I found out last week that NoteMate has been named a finalist in the Emerge 2026 Awards in the "In-Development" category — and I'm still a bit stunned by it.
Emerge is the University of Sheffield's flagship enterprise competition. I pitched NoteMate in front of judges in a Dragon's Den-style format, funded in part by Santander UK Universities. Making the final is something I genuinely didn't expect when I submitted.
Why I built NoteMate
I started building NoteMate during my final year at Sheffield because I kept seeing the same problem: students — including me — were choosing between writing notes and actually understanding what was being said. You can't do both at once. Not really.
That problem is worse for a lot of students. If you have ADHD, dyslexia, processing difficulties, or English isn't your first language, the gap between what you can capture and what the lecturer covers can feel enormous. The answer shouldn't be "just try harder". It should be better tools.
So I built one. Record your lecture, upload the audio, and within a few minutes you have a full transcript plus structured study notes. Speaker identification separates the lecturer from student questions. The entire thing works without a bot joining your call — you record locally, privately, on your own device.
What it's grown into
NoteMate now has 70+ users, runs on the web at note-mate.app, and is live on the Apple App Store. A year ago it was a rough script running locally on my laptop. Watching real students use it — and actually find it helpful — has made every late-night build session worth it.
The free tier gives students 60 minutes of transcription per month — enough to cover a weekly lecture with nothing to pay. That was a deliberate decision. I didn't want accessibility to be gated behind a subscription.
What's next
Regardless of what happens at the awards final, NoteMate is going to keep growing. There are features in the pipeline — better export, deeper AI summaries, more formats — and a roadmap of content and improvements aimed specifically at the students who need it most.
If you're a student at Sheffield (or anywhere else) who struggles to keep up with lectures, try the free tier. I built this for you.
And a genuine thank you to Emerge and Santander UK Universities for the support and the opportunity to pitch. It means a lot.