Remento, a storytelling app for preserving household tales, raises $3M and debuts its iOS app • TechCrunch

Remento, an organization centered on capturing and preserving household tales, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Upfront Ventures. The Los Angeles-based firm can also be launching its iOS app today after beta testing it for a yr.

The corporate’s new iOS app is designed to offer customers dialog prompts to encourage members of the family to share tales about their lives. As soon as you choose a immediate, you’ll be able to document a dialog instantly throughout the app. Particular person tales from these periods are then displayed within the app’s interactive playback expertise, the place they are often shared with different family members with none modifying required.

Remento was based in 2020 by Charlie Greene, who got here up with the concept for the corporate after filming a collection of interviews together with his mom shortly after she was identified with most cancers. Greene advised TechCrunch in an interview that his mother and father recorded numerous dwelling movies when he was rising up, and that it wasn’t till his father handed in 2001 that his household got here to comprehend how treasured these movies have been, as they allowed him to listen to his father’s voice. 5 years in the past, Greene’s mom was identified with most cancers and his household realized that they have been on the precipice of dropping tales about her life.

“Even with a background in documentary filmmaking, I didn’t know the place to begin,” Greene mentioned. “We got here up with an answer to document a collection of conversations about my mom’s life that we positioned onto this digital timeline that our household might entry and add to. I found extra of who I used to be by taking the time to ask her questions on her life. We rapidly realized that this drawback that we solved was not distinctive to our household. Households in all places are dealing with these realities of getting older relations, and youngsters and grandchildren who don’t know them, and that’s why we’ve created Remento.”

Greene believes that recorded conversations seize way over cluttered photograph libraries and static household bushes. He says Remento is constructed on a basis of neuroscience, psychology and storytelling experience. The app is designed to make it simple to seize household tales via guided conversations. Remento goals to make it simple to get began by recommending prompts which might be tailor-made to particular members of a household. Greene says the app is designed to interrupt down the concept of persevering household tales into small bite-sized items.

Picture Credit: Remento

The app is free to make use of, which Greene says displays the corporate’s perception that everybody ought to be capable to have significant experiences that form their lives.

Greene says the corporate plans to construct out a monetization mannequin that may embody extra options and functionalities. The extra options will make it simpler to begin conversations and enhance the best way that the app is ready to suggest prompts to storytellers. Sooner or later, the app will use synthetic intelligence and pure language processing to automate the group course of as soon as content material is created. As well as, the corporate plans so as to add the flexibility for customers so as to add photographs alongside recorded conversations. As an illustration, in case your mom is sharing a narrative about her highschool promenade expertise, the performance would permit you to add a photograph of her in her promenade costume.

Though Remento plans to launch an Android app sooner or later, Greene says it’s tough to find out the timeline for a possible launch. The corporate is at present centered on creating its know-how and can increase availability sooner or later, he says.

As for the brand new funding, Remento will use it to increase hiring and prolong present analysis and growth efforts, together with constructing options that may keep true to the corporate’s mission to assist individuals create lasting household mementos.

The corporate’s seed funding spherical was led by Upfront Ventures, together with a bunch of angel buyers, together with Brooke Hammerling, Chuck Davis, Dan Nova, Emmy Rossum, Sam Esmail and Sarah Harden.

“I’ve been engaged on this challenge for 2 years at this level,” Greene mentioned. “We’ve discovered a lot alongside this journey. With each beta buyer we’ve got talked to, it has been clear to me that there has by no means been a greater time to carry this product to market. If the connections and conversations that came about via home windows and FaceTime in the course of the pandemic taught us something, it’s to by no means take something or anybody with no consideration. Popping out of the COVID-19 pandemic, proper now could be the time for households to be linked and that’s why we’re excited to construct this know-how that we see not as an alternative choice to human expertise, however actually as a complement to our most cherished relationships.”