Generations of families for hundreds of years have relied on stories to pass on family legacies with some using family trees and documents that are also passed down from generation to generation. However, with the advent of technology and the internet, and the ubiquity of video options, there can now be a modern approach to passing on family legacies to impart wisdom, values, and history. Remento is a platform that’s focused on preserving a family’s stories by providing a simple-to-use interface that allows family members to host video conversations with other family members. Users are given a series of prompts to get conversations started to record key details of a family’s legacy in a fun and interactive format. The storyboard prompts cover a range of topics that are designed by professional storytellers, neuroscientists, and memory researchers to combine science with art to truly deliver authentic, meaningful dialogues. All conversations are securely saved in the app and can easily be distributed and shared with family members to create a living, breathing, and most importantly, enduring record of a family’s rich history. The app is free to use with plans to add premium functionality as platform usage grows.
LA TechWatch caught up with Remento CEO and Cofounder Charlie Greene to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, recent round of funding, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Our $3M seed funding round was led by Upfront Ventures, with institutional participation from Deck Point, Capital, Flybridge, and Alumni Ventures Group, plus angel investment from a collection of individuals with deep product, operating, venture capital, storytelling, and PR expertise, including Brooke Hammerling, Chuck Davis, Dan Nova, Eli Portnoy, Emmy Rossum, Jake Poses, Jack Brody, Sam Esmail, Sarah Harden.
Tell us about your product or service.
Remento helps people better understand and more deeply appreciate their family story in a new and unique way. The Remento iOS app makes it easy to host a conversation with a family member that uncovers precious memories of their past. Whether it’s reflections on life-changing experiences or the joys of everyday life, Remento brings families together through shared exploration of the often overlooked truths that made our nearest and dearest who they are today. In doing so, these conversations break down barriers across generations, breed connection through curiosity, and remind us that understanding our own story starts by listening to the stories of others.
The Remento app provides conversation hosts with access to step-by-step guidance and recommendations, designed to make it easy to get started in seconds. Hosts begin by selecting a set of conversation prompts from a list of options recommended specifically for their loved one. Each prompt has been carefully crafted by Remento’s network of professional storytellers, neuroscientists, and memory researchers to blend the art and science of effective interviewing into a streamlined experience. These prompts use different combinations of stimuli to inspire different types of exploration, from questions about a childhood bedroom to invitations to share the stories behind precious photos and objects. Once selected and customized, the Remento app turns these prompts and the user’s device into a conversation facilitator, guiding an in-person conversation, recorded directly in a private and secure file within the app. Individual stories from these sessions are then showcased in the interactive and easy-to-use playback experience where they can be kept and shared across the family without any fancy editing or processing.
What inspired the start of Remento?
Five years ago I decided to sit down with my Mom to record a series of her stories. But I had no idea where to begin. Without an alternative to turn to, I cobbled together a solution: a combination of questions and photos to prompt her storytelling, plus a private website to keep the recordings alive. Nothing about the preparation for that conversation was easy, nor was the recording, editing, and processing. But within a few moments of sitting down together, it was clear that I’d never look at my Mom the same way. As I learned her stories, I better understood my own. And when that collection of digital stories sparked even more curiosity and sharing across our broader family, I realized that the journey of understanding our family story had just begun.
That’s why we’ve created Remento: to bring families together across generations through the power of story. In the last year, we’ve worked with scientists and storytellers to unlock the same devices that redefined what connection and closeness meant during the pandemic to inspire a new type of family reunion as families reunite together in person, many for the first time in years. And by streamlining the organization and sharing of this content in a single place, we’re eager to help families build the foundation for a living, breathing family history that inspires more questions, more stories, and ultimately deeper, more enduring connections.
How is it different?
Remento gives you a simple, science-backed framework for uncovering the stories of your family members. We’ve made the process quick to start, meaningful to experience, and easy to share. And unlike static scrapbooks or flat family trees, Remento helps you capture and organize the richness of their stories in recorded video, meaning you will always have access to the mannerisms, facial expressions, and intonation that make each reflection so meaningful.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
We build products for those curious to better understand their own story through the stories of others. From our beta testing over the last year, we’ve been amazed by the variety of different types of people using the platform. That said, we see specific resonance with the 60 million members of the US sandwich generation, who are “sandwiched” between an aging parent (65+) and their children (<18). These individuals use Remento to take the guesswork out of exploring the memories and experiences that have shaped their aging relatives, either by hosting conversations themselves or inviting their kids to join or lead the conversation.
What’s your business model?
The app is free to use as we truly believe that everyone should have these meaningful conversations. In the future, we plan to build out a monetization model that will include premium features and functionalities.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown??
We’re laser-focused on creating a product that fits a real market need, which is why we’ve spent the last year listening so deeply to our 1,000+ member beta community. From them, we have been reminded that our country is aging, generations are more disconnected than ever, and this pandemic has fueled a widespread eagerness to foster more meaningful and enduring connections with the people in our lives we love. We’re confident that there’s a massive market opportunity for technology to better address these needs and that any company able to address them properly can be successful irrespective of macroeconomic trends.
What was the funding process like?
It was deeply humbling to find a world-class group of investors who so deeply believed in our vision for bringing families together through storytelling. It’s a phenomenal group of institutions and individuals, each of which has gone above and beyond to support our execution.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
The biggest challenge to raising money during a pandemic was not being able to connect with potential investors in person. What we’re building with Remento is a decidedly human product, which meant we had to work a bit harder to overcome the Zoom-induced barriers to authentic connection.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
I suspect many of our investors imagined themselves as users of our product. Several were excited to use Remento to explore and document their lived experiences with someone they love – a parent, a grandparent, or someone else. Others wished the product had been available years ago for use with a relative no longer alive.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
In the next six months, we’re excited to grow our team and scale the reach of our product, particularly as many families gather together for the holidays in the next several months, many for the first time in years.
What advice can you offer companies in Los Angeles that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Many of the best, most profitable companies are born out of or reimagined during economic downturns. This is a time to focus on the core of your business.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Our first priority is to bring families together through the power of storytelling, which is why we’ve built a tool designed to do precisely that. We are working on a version for Android, enhanced sharing and collaboration features, and are hiring for various roles – notably in product and engineering.
Looking ahead, we’ll be excited to integrate the digital stories created with Remento into a living, breathing family history. We imagine a private family library where these stories can be grouped, categorized, and easily explored – by person, theme, community, and more. We’ll build tools that harness the excitement for further exploration to inspire even more sharing across the family. For some, that may include asking additional questions. For others, it may be uploading existing family photos and home videos to add dimension to a specific story. And for those eager to go further, future versions of the product will support the collection of maps, music, newspaper articles, and public records to make the story feel more like a rich, interactive documentary than a static album or one-dimensional family tree.
What’s your favorite outdoor activity in LA?
Running on the beach, hiking, and taking my new rescue puppy Rosie on walks with my wife Lily.
