"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom" - Aristotle
Following Aristotle, Socrates, or Lao Tzu, all the stories start from people, and from self-mastery. In my opinion, the best way to achieve self-mastery is to give. Sharing and giving are the most fundamental things, a mandatory part of what makes us human, don't you think? If you agree with me, I would love to take 5 minutes of your time to share my story, and I hope, to give you something.
I've always been a dreamer. I was an avid reader during the whole elementary school, sometimes up to 200 pages a day. I read, especially fantasy, because it allows us to escape from reality, to build our own world, to create our own stories. My biggest dream always has been to make be able to make true what I dreamed. May sound funny, but that is what makes childhood so great.
In this first part of my life, I learned the importance of having big ideas and being proud of them, I learned to stand out for what I think. Thanks to my family and short yet diverse life experience, I decided that I wanted to make direct steps forward helping others and making my impact on society.
I started with what I know the most, what always made me proud of, building stories, connections. Starting from nothing, an idea, maybe a dream, and turning it into a complete thing, a solution that makes people feel better.
As a 2005 born, the Internet was my kindergarten, my safe place, so that's where I started. My first idea was to create communities around the videogames I played and loved. Gaming clubs can be really personal, competitive, and full of coup bas and arrivism.
I wanted to create a community to show people that video games are also able to create connections, to make people meet, even at a higher level. So, I started contacting top-level players asking them to share my vision and to join my club.
The first I asked laughed at me.
The second one, also.
The third, well, also.
So I changed my strategy. I started contacting people that resonate with my idea. Yes, still active and really good players, but younger, less competitive, more inclusive.
I didn't have to wait long before having hundred of applicants. We eventually reached the top boards in Italy and worldwide in several games, organizing weekly events with tens of participants. Not competitions, events. More than 2 years after, I still received messages from people thanking me for the experience and asking me to do it again.
I learned the importance of having a strong vision, of finding the right people to work with, and of perseverance. I also learned the pleasure of creating, and I decided that it would be the goal of my life. I was 13 by the way.
New year, new goals. I wanted to make something more focused on people, more direct. Less focused on gaming, more on people. I found in Discord a way to do so.
As always, I started by studying the market and adding my personal view and vision to it. Discord is a great place to be, a great community builder, but it can also be based on spam and extreme competitiveness across servers. Caring stats, not real connections.
This time, I wanted to create my own game. It was a roleplaying game based on writing, users were able to make decisions via chat, forming teams. The differentiation factor was in the fact that the game was based across collaboration in and between teams. A team leader was charged to write a two-page text with the why's and how's of the team, trying to be as engaging as possible. New people were able to choose a team, and by doing so form a group spirit inside teams, which I really enjoyed. We eventually reached several thousand users, with players talking and connecting every day. We reached more than 200k+ monthly messages.
I learned that people can be amazing as well as completely disruptive online. I learned to engage others, even when it's hard. I learned the power of gamification. But above all, I learned the importance of communication and exchange between people. I was 14 by the way.
Then, I wanted to do something more, but I was really limited by my lack of online knowledge. Yes, I was working on some other projects including a blog with some thousand readers, but I was limited to a limited view. I needed more to achieve my goals and have an actual impact, I needed coding.
Then quarantine arrived. 1 year on, I finally felt ready to create an actual project. But, what I did, sincerely really surprised me. I always felt a kind of predestination in my life, things that go too well to be only attributed to chance.
I found an error while programming, and I wrote a two-page article about it. I always enjoyed writing, that's why I'm here now, but I wasn't expecting things to go that way. I used a new approach compared to existing online knowledge, rather than being technical (and sorry, sometimes boring), I added a young and original approach to problems. Building a direct connection with the reader, adding jokes that resonate with developers, references, resources, fun facts…
I tried to turn what appeared boring, fun. I eventually published more than 50 articles, having more than 150 000 readers in 5 months.
I also managed a weekly newsletter that I founded, delivering weekly content to more than 1500 developers. I created amazing connections with people from all around the world.
I learned to write for computers. I learned to write for humans. I learned to solve problems in a new and original way and be able to show others so. I learned to bring value to people with my work and knowledge. I was 15 by the way.
I'm 16 now. After taking 6 months to learn entrepreneurship and business management, I decided to start making apps and services with a direct impact on society and people with my newly acquired knowledge.
Phitnest. We are creating with a Harvard student an app to make people meet and create connections, through sport. "Swipe, Connect, Get fit".
Especially after the pandemic, health, as well as social connections, are in danger. In the U.S. alone, 1 in 4 will die from a heart attack, totaling 659,000 deaths each year. I'm managing a team of developers to help solve these problems.
And there is Einote, which I'm launching today. That's where I need to ask for your help. Einote is a project I've been building in the past 6 months. With more than 16 000 lines of code, and thousands of hours of working and improving, each day. It started from a problem, a pain point, that I felt as a student, blogger, developer, founder, and internet user.
Nowadays, we face a lot of knowledge, and notes are really useful to store it. The problem is that there isn't a viable way to take notes directly on web pages, and there isn't a way to save and manage all the knowledge we face and save online. Einote solves these problems.
It's a note-taking app built on top of your browser. With the click of a button, you can link to any part of any page, you can add screenshots, drawings, videos. You can use speech to text in 32 languages including dialects, access advanced note metrics, or share your note by downloading, printing, or sending it via email or socials.
Before, it was tedious, you needed to switch tabs or pages each time, or buy a new monitor and keep losing focus. Now, you can just open an Einote on any webpage, and save your thoughts in seconds.
But now, I need your help. I realized I cannot do it alone.
I need your help to turn my dreams into reality, to actually help people.
If you would like such a project to grow and continue, if you would like this story to have to follow up, even more amazing, I need your help.
I'm launching today on Product Hunt, I would love you to try the product and leave your feedback.
If you want, create an account here and add it to your browser here.
Thank you for your time.
Have a great day.
Lorenzo.
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