Invest in QuestRead

Solving the Child Literacy Crisis Through a Mobile Reading Game

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Public Launch on Jun 1 @ 9:00 AM ET
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INVESTMENT TERMS
Future Equity
 $4M  $3.6M valuation cap
Early Bird Bonus: The first $50K of investments will be in a SAFE with a $3.6M valuation cap
$250, $1K, $2.5K

Highlights

1
QuestRead students have increased their reading by a full grade level in less than 2 months.
2
Started selling B2B this fall -first agreements with tutoring companies and school pilots in place.
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500+ downloads in beta iOS phase, with $0 marketing spend or investment.
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Bootstrapped to date. $75k raised in non-dilutive funding.

Our Team


Partner With Us: $75K Goal

Summary

At QuestRead, our mission is to create a world where everyone can become a confident and successful reader. To achieve this, we’re building the world’s most engaging and effective reading game.

We're seeking our first investment partners to build on our own personal investment and help take QuestRead to the next level. To invest in QuestRead, click the 'Reserve' button on this page to partner with us on this mission.

Our team of parents, educators and technologists founded QuestRead in the spring of 2023, and is 100% bootstrapped to date. Our technology has been developed entirely in-house, we launched our product to families during the summer, and have completed beta testing with a strong response from our early users. We’ve begun to form partnerships with tutoring companies and have our first school pilots lined up for Q1 2025.

With our goal of raising $75,000, we aim to expand sales and marketing efforts to tutoring companies, complete development of the Android app and expand the library book content in preparation for school pilots in the Spring. We are in the process of building a strong foundation for this business, and our ambitions are bold. This capital raise will bridge the gap to a larger fundraising round aimed to accelerate growth into these three market segments: families, tutors, schools.

I invite you to read on to gain a deeper understanding of the problem we’re addressing, our unique solution, and our go-to market strategy.

We're Facing a National Reading Crisis That Threatens Our Children's Future

In America today, a silent emergency is unfolding in our classrooms: two-thirds of our fourth graders can't read at grade level, setting them up for a lifetime of struggles. This isn't just about books -it's about their future, their mental health, and our society's foundation.

The Evidence:

  • 67% of U.S. fourth graders are below proficiency in reading (reference).
  • Increasingly downward trends in reading enjoyment and frequency should be addressed urgently (reference).
  • Reading age is associated with a wide range of long-term life outcomes -e.g. students who struggle with reading by 3rd grade 6x more likely to drop out of high-school (reference).

These aren't just statistics -they represent millions of children being left behind by outdated teaching methods and systemic challenges.

Every child deserves the fundamental right to read and the opportunities it provides. The time to act is now.

pie chart displaying that 67% of children are not reading at grade level

The Daily Struggle to Build Reading Skills

Behind these statistics are real struggles faced every day:

  • Parents watch their children fall behind, lacking effective tools to help without constant oversight.
  • Tutors struggle to maintain student engagement between sessions, limiting their impact.
  • Schools can't bridge the critical gap between classroom instruction and at-home practice.
  • Children themselves find reading practice tedious and isolating, leading to resistance and avoidance.

Traditional approaches often fail because they rely heavily on adult supervision, lack engaging elements that motivate children, and don't provide the consistent practice needed for reading growth.

QuestRead: Transforming How Children Learn to Read

QuestRead's early results speak volumes: students achieve up to a full grade level improvement in reading fluency after just two months. How? By turning reading practice into an adventure children choose to pursue.

At the heart of our platform is play-based learning, and our Book Race competitions, where students naturally spend 4x more time reading compared to independent practice. This dramatic increase in engagement stems from our carefully designed system of external motivators and social connections. Young readers share achievements, earn badges, and participate in a safe community of fellow learners – turning what was once a solitary challenge into a shared journey of growth.

Created by educators and parents who understand these challenges firsthand, QuestRead makes reading accessible to all children through:

  • Personalized, diverse book selections.
  • Screen-based reading tools that benefit struggling readers.
  • Gamified elements that motivate without requiring adult oversight.

Strategic Growth: From Early Adopters to Market Impact

We launched our MVP pilot in the fall of 2023, working closely with over 200 families through the end of our beta period. Through interviews and feedback sessions, we continuously improved our product based on user insights.

We're already seeing the fruit of this with a small number of very happy subscribers since our launch in September 2024. In October, we more than doubled paid subscriber count, most of those coming through word-of-mouth growth.

Although this early success with parents highlights a promising long-term direct-to-consumer opportunity, our immediate focus is on the tutoring market, where we’ve identified a need and a clear path to efficient growth through strategic partnerships. Why tutoring companies? These partners provide an established channel where parents already seek reading support, and our platform addresses critical needs in their model: student engagement between sessions, tutor effectiveness, and parent satisfaction.

This provides another immediate revenue opportunity while allowing us to establish a foothold with professional educators. We'll be launching our first school pilots and strategic non-profit partnerships in Q1 2025.

Demonstrated Momentum Toward Profitability

Our small but mighty team and capital-efficient approach have already yielded significant results. We're 100% bootstrapped to date. Through a combination of personal investment, grant funding, and pitch competition wins, we've built and launched a fully functional product, secured our first paying subscribers, and identified substantial opportunities in the market.

Investment Opportunity

We're now seeking our first investment partners to leverage our own personal investment in this mission and help take it to the next level. This is a unique opportunity to join us in reshaping how children learn to read.

More specifically, raising $75k from this community round would allow us to:

  • expand sales and marketing efforts to tutoring companies,
  • complete development of the Android app,
  • and expand the book content library in preparation for school pilots in the spring.

This puts us more firmly on track toward profitability sooner.

Our earliest investors will take on greater risk with greater potential to reap the highest returns. See more about SAFE's with an ROI example in our FAQ below.

What's Next? Global, Long-Term Impact

While we're taking a measured and methodical approach to building a solid foundation for our business, our aspirations are by no means modest. We are aiming for global impact in a market ripe with opportunity and with a deep need for innovation.

Our community round will bridge the gap to a larger fundraising round in 2025 aimed to accelerate growth into our three identified market segments. This pre-seed capital raise of $750K will help us achieve our revenue target of $1M by 2026.

See our pre-seed investment deck for more details.

Thank You!

Thank you for considering a partnership with us in support of our mission!

We are passionate about solving this problem on a global scale and we take your investment seriously. We'll be staying in touch with all of our investment partners on a regular basis to share the exciting news of how our business is growing and the impact we're having in the lives of children everywhere.

If you have any questions, or want to learn more, we'd be more than happy to speak with you. You can find us on LinkedIn, or feel free to reach out to Janessa directly at janessa@questread.com.

Janessa, Greg, Pavel & the QuestRead team.

FAQ & Further Reading

>>> "Great! How Do I Invest?" <<<

To invest, you need to reserve your investment by clicking the red RESERVE button on this page and complete the form with the amount of your investment and your personal information.

Your funds are reserved in an escrow account until all of the legal paperwork is complete and our crowdfunding investment round is complete.

For further reading on the topic, see:


>>> "What is a SAFE" agreement? What's my potential ROI?" <<<

A Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE) is an investment contract that's very commonly used by early stage startups.

The capital invested converts to equity at a later time, when there is a firm valuation on the business. However, it guarantees a minimum equity share to investors, regardless of future valuation. See this document for a more detailed definition and example of ROI.


>>> The Reading Crisis <<<


>>> QuestRead <<<


Overview