How a Second Brain Transformed My Thinking Forever

What we talked about.

Sunny Ray sits down with Jay, founder and CEO of Noteffect, a seven time founder with nearly four decades in technology. Jay explains his new product, Agent Answer, a second brain built for companies that lets teams recall meetings, emails, and presentations using context instead of keywords. The conversation traces his path from a childhood paper route hustle through early ventures like General Employment Marketplace, which sold technology to CareerBuilder, and Core Apps, the pioneering event mobile app company that grew to 2.6 billion downloads and was used at half of the top 250 trade shows before selling to Insight Partners community brands division. Jay shares stories from CES, changing Core Apps revenue model after attendee pushback, and how his own frustration with paper notes during back to back meetings sparked the idea for Noteffect. Throughout, Jay reflects on timing, partnership, and building products he personally needed. The episode blends startup history with practical lessons on exits, product timing, and staying close to your team.

A seven time founder explains how a paper route hustler became a second brain pioneer for enterprise memory.

The questions, and the answers.

In your words, what are you building with Agent Answer?

Companies gather huge amounts of information from meetings, emails, presentations, and conferences, and staff lose about 30% of their day trying to find it again. Agent Answer is a second brain that recalls that information quickly using context or ideas rather than keywords. We capture audio and content together so you get the whole story, not fragments, and can jump right back to the exact moment you need.

What were you into as a kid, and what was your first brush with business?

I was always a hustler with an entrepreneurial spirit. My first real business move was running a big paper route. When the newspaper company wanted to split my route in two, I ran a bidding war among my friends for the other half, sold it to the winner, and collected part of my payment monthly from their collections. Everything I have built since has come from needing something myself that did not exist.

Your first company was General Employment Marketplace. What did that teach you?

We built it before the internet really took off, running a stack of modems out of my basement so people could dial in and search job listings, advertising in the New York Times and Washington Post. We ended up selling some of that technology to CareerBuilder, my first exit. I did not know how to get funding back then, so we bootstrapped everything ourselves.

How hard was it to convince trade show organizers that attendees would use phones instead of printed guides?

It was not easy, they were old school and wanted their paper maps and booklets. I told them the paper never makes it home, it ends up in the trash. Our first show was Con Expo, the largest event in North America, and our sixth client was CES, which is the gold ticket in the events industry. After CES we had over 100,000 downloads in the first year.

How do you decide when a technology is actually ready versus just loud?

That is a hard one, honestly I have sometimes been too far ahead, like with General Employment Marketplace before the internet was ready. With Core Apps we were first into mobile for events, and with Noteffect we are first into this second brain space, so it is all about educating the buyer. Ironically, products like recall and AI pendants from bigger companies are helping build the market we play in.

Walk us through the decision to sell Core Apps. What does an exit actually feel like?

I like to keep companies between five and seven years because past that I do not want to run something so big I cannot know every employee personally. Ten years flew by at Core Apps because I loved the event space so much, but we saw consolidation happening and decided to sell to Insight Partners community brands division since they wanted to build out registration and session management around us.

How did watching your son study off printed PowerPoints covered in scribbles turn into Noteffect?

At Core Apps I was in back to back meetings all day, taking notes on paper and then struggling to read my own handwriting and recall what I had agreed to. I tried Evernote, OneNote, and other tools but nothing worked the way I needed. Watching my son deal with the same kind of scattered paper notes for studying pushed me to build something for myself again, which became Noteffect.