Inspiration

We valued study notes as a way to keep track of knowledge be able to revise it. We also found it as a useful peer learning tool to learn from friends and seniors. After researching various formats of study notes online, we found Cornell Notes to be the best format. So, we built Classmint.com and now it serves 40,000 monthly uniques.

What it does

Central to Classmint is Cornell Notes editor which WYSIWYG editor with markdown underneath. We've extended fundamental markdown syntax to create our custom version of markdown which goes beyond traditional markdown tools:

Add images to the markdown and annotate them.

Add Text to the notes and annotate text.

How I built it

Me and Amar started coding this together. I was focused on overall design and first version of the product. Amar was focused on building the markdown editor for creating Cornell Notes online. We had first version of the product in one month of time.

Challenges I ran into

It was hard to create online Cornell Notes creation tool which is user friendly. The Text and Image annotations in markdown format were hard. We also had to setup the right infra. to serve users. Reaching out to target users (highschoolers) who won't be able to pay was hard.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Classmint is used by 100+ popular schools/colleges around the world.

People have created 1,50,000+ study notes on our site, using our tools.

Around 500-1000 study notes are created on daily basis.

Teachers love and recommend our product to their students.

What I learned

It helps to use a single common APIs and then write the front-end. We've some struggle with PHP backend at this point. Ideally, we should've liked it all to be Node.js and Mongodb.

What's next for Classmint

We need to put a team together and build mobile apps. Also, a study notes marketplace that needs to be built. Scouting for CTO and potential teamies.