ScrollEd wants to turn textbooks into a scrollable video feed

Startup ScrollEd has created an app that transforms any text document — including dense PDFs or textbooks — into a content feed resembling Instagram Reels or TikTok. Scrolling up brings users to a new topic, presented as AI-generated video, audio, text, or interactive quizzes, while swiping sideways lets them dive deeper into the current topic, ending with a quiz.

Co-founder Utsav Gupta explained that younger users are increasingly gravitating toward short-form, vertical-only content, which creates challenges for material that requires depth. He said ScrollEd aims to meet students where they already are, while deliberately avoiding the engagement-maximizing tactics used by typical social platforms — instead making it as easy to go deeper into a topic as it is to swipe to the next video.

Born from late-night doomscrolling

Gupta founded ScrollEd this year with his wife and co-founder, Rebecca Neff, after both noticed they felt dissatisfied after doomscrolling before bed. Both are current students — Gupta studies AI and human purpose at Stanford, while Neff studies computer science at the University of Pennsylvania. The company has been bootstrapped so far.

ScrollEd is targeting educational institutions, corporate training programs, and individual users. It follows a freemium model, pairing a free consumer feed with a paid ScrollEd Pro subscription and annual institutional licenses; institutions receive engagement and lesson-progress reports in return for their fees.

In the coming months, the company plans to focus on launching its consumer product, expanding its lesson library, refining its source-checking process, and running pilot programs with institutions. Longer term, it aims to build infrastructure allowing educators to assess individual learners and adapt content to their needs. ScrollEd will officially launch its consumer business at TechCrunch Disrupt, taking place October 13–15 in downtown San Francisco.