literature-review
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Mendeley Tried to Reinvent Research. Its Best Trick Was Fixing the Bibliography.
The London startup wanted to map the world’s scientific reading. Nineteen years, one controversial sale and several retired products later, Mendeley has learned that researchers mostly want their PDFs tidy and their citations correct.
AnswerThis
AnswerThis is an AI research assistant that turns literature reviews from months of work into minutes. It searches a database of more than 250 million academic papers and answers complex scientific questions with line-by-line, verifiable citations. Founded by University of Richmond seniors Ayush Garg and Ryan McCarroll and backed by Y Combinator (Fall 2025), the platform is used by over 250,000 researchers and crossed $1M in annual recurring revenue within eight months.
Consensus
Consensus is an AI-powered academic search engine that lets anyone ask a research question in plain language and get answers drawn directly from peer-reviewed science. Instead of returning a list of blue links, it reads across more than 200 million papers, summarizes findings, and shows - via its signature Consensus Meter - how much the published literature agrees. Founded in 2021 by Eric Olson and Christian Salem, the company is building what it calls an AI operating system for researchers, used by millions of students, scientists, clinicians and curious people.