I Started a Software Company to Finish a Story
July 6, 2026
Around 2018, our CEO, Josh Wisoff, started developing a fiction series. While life was busy, he scribbled down notes and hoped that he could piece them together later. Then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, he had more time to write than he ever did.
“I wrote a lot, more than I knew what to do with. I came out the other side with a mountain of material and no real idea how to edit into something coherent. That was the real problem.”
Josh had the creativity, but he needed a way to organize his ideas and keep everything consistent as his story evolved. He began sketching a tool he called the “cognition interface.” While he was designing it, ChatGPT launched, making the kind of data analysis he thought would take years suddenly possible overnight.
“At first I used it the obvious way: to organize the sprawling knowledge base of my series. But I kept coming back to the bigger thing I’d drawn up in early 2022 — a whole platform, not just a workaround. That vision is what led me to found Open Knowledge of New York the following year.”
Today, that vision has evolved into two products heading to market: Wendell, a creative workspace for long-form writing, and NoteBar, its quick-capture companion that turns ideas into organized knowledge.
“Here’s the honest part: the only reason I started any of this was a slightly ridiculous get-rich-quick scheme to fund the thing I love most — writing, and making people laugh with a good story. I’m genuinely grateful to the interns and consultants who’ve shared their time and hard-won experience with this little company…[to help] bring my idea to life.”
Josh never knew that building the software would become just as satisfying as writing the stories themselves.
“Entertaining people with comedy and building tools that help others tell their own stories scratch the same itch. I’m still the writer who builds. The story isn’t finished yet — but now I finally have the tools to finish it.”
Stay tuned for more updates from OKNY, including a new launch for the Capital Region.