Introduction to Readwise's Mission

Readwise's mission is to improve the practice of reading through software by an order of magnitude. Despite the advancements in technology, the experience of reading has remained largely unchanged, with words merely being moved from printed pages to digital screens.

• The company aims to help people achieve their objectives that inspire them to read nonfiction content.
• Readwise believes that with the right software, it's possible to unlock untold amounts of human capital.

The Need for a Better Reading App

Readwise's users have been asking for a better reading experience, citing limitations in existing apps and the lack of software innovation in this area. Some of the common complaints include:

• Inability to easily return to the context surrounding a highlight
• Inability to highlight and save images, tables, and rich text formatting
• Slow highlight syncing
• Difficulty in getting highlights out of PDFs

Readwise's Reading App: Features and Improvements

The Readwise reading app aims to address these issues and improve the overall reading experience by introducing several key features and improvements:

• Full-text search across all books, articles, notes, and highlights, even offline
• Highlighting as a first-class feature, including the ability to highlight images, rich text, and hyperlinks
• New forms of annotation, such as threaded annotations and wikilinks
• Improved navigation techniques, including the ability to hold your place and zip around documents
• Enriched context and metadata, including AI-based summarization and social chatter
• Workflows to help conquer content overload and decide what to read now, later, or never

Reading Phases: Before, During, and After

Readwise aims to improve the reading experience by focusing on three phases: before, during, and after reading.

• After Reading: Readwise addresses retention by resurfacing notes and highlights for review and syncing them to note-taking tools.
• Before Reading: The app bundles all content formats in one place, enabling full-text search and workflows to manage content overload.
• During Reading: The app aims to innovate the reading experience itself, with features like highlighting, annotations, navigation, and context enrichment.

Readwise's Approach to Building the Reading App

Readwise has been developing the core abstractions and concepts for their reading app since 2020. The company has assembled a team of passionate developers and designers to build the app using a local-first, cross-platform architecture.

• The app is currently in private beta, with plans for a public beta launch for existing Readwise subscribers.
• Readwise sees the reading app as the future of their company and a potential new category of software: tools for thought built for reading, not just writing.

Conclusion

Readwise's reading app aims to revolutionize the experience of reading nonfiction content by introducing innovative features and workflows. By improving the before, during, and after phases of reading, Readwise hopes to help users achieve their goals and unlock their full potential through better retention, comprehension, and management of content.