Apple slices, facing up
“Mia’s first week of school. She’d only eat them if the peel faced up - ‘so they can see out.’”
Most of a life goes undocumented.
A Story calls someone you love, listens, and follows up the way someone who knows them would. What they say becomes a private archive the whole family can add to.
Founding families: 25 places, open now.Start now for $29
Sample books
See a real book.
Three lives, three books, every page made the way A Story makes them: from conversations, the family’s photographs and the things everyone else remembered. Turn the pages.
- A family memoir
Carolyn Bennett
Baker, Holland, Michigan. Fifteen memories, in her own words.
Open the book - A founder’s ledger
Raymond Ortiz
Machinist and founder. Forty years of a shop, told by the family.
Open the book - A veteran’s homecoming
Thomas Kessler
Army medic, then an ER nurse. Forty-one letters home.
Open the book
Fictional families. Every page shows how a real A Story book is made.
The , the , the - the milestones usually survive.
It’s the everyday.
Mia, 2019 …what she said the night she asked where the moon goes in the daytime.
You were sure you’d remember it word for word. You remember that she asked.
Dad’s garage, 1984 …the story Grandpa only tells with a screwdriver in his hand.
Everyone has heard a piece of it. Nobody has heard all of it at once.
Dan & Sam, ’98 …why you and your oldest friend still can’t say “the canoe trip” without laughing.
The photo shows the canoe upside down. It doesn't settle who tipped it.
Those slip away quietly.
A Story exists to catch what the photograph can’t.
You do step one. That’s the whole job.
You
Set it up once.
A couple of minutes on their phone or tablet, and the hour A Story should ring. You can do it while they’re in the next room.
Them
They answer the phone.
No typing, nothing to open or save. Twenty minutes is a real conversation, and the next call picks up where the last one stopped.
Everyone
The family keeps it.
Invite anyone to read, correct and add their own memories. Inviting fifteen people costs the same as inviting nobody.
Free for as long as you like, no card. Guided calls from $119 a year.
Not a memoir
Your story isn’t behind you. You’re still inside it.
The mistake is thinking a life becomes worth recording only when it’s nearly over. You’re already living the part you’ll miss later. Open one family’s archive - 1952 to this morning.
Made to be held.
Made to be passed on.
But this is not the end.
The story keeps going.
Because so do you.
Reserve for $1Moments & Memories
1952 - still being writtenThe Hartleys
Family is everything to us.
A StoryDedicated toWalt & Ruth
For the porch steps, the workbench, and every story you told twice. Thank you for always being our home.
A Story
The Hartley Family
In their own words, and in each other’s. Told in calls, kept by everyone.
The Hartley family1952
i
Dedicated toWalt & Ruth
For the porch steps, the workbench, and every story you told twice. Thank you for always being our home.
A Story
The Hartley Family
In their own words, and in each other’s. Told in calls, kept by everyone.
Some chapters deserve to leave the screen. When one is ready, make it a volume - a Classic Hardcover comes with every plan, or print it at home free. Printed editions from $39. The archive keeps growing after the book is printed.
Three calls. Nobody changes the subject.
Some stories only appear because somebody asks twice. Someone lets something slip on the way to answering a different question - A Story drops its own question and goes after it.
9:41●●● ▮
The wall at St Brigid’s
Faith & what carried me
A Story asksThen I’ll do the asking, and you can put it down any time. What’s your earliest memory of worship - how old were you, and whose hand were you holding?
RosaMy mother’s. St Brigid’s, six o’clock Mass, before her shift at the laundry. She went every morning of her life. Even the winter she wouldn’t look at Father Dolan.
A Story followsRosa - you slipped something in at the end there. The winter she wouldn’t look at Father Dolan. I’d much rather stay with that than move on. What happened that winter?
12:4826:57
Faith & what carried meI’d tell her they moved the wall. That’s all. I’d just want her to know they moved the wall.Rosa, 84 - about a brother who lived four days
RosaHears the aside
9:41●●● ▮
The long way to school
Childhood
A Story asksYou went straight past something there. The year your mother was in the sanatorium. I’d like to come back to that rather than the bread - how old were you?
ErrolSeven. Eight by the time she came home. Look - I’d rather not go into what she had, if that’s all right with you.
A Story followsOf course. We’ll leave that exactly where it is, and it won’t come up again. Tell me about the house instead - who looked after you that year, and what did an ordinary day with them actually look like?
12:4826:57
ChildhoodShe never once said why we went round that way, and neither did I. No. I never told her.Errol, 79 - about the year he was seven
ErrolTakes the no
9:41●●● ▮
All but one
Love & family
A Story asksYou don’t start with the fifty-one years. You start with one thing. What did you notice first about him?
JoanHis handwriting. I knew his handwriting a year and a half before I properly knew his face - he was posted out to Aden and we wrote. I’ve still got them all in a biscuit tin. All but one.
A Story followsAll but one. So you’ve counted them. What happened to the one, Joan?
12:4826:57
Love & familyHe’d been writing it down where I wouldn’t see. All those years. Because he couldn’t get it out of his mouth.Joan, 84 - about fifty-one years of marriage
JoanFollows the detail
Every memory has more than one witness.
