"Stop studying, you're not smart enough": an HEC student took a Top Grossing chart in France with 13 photos

RayOnn is a French study focus app: pomodoro, to-dos, habits, study methods, all old ideas. Two and a half months after launch it barely moved, but in the first week of November its ratings went from 42 to 202, and it squeezed into the French App Store productivity Top Grossing chart. What pushed it wasn't the features, it was the founder's own TikTok: a set of 13 photos, told in the first person, of a story from "4.75 out of 34" to getting into HEC. Below, what it is, how it took off, how much it might earn, and whether you could do the same in another country.

13 photos

In November 2026 4, the TikTok account @rayonn_the_way posted a photo carousel with no caption, over a sound called "original sound - s_one.wav." The first photo shows several students in HEC hoodies walking across campus, with the caption "« Stop studying, you're not smart enough »". The second is an exam paper, "4.75 out of 34," captioned "I almost believed it…". Then comes the library at night 22:01, a dorm room, messy economics notes, a text from mom "are you at the library?", and scores climbing: 14.75, 17.5, 20. The second-to-last photo is an app stats page (1,284 focus sessions, 411 hours, "you're in the top 1% of the RayOnn community") captioned "this app is called RayOnn, it saved my year." The final photo is the HEC Paris lobby: "I achieved my dream…"

By Nov 6 this post had 118k views (TikHub, 11-06). Two days earlier the same account had posted an almost identical set: most of the photos were the same, but the opening became "« Don't go to prep school, you're not smart enough »" and the ending switched to a screenshot of HEC's admission page, "we did it… believe in yourself, you can do it!!!", with 74k views.

Nobody in the comments seemed to care that it was an ad. The most-liked were "respect, a warrior" and "congrats bro, truly impressive," mixed with a few genuinely useful ones: "what did you use, the one that tracks focus time?" "Can I use this app?" "Too bad there's no Android version."

What it is

RayOnn is French-only and only has traction in France. Open it and you get a set of study tools for middle and high school and university students: focus timer and pomodoro, scheduling, to-dos with an Eisenhower matrix, habit tracking, study logs, study stats, plus "100 study methods," recommended to you through a personality quiz. The gamification layer is points, levels, leagues, friend groups, and chat: the longer you study, the higher your score and rank.

Monetization is a free download with subscriptions: 5.99 € a month or 39.99 € a year, with the website offering a 7-day free trial (French App Store listing, rayonn.fr). The website also has a web version, and its homepage says "over 10k students already use it" (unverified).

It was built by Elie de Baudus, a current HEC Paris student who started the app in September 2025, and who has interned at Voodoo, a French game and app publisher, since July 2026. Before that he worked in brand content and sold one-on-one "study method coaching" online. His story is the product's entire foundation: in high school, he didn't get into a single program through Parcoursup (France's university application system), and two years later he got into HEC. Le Figaro Étudiant ran a video interview with him in January 2026. The app launched on iOS in August 2026 20, and it's the only app under that developer account.

How it took off: two top-school student accounts, one photo format

Look at the numbers first. RayOnn's ratings on the French store: 28 38 in October, 31 42 in October. Over two-plus months it only collected about forty ratings. Starting 1 in November, it added 6, 16, 24, 45, 29, and 40 new ratings a day, reaching 6 202 by November. In the same week it climbed from around #145 to #140 in the French Productivity Top Free chart and into the Productivity Top Grossing chart, peaking at #76 on 2 and hitting #136 on 6 November.

Next, TikTok. The founder's account @rayonn_the_way now has 2,400 followers, 270k likes and 125 videos. Bio: "HEC Paris student ☀️ my App keeps you motivated and boosts productivity ⬇️" (TikHub, 11-06). He mostly posts talking-head and text videos about study methods and his Parcoursup experience, most getting 500 to 2,000 views. Only one video from Sep 11, about the self-discipline needed to keep going to class, blew up to 206k.

In October he changed approach: no talking, no captions, just carousels of 12 to 13 photos with a short line of text on each, always the same soundtrack, one to three posts a day. The hit rate jumped: 10-22 156k, two at 10-30 and 93k, 57k, 10-31 65k, 11-02 74k, 11-04 118k. The photo story was almost always the same (looked down on, low score, late nights, scores rise, app stats page, HEC), with only the first line changing. Talking-head and long text posts continued but mostly stalled at a few thousand views.

A second account joined in October 30. Jay Besnard, who says he studies at HEC, CentraleSupélec, and ENS, has 24.5k TikTok followers and 1.83M likes, usually posting "a day in the life of a top-school student" (one October post about the three schools' daily routines got 7k views, 99). In October 30 he posted a self-introduction, and nearly every post after that included RayOnn: 11-04 "Reaching the top! Become the best student with RayOnn", 11-05 "Never give up. RayOnn, the app that got me here: link in bio", 11-06 "No excuses: I built an app that teaches you how to study (RayOnn). Free, link in bio." On LinkedIn he's listed under the RayOnn company page; from the outside, it's unclear whether he's a co-founder or a paid creator.

