LifeTimeline

LifePosts

    • OCT

      Conception

    2011
    • Gestation

    2012
    • Assembling a team

    2013
    • An amazing staff arrives

    • AUG 21

      Born

    2014
    • From vague ideas to detailed schemas

    • Private Beta!

    2015
  • Conception

    As with all types of conception, it’s sometimes difficult to pinpoint the exact moment.

    I started thinking about this when I was working for the Knight Foundation & the FCC studying the collapse of local newspapers. One of the unstudied consequences was the decline of obituaries and articles about other major life milestones (births, weddings, job promotions etc).

    This got personal because my wife, Amy, is a newly-minted funeral director. She kept coming home with stories of incredible people she’d worked with who didn’t have any acknowledgement.

    This led to the realization that the opportunity and need went way beyond trying to replace the old obituaries to creating a new way of memorializing and creating biographies for loved ones.
    By Steven Waldman
  • 2

    Gestation

    Research, research and more research -- especially about what were the best storytelling tools out there. I started to realize that the gap that existed around the memorialization also was there for life celebrations, for slightly different reasons. We have many ways to capture micro-moments but it's surprisingly hard to craft, curate, and control a commemoration that draws in friends and family to help, and which can be easily preserved.
    Amy Cunningham
    A website is born, and its birth is much more attractive than sausage being made.
  • 8

    Assembling a team

    We created business plans, and most importantly, began assembling an amazing group of staff, advisors and investors that includes Lauren Zalaznick, Larry Hackett, Jon Miller and many others.
    By Steven Waldman
  • 4

    An amazing staff arrives

    A team! Ju-Don Marshall Roberts – the former managing editor of The WashingtonPost.com and Executive Vice President of Beliefnet – joins as Chief Operating Officers. Then Ned Berke, founder of one of the best local news startups (Sheepshead Bites) becomes senior editor.
    By Steven Waldman
  • Born

    We’re alive (says the state of Delaware)!
    By Steven Waldman
  • 5

    From vague ideas to detailed schemas

    We spent the next 18 months building. First the bones develop (the basic structure). Then the skin. And finally the personality. Not exactly like human development but many moments of pain, frustration and joy, just like real life.
    By Steven Waldman
  • 6

    Private Beta!

    We launched the private beta! Seeing our first actual use of the LifePosts tools was so exciting! My cousin Rob did an amazing one on my great uncle, Myron Waldman, who animated Casper, Betty Boop and Popeye! Ju-Don did a lovely one on her daughter’s graduation.
    By Steven Waldman