Teens who grew up together are now helping grow trees with their climate-focused productivity app

Two high schoolers who became friends while living in the Seattle area are now long-distance collaborators on an app designed to help fight climate change.

Eshaan Shetty and Thiago Sardenberg, both 17, started working on the iPhone productivity app Sapling over the summer. The two friends, who grew up in the Education Hill area of Redmond, Wash., now live on opposite sides of the country — Eshaan is in San Jose, Calif., and Thiago is in Boca Raton, Fla.

Eshaan’s father, Satish Shetty, is a Microsoft vet who is founder and CEO of Codeproof, a mobile device management platform that he started in Redmond in 2011 before moving to Silicon Valley in 2021.

Sapling works by rewarding users with credits for tasks completed. Those credits can be used to purchase trees via a fundraiser the teens set up through the National Forest Foundation.

Each completed task equals one credit, and 20 credits equals $1 — enough to fund one planted tree.

“In a day you could do your homework, clean your room, do the dishes, etc.,” Eshaan said. “And over two or three days, you could probably plant one tree.”

Through the app, users can see what tasks they and people they follow have completed. They can also view a map to see where they have already helped plant trees, what types of trees, and details about the reforestation project going on in the location where the trees were planted. 

“We wanted to make a productivity app and we found that helping the environment is a way that we could impact the community,” Thiago said. “We decided to plant trees to help reduce climate change.”

Thiago said he and Eshaan have always been good friends. The same synergy they experience playing video games together online is now coming through via the design and coding responsibilities they share on the app.

Sapling has attracted about 100 users this far and the fundraiser has bought in almost $850.

Beyond Sapling, Eshaan and Thiago are both working on figuring out where they want to attend college after high school. And they’re eyeing the next projects that could benefit from another technology solution.

Eshaan wants to use tech to help address the homelessness crisis in the Bay Area, and Thiago hopes to build something to help combat ocean pollution.