Editor’s Note: The Fetchnotes team was kind enough to extend a limited number of invites to us. Be one of the first to try Fetchnotes (free) by using this link: http://www.fetchnotes.com/invite/growdetroit





Today, Ann Arbor startup Fetchnotes officially announced the private beta of their cloud-based note taking service. Founded by Alex Schiff and Chase Lee, two full-time students at the University of Michigan, Fetchnotes aims to make the process of note taking simpler.

With over 600 beta users on their service, Fetchnotes is already gaining some traction and media attention. We caught up with cofounder Alex Schiff to find out a little more about their service, and how they match up against other other startups in the space…



How was the idea for Fetchnotes first conceived?

The idea was born in the March 2011 from a course at the University of Michigan taught by Aardvark co-founder Nathan Stoll. It was somewhat of a bootcamp in the lean startup methodology, and I entered the semester in January with an idea for an “ideas marketplace.” After talking to people, I realized that no one wanted to buy ideas, and pivoted quite drastically when I discovered that a big problem existed in the way people captured their thoughts. There was no good way to do it, and I found that it’s not just ideas — it’s any short piece of information you need to remember when you’re on the go. I found very few people who were legitimately happy with their workflow, whether they text/email themselves things, use an actual app, or just try to remember it all in their head. Hearing so many people complain about this — and experiencing the pain myself — was a screaming market opportunity.

How did your team come together?



I teamed up with Chase Lee in March 2011. Coincidentally, I had asked him to help me interview potential co-founders, as I have no technical background and he is undoubtedly the best developer I’ve ever met. After interviewing a few candidates, we agreed that no one was a good fit, and he offered to build the prototype that night (all I wanted was a quick and dirty SMS app to show for my class). He did build it that night, and we agreed to attack this problem together.

We recruited the most of our team between May and June through personal connections and the Engineering recruiting website at U-M. By the end of June, we were knee-deep in product development. We added a couple more at the beginning of the year.

With regard to companies like SimpleNote, Evernote, Springpad, OneNote, Task.fm — would you consider them competitors? How do you differentiate yourself?

Those apps try to be your virtual brain. They want to store your long-term information so that you don’t have to. And they do a great job at that. But the problem is that an interface geared toward long-form note-taking ends up being way too clunky for notes that might only be 3-4 words, and there’s nothing with a “just enough” feature set. We’re targeting the type of notes that you just need to get down somewhere and push them into your workflow. As a result, the simplicity and speed of the note-taking experience is paramount so that you can jot it down and get on with your life.

How was your experience incubating a startup at U-M? How is Entrepreneurial culture in the region, and (more specifically) on campus? Are there any local groups that helped foster the development?



There are several:

MPowered – For raising awareness on campus and pushing the entrepreneurial agenda forward from the bottom up.

The Center for Entrepreneurship and Zell-Lurie Institute – Supporting entrepreneurship from the top down and offering curriculum and programs that teach entrepreneurial skills beyond how to write a business plan.

TechArb – For providing a place for serious student entrepreneurs to work and interact with one another. Actually, we are about to enter our second session in TechArb.

The entrepreneurial culture here is fast-growing and very exciting. But, to be fair, we’re still way too caught up in the general risk-averse, go for the safe corporate job type of thinking that plagues the Midwest at large. There’s also limited funding opportunities for student entrepreneurs, so many end up working jobs they have no interest in rather than founding or joining a startup. The administration should start directing work study grants toward teaching people how to create jobs while in school through entrepreneurship, rather than using it as a pool of cheap labor.

Can you discuss your Business model in greater detail?



Sure, we plan to employ a freemium model so that we will give away our core applications for free and then sell a premium subscription for additional, value-adding functionality. So, you’ll be able to use our apps with no charge and limited groups and things of that nature, but in our premium plan you’ll be able to sync your notes with other tools like Evernote and Google Calendar, text or call in your notes, have more groups, etc.

What we really want to avoid is having a premium plan driven by caps that drags you kicking and screaming into paying. People will come up with extremely creative ways to stay under those caps, and you don’t end up with the same level of loyalty as someone who buys your product because they believe it will add value to their life. We want to create brand evangelists, not just dollars and cents. However, for our current beta everything is free.