Episode 51: Abe Lamoreaux with Reflect
“Whenever an elder dies, a library burns down.”
― Amadou Hampâté Bâ
How do you preserve the stories of your parents and grandparents? Stories are what ground us and connect us to our collective self and help us define who we are. And a greater percentage of our society is aging than at any other time in the history of the world.
Abe Lamoreaux is a founder of Reflect (now Noodle Journal) – a software startup that makes journaling and preserving memories as easy as talking on the phone.
He pitched his entrepreneurial venture at the recent Do Good. Better. Conference at the Ballard Center for Social Impact, and was one of the 3 award winners.
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Podcast Transcript
[00:00:00]
Jacob: I’m here with Abe Lamoraux with Reflect. We had crossed paths at the Do Good Better Conference. And I had been invited by Stephen Fox to come check it out. At the event, they started with student entrepreneurs that were pitching their social ventures, and Abe’s group was one of the three winners. I was really intrigued by his approach and what he is doing with his software startup, particularly because my very first film class in college. The first assignment was to go interview somebody. It was my grandpa’s birthday, and I went and pulled him aside in his study and set up a VHS camcorder, and recorded him. And we talked for maybe 20 minutes, and then he had to get back [00:01:00] to his guests. I cut that together for the assignment, but two weeks later, he passed away. And so those memories are so incredibly valuable for me and my family. I was dating my wife at the time, but she never got to meet my grandpa, and none of my kids did.
For me, preserving those stories and helping my family connect with my grandpa, I feel such importance to that.
Abe, explain a bit of how you’re trying to tackle a similar challenge or help more people preserve those memories with your startup.
Abe: I would love to, and thanks for having me on. I actually have a really similar story. When I was a young man growing up. I remember my great-grandpa Glen. I never got to meet him, but everybody would tell me that I looked just like him. We actually found some tapes that he had recorded at the end of his life explaining all of his life stories.
He grew up in Wyoming, so it was really on the frontier, his cowboy stories, he’d call them. It was a wonderful thing. I remember whenever we’d drive from St. George, up [00:02:00] to Utah County, it’s about a four-hour drive, we would listen to his recordings. And I remember just feeling such a kinship for my grandpa that I’d never met.
When his wife, my great-grandmama, was passing away, she was losing her memory, and I remember my mom introduced me to her and she said, Look, this is my son. He looks just like Glen. She would show I wore my pants too high, almost to my belly button, and my grandpa Glen did the same thing. I always have felt this intense love for my great-grandpa Glen, and I never even got to meet him in person.
What we’re trying to do with Reflect is help stories just like my grandpa Glen’s be saved and accessible for the future, so that we can hear his stories in his own voice. We want to help people save stories in the easiest way possible. We wanna make it possible to connect people across all generations. We want grandkids to connect with grandparents. We wanna make it possible for those stories to have great longevity. Building an accessible and authentic platform for saving [00:03:00] stories and the easiest way possible.
That is the vision of Reflect, to make it as easy as possible to stave and to share those stories.
Jacob: Awesome. So tell me, tell me how it works.
Abe: We’ve surveyed thousands of people about journaling, and we asked them, Do you journal? We gave three different answers: Yes, I journal regularly; No, I don’t journal regularly, and I don’t intend to; and No, I don’t journal, but I wish I did. More than 60% of people that responded said, No, but I wish I did. So there’s this really big disconnect of people that want the outcomes of journaling, but without the process. And so we wanted to make the process easy and frictionless so that people can actually achieve this goal that they have for themselves.
Our Reflect journal helps people, parents, grandparents, to journal rather than handwriting or typing, simply by phone call instead. You pick up a phone, you speak normally and naturally, and then we save everything for you, both the audio as well as the speech to text, so then you’ll have these memories for the long [00:04:00] term.
Jacob: How does that solve for anyone, particularly a less tech-savvy, older demographic that isn’t going to log in to a software application? How have you found beta testing this? How has that been received, or what initial results or traction have you gotten so far?
Abe: That’s a great question. So we’ve built the entire thing so that somebody like my grandma would be able to use it. She struggles with arthritis, and she’s having issues with her memory as well. So we knew that we needed to have something that wasn’t taxing for her to do, and also that it actually acted upon her, rather than her acting upon it.
She actually receives phone calls and, rather than having to handwrite or type, she just speaks easily. If you can pick up a phone, then you’ll be able to use our product. Our catchphrase is that WE keep the habit for you of journaling.
Jacob: Is that all AI-driven, or is that a live person on the other end? How does that part work?
Abe: The phone call and everything is automated, and we have AI on the other end. One of the big concerns we received is, [00:05:00] Is it me? Is it me listening? And then I can hear all of the secrets and everything they have to say. And I’ve been quick to reassure that, no, it’s not me listening on the other end.
