It was the first of November, and Wilmington consultant Fabrizio Parrella wished there was a way to leave notes on the invoices he was compiling online.

He didn’t want to deal with hard copies and lots of multi-colored adhesive squares.

Surely there was a way to do it virtually, right? After a quick Google search, Parrella, who had recently left his job as CTO of Queensboro Shirt Company, couldn’t find what he was looking for. While other web annotation tools exist, they didn’t have the exact functions he wanted.

“I was like, you know what? I’ve got extra free time now, let me see if I can do it,” he said.

Three days later, OurStickys launched as a free extension on the Google Chrome Web Store.

Parrella’s creation allows users to add a virtual sticky note to nearly any webpage. If you leave the page and come back, the note will still be there. You can share it with others so they see the note when they visit that page.

Quickly, Parrella realized he wasn’t the only one who had been looking for this type of functionality.

Two days after he made OurStickys available to the public, the blog Free Technology for Teachers posted a review, saying, “OurStickys could be a good tool for students to use to annotate webpages that they plan to reference in their research papers” and “... could also be useful for teachers who want to make notes of teaching and talking points.”

More positive reviews and feedback followed, also touting the tool’s potential usefulness in the classroom.

Soon educators in the Midwest became big contributors to his early success, which included more than 30 percent day-over-day download growth.

Parrella hadn’t considered the appeal to teachers when he created it. But now he is leaning in to the feedback as he develops more features and functions.

“I said, ‘This is not anymore a side project. I need to really spend some time on it.’ My focus right now is for developer teams and teachers and students,” he said.

He’ll soon offer “channels,” which will make it easier for users to share multiple notes with the same people (like teachers with students or programmers with development teams).

“I want this to be the note-taking tool that anybody uses,” Parrella said.

Other features could be notes seen only by registered users or site subscribers. Picture seeing a note with a special “20 percent off” code word appearing on a store site once you log in.

That sort of additional intricate functionality eventually could be included in a “pro” version, but OurStickys launched so quickly Parrella hasn’t had time to map out a full business plan.

In the meantime, he’ll keep updating and expanding the free extension’s features based on feedback and his own need for constant improvement.

“I’m never happy with anything,” Parrella said.

Still, he is pleased with how his extension is being received, even if he really didn’t plan for any of this.

“You never know where you’re going when you start with something,” he said.