Alice.tech

What do they actually do

Alice.tech is a web app that turns your course materials into study tools. Students upload PDFs and the product creates a structured course summary (“Golden Note”), topic breakdowns, flashcards, multiple‑choice quizzes, and timed exam simulations. It also includes a context‑aware AI chat and lets students share materials with a study group (alice.tech homepage/features).

A typical workflow is: upload PDFs → get an organized Golden Note → generate flashcards/quizzes/exam simulations tied to that content → study with a context‑aware AI chat → track weak topics and share with classmates. The service is freemium: the free tier has concrete limits (e.g., ~5 uploads and ~30 AI chat messages/month), while paid tiers lift those limits (alice.tech features & FAQ, pricing/homepage).

Current constraints the team states: it works best with PDFs; images in chat aren’t supported yet; and some text‑sensitive subjects (like law) can be tricky. They say they don’t train models on user inputs and don’t store materials on their servers except when you explicitly share with a study group (alice.tech FAQ). Traction claims include “Over 100,000 students use Alice” on the homepage and a YC profile noting “more than 10k college students have already used Alice,” team size ~5, and reported MRR of about $20k with ~10% week‑over‑week growth over the last eight weeks (alice.tech homepage, YC company page).

Who are their target customer(s)

• College undergraduates cramming for midterms/finals: They’re overwhelmed by long lecture PDFs and need concise summaries and practice questions built directly from their course materials, not generic study sets (alice.tech features/FAQ).
• Students in high‑stakes, content‑heavy programs (engineering, pre‑med, etc.): They need accurate, topic‑targeted practice and realistic timed exams aligned to their syllabus because generic tools don’t match course depth or exam format (alice.tech product pages).
• International or non‑native speakers: They struggle with reading speed/comprehension and want clear summaries and practice in their language or aligned to it to study efficiently (alice.tech language/feature notes).
• Study‑group leaders and student organizations: They spend time consolidating notes and coordinating resources; they want one place to generate, share, and track course‑specific study materials (alice.tech features/sharing).
• Educators and school administrators: They need to improve outcomes at scale while controlling content privacy and seeing progress/weakness metrics for classes or cohorts (YC company page / institutional focus).

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Recruit friends, classmates, and YC/college alumni to upload a course PDF and run 1:1 usability sessions; convert the most engaged testers to paid with a short trial to validate Golden Notes, chat accuracy, and exam sims (features & FAQ, LinkedIn).
• First 50: Pilot with student‑run orgs and study‑group leaders (free multi‑user access for one course for feedback/testimonials) and launch a small campus ambassador program in large classes to drive peer invites—leveraging sharing and Golden Notes to seed word‑of‑mouth (features/FAQ, YC page).
• First 100: Add classroom pilots with a few professors/TAs (assignment‑aligned exam sims, easy onboarding, short institutional trials) and run referral incentives for existing users; convert high‑engagement pilots into paid Pro users while testing pricing and retention (YC page, pricing/homepage).

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

There are about 264 million higher‑education students globally (2023), and the broad exam preparation and tutoring market is estimated around $70.7B in 2025—showing large headroom for digital study tools (UNESCO, The Business Research Company).

Bottom-up calculation:

Starting from 264M higher‑ed students, assume ~25% are in content‑heavy, lecture‑based programs that rely on large PDFs and would benefit from course‑specific notes/quizzes, and ~10% of those are reachable/willing to pay or covered via institutions in near‑term markets—yielding an initial serviceable pool of roughly 6–7M students. This aligns with Alice’s early penetration being a tiny fraction of the total, underscoring that distribution and conversion are the main levers (UNESCO, alice.tech).

Assumptions:

• ~25% of higher‑ed students are in content‑heavy, lecture‑based programs that use large PDFs.
• ~10% of that subset is reachable/willing to pay or accessible via institutions in near‑term target geographies.
• Institutional deals can cover multiple seats and improve effective reach versus purely direct‑to‑consumer.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Quizlet: A leading study platform for flashcards and practice tests, now with AI features (e.g., Q‑Chat); a common default for students seeking quick practice sets.
• Chegg: Broad homework help and study resources with AI initiatives (e.g., CheggMate); strong higher‑ed brand and distribution.
• Khan Academy: Free learning platform with an AI tutor (Khanmigo) used by students and schools; influential in education and institutional channels.
• UWorld: High‑fidelity exam prep for medical and professional exams; known for realistic question banks and exam simulations.
• Anki: Open‑source spaced‑repetition flashcard app popular with med/engineering students; entrenched in high‑stakes study workflows.