Invite the people who were there. Their photos, voices and versions become part of the same story - through one link, no account needed. Nothing replaces anything else, and nothing appears until the storyteller says yes.
SarahLily’s mum
“She didn’t sleep. She kept watch at the tent door with a flashlight.”
+ 12 photosLily, 11Walt’s granddaughter
“There WAS a monster. I heard it breathing.”
+ Voice noteUncle BenWalt’s son
“The monster was me. With a paddle. Sorry, Lily.”
+ Written9:41●●● ▮
The lake monster
W
Grandpa Walt · told in a call“I told Lily there was a monster in that lake. I never thought she’d believe me for three whole summers.”
Everyone’s version
Invited · Sarah
S
Sarah12 photos
“She didn’t sleep. She kept watch at the tent door with a flashlight.”
Invited · Lily
L
Lily, 11Voice note
“There WAS a monster. I heard it breathing.”
Invited · Uncle Ben
B
Uncle BenWritten
“The monster was me. With a paddle. Sorry, Lily.”
3 additions waiting for WaltReview
0:32
One life.Many witnesses.
Not a diary. A documentary.
New in A Story
The easiest way for a whole family to keep its stories.
Every family has one who talks, one who types, one far away and one with the shoebox. A Story has a way in for each of them - and none of them has to be good with phones.
The family tree
Four generations on one tree.
Rose, her parents, her children and her granddaughter. Tap anyone to add or fix them.
Group calls
Call the family together.
Up to four phones at once. Everyone talks; A Story listens and turns what’s said into memories.
A page for each person
A life at a glance.
Born, grew up, schools, work - built from what the family has written down.
Family codes
Six letters, and they’re in.
Send the code by text. Up to ten people can join with it.
The one telling it
They just talk.
No typing, nothing to learn, nothing to save. A Story rings at the hour you choose and follows up like someone who knows them. The first conversation is on us: ten minutes, no card.
The cousinsNew
Four of you on one call.
Grandkids in three cities and Grandma at home, on one call. Ring up to four phones at once, and what gets said is kept with her story.
Everyone who knows themNew
Tell your part of the story.
Aunts, cousins and old friends get questions turned around for them -
Which story about Rose gets told again and again?
What they add is credited to them, beside hers.Whoever wrote it downNew
Bring in the memoir.
Already typed up forty pages? Add the Word or text file and each chapter becomes a memory, marked
From Rose’s memoir
. Nothing written down is ever typed twice.JoiningNew
A six-letter code, and you’re in.
No hunting for the right email address. Send the family code by text or WhatsApp; whoever types it joins, whatever email they signed up with.
The family treeNew
Everyone on one tree, each with a page.
Parents, partners, children and grandchildren on one tree, and a page for each life: dates, places, schools, work - built only from what the family has written down. Anyone can suggest a change; the people keeping the story say yes.
When you’d rather writeNew
A companion beside you.
Stuck on a blank page? A Story offers a question to answer out loud, tidies spelling and full stops while your words stay yours, and suggests a title. One tap keeps a memory private.
Bad signalNew
Nothing gets lost.
If the connection drops mid-sentence, what you wrote stays on the phone and saves itself the moment it can.
Why we started
The conversations we thought could wait.
Two of my uncles had strokes within months of each other. They lived - I want to say that first, because what follows is not a story about dying.
I did not know how my grandparents met. I had never thought to ask. So I started building A Story: someone to ask, time to listen, and a place for a family to keep the answers.
D
Daniel Hoang NguyenCo-founder & CEO
Founding families · 25 places
Twenty-five families start now.
Before launch, we are setting A Story up by hand for 25 families, with one of us on your first call. No week to wait for: we write within a working day of you joining, and places go in the order families join.
$29once · refundable until your first call
Then half off your first year - $119 $59.50, and the $29 counts, so $30.50 more whenever you choose.
- One of 25 families who start now, before launch
- We write within a working day and set it up with you, by hand
- Your first month of guided calls, from the first call
- One of us there for that first call
- Half off your first year, and the $29 counts toward it
- Refunded any time before the first call
How A Story compares
A memoir keeps one voice. A Story keeps the whole family.
Memoir apps turn one storyteller’s answers into a finished book. A Story calls, follows what they say, and keeps every version of the family’s story - and it keeps going.
| What you get | A Story | Storyworth | Remento | Storii |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| They just answer the phone - nothing to type or record | ~ | |||
| Follows what they actually said, not a fixed list of prompts | ||||
| Everyone who was there adds their own version | ~ | ~ | ||
| Different memories kept side by side, not merged into one | ||||
| Today counts too, not only the past | ~ | ~ | ~ | |
| Keeps growing after the book - the book isn’t the end | ~ | ~ | ~ |
One moment does not need one official version.
Mom remembers it one way. Her brother remembers another. The photograph adds something else. A Story keeps all three attached to the same memory.
From each company’s public pages, September 2026. Features change; we update this as they do.
The story keeps going. Because so do you.
One conversation to begin. The whole family keeps adding to it.