My mother is 80.

She has always been the storyteller of our family — her childhood, her values, the recipes she never wrote down, the things she believed in and the things she'd never have stood for. She tells me these stories on the phone, at family gatherings, in passing. And every time, the same thought: I have never actually captured any of this. Not properly. Not in a way that lasts.

I went looking for something that would. There was nothing built for an 80-year-old who isn't tech-savvy — nothing warm enough to sit with her, week after week, and gently draw the stories out. So I built it. HeartTold calls her, warmly, every week. Gentle questions, her answers, her voice — kept.

Then she mentioned some upcoming heart tests. She'd had a severe heart attack fifteen years ago. And a cold thought landed: she won't always be with us.

That changed what HeartTold had to be. Because if we capture enough, her stories, her memories, the way she sees the world, something becomes possible that never was before. Not a recording you play back. A conversation you can still have, in the voice you know, drawn entirely from what she actually told us. Five meaningful conversations is where it begins, and it only grows richer from there.

I want to be careful about what I'm claiming here, because it deserves care. HeartTold doesn't bring anyone back, and it will never pretend to. What it keeps is real — her voice, her stories, her way of putting things — and a way to reach for them again that rings true, because every word of it was hers. That line matters to me. It's the difference between comfort and pretence, and we stay on the right side of it.

And honestly, the “after” isn't even the point of it. The point is now. Every week, she settles in for a call that exists for one reason: to listen to her, properly, about a life that deserves the attention. Whatever the future holds, those conversations are already the gift — for her, and for all of us.

I'm not building HeartTold as a startup. I'm building the thing I needed and couldn't find, for the person I most want to keep in my life, and for everyone who feels the same about someone in theirs.

If any of this resonates with you, the way it resonated with the small group of people we first shared it with, I hope you'll give her that first conversation. It's free, and it takes about twenty minutes.

— Scott, Co-Founder