TechStars grad Fetchnotes now lets you share notes

The super simple note-taking app now lets you share notes with users and non-users with @mentions

If you haven’t used Fetchnotes yet, you’re missing out on something so mind-blowingly simple and intuitive that it kind of bums me out that I didn't have this in college...even though there were no iPhones around when I was in college...because I'm a dinosaur. 

The super simple note-taking app got a big update on Wednesday and now allows users to share notes quickly and easily by simply adding an @mention.

The app lets users organize and create lists and note categories instantly by simply adding a hashtag—no setting up separate notebooks or whathaveyou. For example, you can create a grocery section by adding #grocery to a note, and henceforth you can search grocery lists under #grocery.

Now, with the new sharing functionality, you can add a contact to a note instantly. For example, you want to remind your wife to grab you some ice cream from the grocery store on her way home? You just add it to her To-Do list with a note: @Khaleesi #todo pick up some more moose tracks plz.

You can also share notes with non-users by adding an @mention and the name of a contact, a phone number, or an email address.

The app even has Amazon integration so if you want to recommend a book, movie, music, or some other content to a friend, the note instantly adds a link to the Amazon page. And the team is currently working on a machine learning-based categorization model that will help users quickly locate items like phone numbers, reminders, contacts, meetings, and so on.

“It's all about simplicity; people are already familiar with the @mention and #tag and most people take notes, we just combined them in the simplest conceivable way,” said co-founder Alex Horak. “We've fielded a lot of request for reminders - and the team is really excited to build it. We want to implement them with that same simplicity in mind so we'll be really careful.”

That simplicity is really where Fetchnotes differs from Evernote. Creating and categorizing a note on Fetchnote is as easy as adding a hashtag, and the app does the organizing for you. 

Horak says that some of the most common hashtags include #groceries, #music, #checkout, #read, #gifts, #ideas, #quotes, #watch and #todo. And some of our more creative ones include #dreams, #dateideas, #failedrecipes, #greatcheese, #puns and #lifehacks.

The team consists of a group of University of Michigan students who dropped out to head to Boston for the TechStars Fall 2012 class. The startup has been backed by TechStars, Beta Fund, Start Garden, the CTO of Rockmelt, the former COO of Harmonix, and several angel investors.

“Fetchnotes doesn't require too much adaptation from people,” said Alex Horak. “It's quite similar to the default note taking app because that's what people are already familiar with. In our opinion, complicated, opinionated apps require too much change. Most people just want to jot down that book they want to read later, remember to checkout that one website, or add an item to their grocery list and then get back to what they were doing.”