Why Are We Building Glasp?
Democratizing Knowledge: A Legacy Built on Shared Learning
Hello everyone,
I’m Kazuki, the cofounder and CEO of Glasp. Throughout my life, I’ve been driven by two deep-rooted desires: to create something meaningful and to leave behind a legacy of knowledge for future generations.
The Moment That Changed Everything
At 20 years old, I had a near-death experience. A sudden subdural hematoma paralyzed the left side of my body, and doctors told me I could go into cardiopulmonary arrest at any moment. In that moment, I wasn’t thinking about achievements or ambitions—I was overwhelmed by a singular, urgent thought: Had I left anything behind that truly mattered?
Surviving that experience changed me. I realized that knowledge is one of the most valuable things we accumulate in life, yet it often disappears when we do. The books we read, the insights we gain, the lessons we learn—most of it gets lost in the depths of personal notes, never to be shared, never to benefit others.
Why Can’t We Learn Effectively from Others?
Later, after co-founding my first startup and experiencing a painful co-founder split, I sought wisdom in books. I read over 100 works from history’s greatest minds, and one truth stood out: while everything changes, human nature remains the same. Across centuries, people have sought to leave something meaningful behind. But here’s the problem: of the tens of billions who have ever lived, only a select few have had their insights preserved in books or history.
I began asking: What if we could democratize knowledge? What if, instead of knowledge being locked away in private notebooks, it was made visible, interconnected, and built upon? What if we could truly learn from one another’s experiences?
Otto von Bismarck once said, “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” Yet in today’s world of information overload, learning from others has become increasingly difficult. Algorithms optimize for engagement, not wisdom. Valuable insights get buried under the noise. The internet is filled with fleeting trends, but where is the cumulative knowledge that helps us grow over time?
The Birth of Glasp
With these questions in mind, we built Glasp—short for Greatest Legacy Accumulated as Shared Proof. Our mission is simple but profound: Make knowledge visible, shareable, and built upon.
We started with a simple tool—highlighting the web—because we believe that what people highlight reflects their most valuable insights. But we didn’t just want to create another personal note-taking app. We wanted to bring knowledge out of silos, allowing people to see what others find meaningful, connect over ideas, and build a collective intelligence that spans generations.
Building a Learning Assistant for the Future
As Glasp grew, we saw something fascinating: people weren’t just highlighting; they were curating their own learning paths. We realized that your highlights are more than just saved information—they reflect who you are, what you care about, and what you aspire to become.
With advancements in AI, a new possibility emerged: What if Glasp could not only store knowledge but actively help you learn? What if it could connect the dots between ideas, provide insights, and act as a personalized AI-powered learning assistant?
That’s where we’re headed. By leveraging your highlights, notes, and reading patterns, Glasp is evolving into a tool that deeply understands your learning journey—guiding you toward more meaningful knowledge discovery.
The Community That Makes It Possible
But Glasp is more than just technology—it’s a community. The real magic happens when people share knowledge, engage with others’ insights, and build on collective wisdom.
Every highlight, every note, every shared thought contributes to a living archive of human learning. Instead of knowledge being lost in forgotten bookmarks or locked in closed notebooks, it becomes a shared resource that benefits everyone.
Where We’re Headed
We believe that the future of learning is both social and AI-assisted. The internet should not just be a place of passive consumption but of active, meaningful engagement with knowledge. Our goal is to create an environment where learning is not isolated but shared, and where knowledge is not lost but accumulated.
Through Glasp, we aim to democratize access to the world’s learning and experiences—just as Google democratized access to information, Twitter democratized access to thoughts, and Pinterest democratized access to visual inspiration.
Glasp wouldn’t be possible without the dedication and collaboration of our team. Kei and I founded Glasp with a shared passion for democratizing knowledge and making learning a social experience. Together with our incredible team and community, we are shaping the future of knowledge sharing.
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “My life is my message.” With Glasp, we hope to help people make their message visible, accessible, and impactful for future generations.
Let’s build something that lasts. Let’s leave something good behind.
Kei & Kazuki
Co-founders of Glasp
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Writing this post was a deeply personal reflection on why Glasp exists and what we hope to build with our incredible community.
At its core, Glasp is about making knowledge visible, shareable, and lasting—so that we don’t lose the valuable insights we gain throughout our lives. It’s a vision inspired by my own experiences, but ultimately, it’s something much bigger than me.
I’d love to hear your thoughts—what does knowledge sharing mean to you? How do you capture and retain what you learn? Let’s continue this conversation together!
The paradox of knowledge preservation is that we've never had more tools to capture our insights, yet most of what we learn still dies with us, not because of lack of storage, but because we lack incentives to make knowledge legible to others. Your near-death realization cuts through the noise, individual learning is hoarded by default, not shared, because the friction of making private notes public feels like work with no immediate return. What makes Glasp compelling is the implicit bet that people will curate knowledge differently when they know it's visible, that social accountability changes what you choose to save and how you organize it. The AI layer makes sense, but I feel the larger impact will be from community/culture; can you create a system where sharing what you've learned feels less like performing for an audience and more like contributing to infrastructure you yourself will benefit from? Because right now, the internet rewards hot takes that disappear in 48 hours, not cumulative wisdom that compounds across decades. Great initiative!