Kids are reading less and Study Cake wants to fix that
Study Cake, one of Startup Reykjavik’s 2015 batch, is launching its app today. The app, which aims at making reading more fun, by allowing parents (and others) to gamify their children’s reading.
“Children are reading less, and we want to fix that problem,” says Kjartan Þórisson, CEO and co-founder of Study Cake. “Books don’t have hashtags or retweets, which is where we come in.”
The app, which includes crowdsourced reading comprehension questions that accompany many children’s books, revolves around the readers answering multiple choice questions at the end of each chapter on their device. Correct answers are rewarded with Brain Cells that the kids can exchange for real-world treats promised by their parents.
“For example, a mother who wants to encourage her daughter to read can create prizes like pizza and movienight once she reached 50 brain cells,” Kjartan tells us.
Study Cake was one of ten companies that took part in Startup Reykjavik 2015, and pitched at investor day last August. The company was founded by Kjartan Þórisson, Hörður Guðmundsson and Kristján Ingi Geirsson. Although their pitch at Startup Reykjavik was exceptional, as Wellington Partner Linus Dahg noted, the team has not received investment, but is bootstrapping their launch with the investment from Startup Reykjavik, and revenue generated by the app.
“Up until now, the book publishers have been paying us for having question packs for their books in the app,” says Hörður Guðmundsson, the company’s co-founder and CFO. “In this first version of Study Cake, all the question packs are free. We’re working with some publishing houses and authors on developing video-books aimed at 3-10 year olds. We want to become the place to go for technologically augmented reading development.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd2b0MVYdbo
The app is available now for the iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets. For now, the app only supports books and questions in Icelandic.
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