Jacob: How have people responded to that, like non-live person? You know, maybe a younger generation wouldn’t be bothered. They’re used to automated things, is that off-putting for a senior to have a bot talking to them?
Abe: So far, our reactions have been really good. People haven’t had any issues with it. Obviously, we’re still working to make it better. There’s things like the real-time API that OpenAI has put out that is really great and seems like a normal and natural speaking voice. We haven’t implemented it yet because it’s really expensive, so we think is AI continues to get cheaper, then we’ll put it in.
We look forward to having more of a human interaction as it goes, but so far, we’re still on our way there.
Jacob: Awesome. Where are you at in the journey? So is it just a napkin sketch? Do you have a working model? Like is it fully commercially available? Kind of where are you at in that journey?
Abe: [00:06:00] You can go check it out. Our website is ReflectJournal.app, it’s up and available. You can sign up for yourself; we have free trials, and you can get started on journaling. It’s as easy as that. We have our first customers, we have users that are really loving it and giving us great feedback so far on their progress. We’re really excited with the direction we’re going in and the traction that we have, so we can keep going and making this accessible to more and more people.
Jacob: What have been some of those success stories?
Abe: We actually were at an event here in Utah called Roots Tech, which is a family history conference. People from all over the country, even internationally, we met people from France, from Israel. People were raving our product, they were so excited to have this new way to journal.
We’ve had a lot of mothers sign up. They’ve really enjoyed it. They have these kids and they’re having such wonderful experiences, funny stories they wanna save, but they don’t have the time. Our services help them pick up the phone and journal normally and naturally, as quickly as possible, and still spend time with their kids while saving the memories.
So we’ve had some [00:07:00] great feedback, especially from mothers and also from grandmothers, cherishing the time they have with their kids and grandkids.
Jacob: Awesome. Who generates those questions? Is there an automatic feature, or can you customize it? How does that part work?
Abe: For now, we have the questions generated. We’re looking to launch another product that’s similar to StoryWorth or Remento, it’s a gifting platform where you’d gift it to a loved one. It specifically goes through a prompted experience to save their memories. Those will have different customizable prompts, different things like that. Keep your eyes out for Reflect Stories.
Jacob: Okay, great. What are sort of the next steps you see in this? What’s the biggest hurdle you’re facing to get to where you’re trying to go?
Abe: That’s always the thing when you have a problem you’re trying to solve, is where to go next. One of the biggest things is my co-founders and I are all graduating this month from college. So we’re really excited because it means we can go full-time on this, but with that, we need to see more traction to be able to keep this going for the long term.
What we’re really looking to do right now is [00:08:00] continue to generate lots of traction. Meet and help a lot of people get on the platform; that’s our main goal. We’re working with different companies to raise some money and be able to build, looking to connect with people that can help us as we continue to expand.
For example, we’ve talked to therapy clinics, worked with retirement homes and communities, as well as places like the BYU Family History Department. We’re working with them to get their students on our product. Kind of a widespread approach to being able to get more and more people using our service.
Jacob: So if you had to forced hierarchy of the three most important allies you’re looking for? One being the highest and most important for you. What would your list be? Anything come to mind as far as specific doors you’re looking to open right now?
Abe: At the top of our list, we would put investors. Having people that can help us to reach our vision here would be very important. To be honest with you, two and three would be tied between great mentorship and strategic partnerships. I think a lot of those would come [00:09:00] together, mentors will be able to correct us with great strategic partnerships. And those strategic partnerships tend to foster good mentors.
We definitely wanna be connecting with people that have an interest in journaling and saving history. There are genealogical or family history societies that we wanna be connecting with. Likewise, we want to keep connecting with people that have kids, grandkids, nursing homes, retirement communities, therapy clinics. We’d love to put on events or be able to help communities.
Jacob: Where do you see this going? What’s your vision for this?
Abe: Long term, we see this much bigger than journaling and saving stories, but we see this as an authentic way of both using AI as well as helping people to connect authentically. It’s no secret that we live in a world where people are using social media more than ever. Social media will turn out to be like the cigarettes of my generation, that people are losing so much time and losing so much productivity to something they don’t even want to be on.
People use things like Instagram or Facebook as a journal now, and they miss out on catching a [00:10:00] lot of the things that really matter to them, how they felt about things. The overarching goal of Reflect is to promote authenticity and saving stories, memories in a way that isn’t being done very well on Instagram and Facebook. A lot of these personal spaces, like journaling, have been overlooked, even though technology’s adapting so much things like journaling still have a lot of space for innovation.
Jacob: That’s really interesting. Obviously, there’s a lot that you can do with just the spoken word and hearing someone’s voice. Is there any plans in your development for some kind of visual capture of any kind? Or is it just audio and text for the foreseeable future?
Abe: I wanna highlight two things with this. As we go forward, as we get more people on the platform, we want to be able to have research opportunities.
