How well do you really know what your parents were like when they were younger?
You may get stories of their youth on occasion, but it’s often short, unorganized excerpts that you’ll forget with time.
“It’s really hard to get to know what your parents were like before they were your mom or dad,” Ryan Brown said.
That thought led Brown and a small team of former Craftsy employees to create Kinecho, a service that captures and preserves family memories through audio recordings.
After leaving Denver-based Craftsy last August, the small team began brainstorming ideas to better serve an older adult audience through technology.
“At Craftsy we had the opportunity to work on the older adult audience,” Brown said. “We believed they were still largely underserved by tech.”
So, they created a way for families to record memories and stories using audio recordings that are stored on a digital scrapbook.
Family members can send out prompts or questions to gather specific memories or leave it open-ended. Then, other family members audio record their memories and upload them to Kinecho.
The audio is automatically transcribed, and users can upload photos as well. Brown and the Kinecho team thinks the audio is what makes this service special.
“There’s actually a biological response to hearing a close family or loved one’s voice,” he said.
“A huge part of what we’re trying to capture is the human voice, off the cuff stories and small moments and answers to specific questions,” he added.
Since the team began testing the product last year, Brown has been surprised by what he found out about his own family.
His father, whom he described as self-deprecating, was the drummer in a Southern California band called Dave Travis and the Extremes.
“Now I have that story and I can share it with my daughter in the future,” he said with a laugh.
The seven-person team is based in Denver, and Kinecho recently raised a $450,000 funding round.
Brown said the money will primarily be put towards keeping the core team together and expanding the product.
Kinecho currently costs $9.95 per month, $79.95 for a yearly membership, or $195 for a lifetime membership. Once you pick your plan and create the group, each additional member that joins is free.
Brown said Kinecho has hundreds of users at this point and will continue making improvements to the product as they receive feedback.
He’s hopeful Kinecho will become a safe, secure place for families and friends to preserve memories for years to come.
“My parents won’t live forever, and I want to capture as many of the stories from them as I can,” he said.