Ratings started climbing exactly in these days: from 10-30, posts over 50k views ran for several days straight, the second account began driving traffic, and ratings started rising every day from 11-01. Two other possible amplifiers: France's All Saints' break ended in November 2, and the first exams after the return to school were approaching, so "how to keep studying" content was seasonally perfect (inference). Also, in October 30 the app shipped version 1.0.9.1, and from the next day ratings jumped from single digits to dozens a day, likely because an in-app rating prompt was added (inference), so faster rating growth doesn't entirely mean faster download growth.

Not checked: paid ads (failing to find them doesn't mean there were none; the founder interned at Voodoo, so whether he uses paid acquisition methods is an open question), discussion on X and Reddit, and any revenue disclosures.

What users say

Reviews on the French App Store are almost all five-star, short and enthusiastic: "This is the only thing that actually got me to start studying" (11-03), "I'm in my last year of high school, studying math and economics, and it lets me stay focused for long stretches" (10-25), "I've tried lots of French and American study apps, this is the one I use the most" (10-24). The batch of five-stars from the first days after the late-August launch came in clusters with similar tone, which most likely means friends and acquaintances.

The bad reviews point to two things: "You get told to pay monthly right after the tutorial" (1 stars, 10-29), and "Stuck after ten minutes, can't add tasks, and the timer doesn't run" (2 stars, 10-22). The first is the classic reaction to a subscription wall placed right after onboarding; the second says the product is still rough.

How much it earns

Not much, at least for now. Getting into the top 100 of the French productivity Top Grossing chart isn't a high bar, and #76 to #136 means people are paying, but the amount is hard to estimate. Going by dozens of new ratings a day, and the rating prompt possibly inflating that, new downloads are probably in the hundreds a day (estimate), and monthly revenue is most likely a few thousand euros (estimate).

Its ceiling is also clear: French only, iOS only (you can't find it on Google Play, and TikTok comments have people complaining about that), and it targets French middle and high school and university students.

Who it's competing with

Feature-wise it has nothing unique. There are plenty of similar apps:

RayOnn's difference from these isn't features. First, it's native French and speaks the language of French exams: Parcoursup, the bac, prépa, and business school prep. Second, it leads with "learning how to learn," not just timing. Third, the person who built the app is the role model the target user has in mind, and appears on camera himself. The third point is why it took off. The first two make the path "watch video → download app → the app contains the method from the video" feel seamless.

Few people know about it: revenue isn't public, no tech outlet has covered it, and its only press is an interview from over half a year ago about a personal story. Nobody is copying it yet.

If it were you

The short take: This isn't a product opportunity, it's a playbook opportunity. Building another study-focus app makes no sense. What's worth doing is finding, in another country and another language, a student whose own story is the comeback, and running the same image-carousel playbook.

Who it suits: People who are themselves students with a story from a top school or the exam-prep scene, or small teams that can recruit such a person as a partner who is willing to appear on camera every day; people who understand the university entrance exams of a particular country (Germany's Abitur, Spain's EBAU, Italy's Maturità, Brazil's ENEM, China's and Korea's college entrance exams, China's postgraduate and civil service exams).

Who it doesn't suit: Developers with no persona who only want to grow through features or organic app store search. The Pomodoro and habit-tracker pool is already full. Anyone aiming at the English market will face Forest and Focus Friend, which are celebrity-backed or established. Anyone wanting to head-on copy RayOnn in France will find Gunesh and Studva already there, and you can't copy the persona.

How to do it:

• Keep the product lean: focus timer + stats page + a study method tailored to your country's exams + friend leagues, launching on one platform first. Make the stats page look good, since it appears second-to-last on every post.
• First fill the gaps RayOnn left: Android (lots of French students use Android, and reviews are already asking for it), plus study plans split by specific exams (bac, prépa, a particular major).
• Price it like its student tier: about €5–6 a month or €30–40 a year, with a 7-day free trial. Put the subscription wall after the user has tried a focus session once, not right after onboarding.

How to get users: TikTok image carousels of 12 to 13 real photos (test scores, late nights at the library, the dorm, texts from family, the app's stats page, admission results), each with one short caption, no long post text, one fixed soundtrack, posted daily. Keep the story spine constant and test a different opening line each day. A single founder account won't take off on its own, just as with RayOnn. Recruit a second student account with a bigger following from the same school to post alongside it. Pin a reply to comments asking "what is this app."

When to get in early: Follow the exam calendar. This French wave lined up with the return-to-campus period and first-semester exams. Other countries should target the three to four months before their own major exams and the start of the school year. Most European countries' final school exams fall in 5–July, and the school year starts in September. Miss that window and you wait for the next cycle.

Signs you've misread it: ① RayOnn's ratings drop back to single digits per day by late November, meaning this was a one-time spike that image-carousel acquisition can't sustain. ② Its French Top Grossing rank rises while ratings don't, or there's a flood of "charged me, can't cancel" reviews in 1–February, meaning the money comes from subscription design, not students willingly paying. ③ Conversely, if persona-free competitors like Studva and Gunesh also grow with plain image carousels, the format alone is enough and you don't need a "top-school comeback" person, so the bar for following is lower than this analysis suggests.