In 2020, I first encountered E-Ink technology — a display that behaves like real paper: no glare, no eye strain, none of the energy waste that comes with a traditional screen. The direction was immediately clear: build a distraction-free digital notebook, focused entirely on handwriting, made specifically for schools. It didn't exist yet. That same year, I registered the EVONOTE trademark and secured the evonote.eu domain.
I'm George Laza — the founder, architect, and developer behind EVONOTE. I've always leaned toward mathematics; national-level results in school competitions in Romania were an early sign of that. But I studied Sociology at the University of Bucharest, graduating in 1998, before a brief detour into politics and market research brought me back to what I actually wanted to do: build software. I've worked as a developer since 2001 — first in web design, later as a systems architect. Some of what I built back then is still running today, more than 15 years later.
That dual background — sociology and computer science — shaped how I approached EVONOTE from the start. This was never just a hardware problem. A digital notebook only works in a classroom if it respects how students actually learn, not just how a system is engineered.
That's why EVONOTE has operated, from day one, as a dedicated R&D lab — not a rushed product, but a system built and tested until it actually earns its place in a classroom.
In 2022, I went back to university to build the system properly, from the ground up. It became my Computer Science diploma thesis — graded 10/10 — titled "A Minimalist Digital Notebook for Education on EPD Devices, with Cloud Storage (Evonote Prototype)", laying out the full architecture behind what would become EVONOTE.
As the project moved forward, its deeper value became clearer. Most digital education initiatives before it had fallen short — digitizing the classroom often meant replacing handwriting altogether, not supporting it. Handwriting is still where real learning happens. EVONOTE doesn't compete with that; it extends it. It gives handwriting the "superpowers" of digitalization — instant cloud backup, seamless sync, effortless archiving — without ever pulling focus off the physical page.
Months of daily use followed: my own, through a master's program, and real classroom testing with students, generating more than a thousand of handwritten pages on the device. The system held up. And by keeping hardware requirements minimal, EVONOTE stays close to what a school can actually afford — not just what's technically possible.
Every step since 2020 has led here: commercial launch in September 2026, in time for the new school year. EVONOTE isn't just code and hardware. It's proof that an E-Ink screen and a distraction-free design can bring handwriting into the digital age — without asking a student to give it up.