-old dropouts constructed AI notetaker Turbo AI and grew it to five million customers

5 million customers. Eight-figure annual recurring income. Twenty thousand new customers becoming a member of every day. These are some stable numbers for a startup referred to as Turbo AI launched in early 2024 by Rudy Arora and Sarthak Dhawan, two 20-year-old faculty dropouts.

Most of this development has come prior to now six months, the founders inform TechCrunch, throughout which their AI-powered note-taking and examine device grew from a million to 5 million customers, whereas remaining worthwhile.

They are saying the thought for Turbo stemmed from a classroom drawback many faculty college students face, which is making an attempt to take notes whereas being attentive to a lecture on the identical time.

“I’d at all times battle with taking notes as a result of I simply couldn’t each hearken to the instructor and write on the identical time. I simply couldn’t do it,” stated CEO Dhawan. “Each time I attempted to take notes, I’d cease paying consideration. And once I listened, I couldn’t take notes. I used to be like, what if I might use AI?”

So the pair constructed Turbolearn as a aspect mission to permit them to document lectures and mechanically generate notes, flashcards, and quizzes. They started sharing it with buddies, then it unfold to classmates throughout Duke and Northwestern, the place they had been enrolled till dropping out this 12 months. Inside months, the app had reached different universities, together with Harvard and MIT.

The product takes the standard note-taker system — document, transcribe, summarize — and makes it interactive with examine notes, quizzes, and flashcards, together with a built-in chat assistant that explains key phrases or ideas.

Nevertheless, recordings in giant halls typically choose up background noise, so the founders constructed options that permit college students to add PDFs, lectures, YouTube movies, or readings as an alternative. That’s now a extra frequent use case than stay lecture recordings.

“College students will add a 30-page lecture and spend two hours going via 75 quiz questions in a row. You don’t do this until it’s actually working,” stated Dhawan, noting that college students love how the product saves time and helps them retain info.

It’s not simply college students utilizing Turbo AI, although — as mirrored by the title change from Turbolearn (a examine app) to Turbo AI (an AI notetaker and studying assistant). Professionals have adopted it too, together with consultants, attorneys, docs, and even analysts at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, the founders say. Some, as an illustration, add studies and use Turbo to generate summaries or convert them into podcasts they’ll hearken to on their commute.

Arora and Dhawan have been buddies since center faculty and have collaborated on a number of tasks over time.

Dhawan beforehand constructed UMax, an recommendation app that promised to make individuals extra engaging and reached No. 1 on the App Retailer with 20 million customers and $6 million in annual income. Arora, in the meantime, makes a speciality of utilizing social media methods to drive explosive development and entice hundreds of thousands of customers.

Constructing viral apps is a uncommon talent. However regardless of the dimensions of their earlier tasks, the founders solely felt the necessity to drop out for Turbo as a result of they noticed a chance to construct an enduring enterprise.

Nonetheless, not like many fast-growing AI firms, they’re cautious about elevating an excessive amount of cash too early, having taken in solely $750,000 final 12 months.

“We raised that earlier than we had loads of traction. Since then, we’ve had loads of inbound curiosity, however we’re taking our time as a result of we’re cash-flow constructive and have been worthwhile our whole time as an organization,” stated Arora, who added that their 15-person workforce relies in Los Angeles and centered on staying near pupil and creator communities at schools like UCLA.

College students pay about $20 a month for the product, however the founders say they’re exploring different pricing choices to mirror the value sensitivity of scholars, even because the app scales past the goal group. “Proper now, we’re experimenting with different pricing and working loads of A/B exams to see what works,” Arora added.

Turbo AI sits between totally handbook instruments like Google Docs and totally automated note-takers like Otter or Fireflies. Customers can let the AI take notes or write alongside it, the founders say. That method has helped Turbo stand out whilst rivals like Y Combinator-backed YouLearn goal comparable pupil audiences.

“What’s cool now could be that when college students consider an AI notetaker or AI examine device, we’re the primary ones that come to thoughts,” Dhawan stated.