Enrico, a business student, looked up from his own notes. “What if we just shared our summaries? I understood thermofluids differently than you. Maybe your explanation is the one that makes it click for me.”

Enrico wanted to delete all documents that resembled textbook content. But Riccardo hesitated. “We’re not stealing textbooks,” he argued. “We’re helping students interpret them. A student’s own notes are their intellectual property. We just provide the shelf.”

But the most powerful moment came in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. As universities around the world shut their doors and moved online overnight, millions of students were stranded without access to libraries, study groups, or face-to-face teaching. Docsity became a lifeline.

That casual conversation planted a seed. Over the next few weeks, Riccardo, Enrico, and a small group of friends built a rudimentary website. It wasn't pretty. The font was Times New Roman, the layout was clunky, and the only feature was an upload button. But the idea was revolutionary for its time: a peer-to-peer document exchange where students could upload their own study notes, past exams, and summaries—and download those made by others.

The transformation worked. The publisher’s lawsuit was settled out of court after Docsity demonstrated that less than 0.5% of their content directly infringed on copyrights, and that they had a robust takedown procedure. More importantly, universities began to notice the platform’s positive impact. The University of Bologna ran a study showing that students who used Docsity’s verified summaries scored, on average, 12% higher on final exams than those who only used textbooks.