Two Minds, One Vision

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — African proverb

I launched Mindsera alone in 2023 while working with talented contractors. Things moved quickly, but after six months of working 14-hour days, I got burned out. I know—ironic for someone building a mental health app.

This led me to search for a partner to build this with, someone aligned with the values of privacy, human-centric AI, and striving for excellence.

It was quite a search, but the universe delivered: Markus Trasberg, a young and talented software engineer, who stood out with a thoughtful letter, joined as a freelancer, and soon became Mindsera’s CTO and co-founder.

After eight months of burning the midnight oil in Tallinn and Amsterdam, we slayed the beast of a to-do list and launched Mindsera 2.0.

The feedback has been incredible, and we’re more motivated than ever to make Mindsera the best journaling app in the world.

Interview: A Look into Markus's Mind

Here's a quick interview I did with Markus to explore how he thinks, what excites him about Mindsera, and the innovations he hopes to bring to the platform.

What excites you about Mindsera and its mission?

Firstly, I think Mindsera is a lot about showing people how insightful and rewarding journaling can be. While journaling by itself is a powerful concept for self-discovery, it can be difficult to know what to write about or how to view your thoughts from a different perspective. By leveraging AI, we enable a whole new world of possibilities.

Four years ago, when I started experimenting with GPT-2, large language models were still considered a niche field in AI, and this level of reasoning seemed like a distant dream. My undergraduate thesis focused on how language models could be used for simple survey generation in the wellbeing domain. Back then, the results were promising but nowhere near good enough. Fast forward to today, the models have become tremendously better, enabling us to make complex emotional analysis and detect patterns across hundreds of entries.

Another aspect of Mindsera that resonates with me is its human-centric approach—it’s not trying to replace you as a writer. In a world where we increasingly outsource writing and thinking to AI, it’s crucial to retain ownership of our thoughts and creativity. Mindsera positions itself at the intersection of human expression and AI assistance: you write, and the AI listens, provides feedback, and identifies long-term patterns in your entries. By building tools that encourage deeper thinking and reflection, Mindsera supports continuous learning and exploration.

What innovations or improvements do you hope to bring to the platform?

I think every journaling experience must have two core components - a clean environment to let your thoughts flow and knowing that your thoughts only belong to you. In the new Mindsera version launched in November, we removed all distractions from the editor to enhance this flow. Regarding privacy, it is and always will be our top priority - we must ensure that your writings are secure and protected at all times.

The second focus is about how to take the existing Mindsera insights to the next level. There are many ideas on what to explore and improve - think improved memory capabilities, better visualisations, or integrations with additional data points like sleep data or personal calendars.

Finally, each of us journals in a different way - some like to type in a computer, others enjoy writing in a physical journal, while some record their voice or even capture videos. My hope with Mindsera is that it can become a tool for all types of journalers to collect, analyse and learn from your entries, regardless of the medium they use.

How do you journal?

While I spend hours every day on Mindsera writing its code, I journal less frequently, aiming to have at least one writing session per week. During the early stages of Mindsera 2.0 development, I would start writing in Mindsera but then some bug would appear, and I’d start debugging it instead of writing down my thoughts. Thankfully, we’re past that phase now and the writing sessions are more enjoyable than ever.

When I do journal, I usually spend a few good hours and just try to write down everything that’s happened: events, people, feelings and everything in between. For me, journaling is a lot about storing the life and the mental clarity it brings. It’s as if you can just hit a ‘Save’ button on your life - everything is stored and you can move on without worrying about the past. It’s fascinating to read journal entries of 3-4 years ago and understand what a completely different person I was back then.