For example, in my father-in-law’s family, they struggle with Alzheimer’s, and I would love to be able to diagnose and be able to provide some treatment. We don’t think we can solve Alzheimer’s, but we can help prevent it and continue to have mental stimulation. Especially for people that live in nursing [00:11:00] homes and that are isolated from other people can degenerate quickly.
The other thing is, we do see a future going forward of having more and more features. So for now, it’s accessible by phone call. We plan on being able to type, if you’d like, respond by email. And I could see a feature where we have kind of the premium feature, being able to do video.
One of our concerns, though, is that we want it to be easy to do. In my experience, my grandma, if she knew that she was gonna be filmed for something that would be remembered forever, she might get dressed up. She might feel a lot of perfectionism, like she needs to do this correctly. And our goal is to make this very accessible and authentic. It’s just picking up a phone call. It’s just having a normal, natural conversation. And I think that normal and natural has more value in the long term.
The geriatric community, the community that’s 65 and older, is growing in the US right now with the baby boomers aging up. There’s gonna be over 58 million Americans that are in this geriatric community of 65 and older, which is 18% of [00:12:00] America. 10% of those people are gonna struggle with different diseases or conditions that affect their memory. The hard part is you don’t know which 10% of that 58 million is gonna be. Our goal is to be able to help identify that 10%.
Jacob: You said you want to help identify those that might suffer from Alzheimer’s. How does your program do that? Or in what ways are you helping early identification for those kinds of diseases?
Abe: I’m not here to claim right now that I think we’re doing this, yet I think we need a lot more data. We have over 100 users on a platform right now, but it’s a longer game. It’s an aspirational vision for us that, as we continue to onboard more people, our commitment is to helping people be able to notice these things.
But obviously it’s an aspirational goal. I can’t say yet that we’ll help identify. We do meet the pillars for preventing and helping people to prolong their prevention of these diseases as we engage socially and mentally. There’s great [00:13:00] research that shows that the more people mentally engage, have social connections, then they’ll be able to resist different symptoms of Alzheimer’s and such.
Reflect journal starts lots of conversations in the same way that your documentary with your grandpa and the recordings from my great-grandpa started conversations within my family. We’re optimistic and we’ve seen it’s promoting social engagement for people of all ages.
Jacob: Tell me what those pillars are as far as helping to prevent. What are the challenges that the senior community has because of isolation, lack of social interaction, or mental stimulation, and how do you address it?
Abe: Anybody that has an older parent or grandparent that’s living in a nursing home or an assisted living community will understand that loneliness is a really big issue. There’s great care going on in these different facilities, but for the most part, there’s more people than there is care they can receive. And research shows that people living in these isolated communities or in different isolated situations actually tend to digress faster than other [00:14:00] people that are well connected.
I also don’t think it’s a secret that older people have a hard time having community, especially as they retire from the labor force. They can have a really hard time with retirement, making new friends, having some of the things that have made life so meaningful to them. Mental stimulation helps them to continue on longer. Regular exercise, both mentally and physically, is huge for retention as well as social engagement.
So those are the levers we’re trying to pull on to create social engagement as well as mental stimulation. We’re not there with physical stimulation yet, I don’t know if we will be.
Jacob: That’s great. The business model is, it’s a subscription, right?
Abe: Yes.
Jacob: And what is the current price point?
Abe: Right now, we’re priced around $8 a month, or you can buy the annual. If you have any issues, find me on LinkedIn, I’d be happy to send you a coupon. That’s a big thing we’re doing right now is coupons from different places that you get on.
Jacob: Awesome. If we touch base again in the year, where do you hope to be at?
Abe: For me personally, I would love to say that we’re doing this [00:15:00] and helping people out full-time. And I would love to say that this is not something that you’ve heard about from a podcast, but it’s something you’re hearing from somebody that’s actually experienced it for themselves and has great things to say. People are learning about this naturally because they’re just so excited to talk about it.
Jacob: Fantastic. Anything else you wanna share before we let you go?
Abe: I wouldn’t be doing myself, service if I didn’t say thank you to my wonderful co-founders Spencer Hodson, Lucas Gondola. I’m very grateful for some other people that have worked with us, Jayden Spaten, Daniel Mount, that have worked on the team to make this possible. I’m grateful for the mentorship that we’ve received from BYU and all of the different people that have taken a chance and believed in us to make this happen.
It’s wonderfully empowering to have people like the Ballard Center that make it possible for us to go forward and make products like this that can empower and help people. Truly. I’m so grateful for the mentors. There’s so many more people, just like us at BYU, that are being empowered by the Ballard Center, by the Sandbox program. People like you that [00:16:00] are taking us on a podcast and taking a chance to let us tell our story.
Jacob: Excited to see where you go with this and the good that you can accomplish.
Abe: I’m excited, too. Let’s follow up in a year, and I’ll get back to you on it.
Jacob: Awesome. Thanks Abe. Good luck.
Abe: Thanks
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