A bioinformatics degree was supposed to be my answer. Five weeks before graduation, I'm betting on something else.

I picked bioinformatics at UCSD because it was the top-ranked major and I wanted to contribute to science. Four years later, my peers are all queueing up for PhDs to break into biotech, and I'm realizing I don't want to spend another half-decade learning before I'm 'allowed' to make something. So I'm using my last 5 weeks of college to ship.

First product: Notie (https://notieapp.com), an AI-native study app for students.

The original spark came from my mentor at Novartis. I noticed researchers there have a specific ritual for going through papers: they highlight interesting passages and pull them into slide decks they can refer back to for their own work. That stuck with me. I started building Notie for professionals with that workflow in mind, but as I talked to more peers, I realized something bigger was missing in the student space. Apps like Notability and GoodNotes treat AI as a support character, a little 'explain this feature' button, or tack on gimmicks like 'quiz me' that don't actually map to how people study. Nobody had built a note-taking app where AI was the main character. So I pivoted toward students, where the pain felt sharper and the bar felt lower than it should be.

The core insight is that students shouldn't have to tab-switch between their PDF and ChatGPT. The reading and the thinking should live in the same place. So in Notie, you import a PDF and highlight passages directly, and the AI conversation is anchored to whatever you highlighted, with full context of the document already loaded. From those highlights, you can auto-generate flashcards that go into a spaced repetition system (SM-2), and from any flashcard you can jump back to the exact passage in the source if something isn't clicking. You can also load multiple documents into one workspace and have the AI cross-compare them, which is something I personally needed studying for my own classes. And because of where the idea started, export-to-pptx is in there too, for anyone who wants to turn their highlights into a deck.

The bigger vision is an ecosystem for studying, where AI organizes the material and you do the thinking. I'm also intentionally building this as a web app, not iPad-first. Every student has a laptop. Not every student has an iPad. And honestly, I think trying to replicate pen and paper on glass is a losing game. Pen and paper is irreplaceable for working through problems, and laptops are unbeatable for organizing knowledge. Notie leans into that split rather than fighting it.

It's free while I iterate. Eventually I want to do a subscription with tiered plans based on AI token usage. I have at least two more ideas I want to build after this one.

Two asks. Try it and tell me what's broken, any feature that would improve the app is good too. And if you've shipped something to prove a point to yourself, comment and let's connect. I want to learn from your scars.