Meet the millennials trying to help others preserve legacy of loved ones

It wasn't until he became a father that Nicholas Worley rekindled the idea of ​​preserving the memories of his loved ones and their legacies.

The idea first arose when Worley was only 16 years old. That same year he lost his grandfather to prostate cancer and his maternal grandmother to Alzheimer's – both deaths had a deep impact on him.

“After Grandpa passed away, I had nothing concrete to remember him by or to know what he was like as a little man or a child,” said the 41-year-old British Columbian, father of three active children. How were you?” small children

The death of family members, a failed business partnership and the COVID-19 pandemic played a role in helping three millennials venture into new businesses that help others memorialize relationships and preserve their family heritage.

Worley is the founder of inaLife, a digital platform that helps families create digital family trees for a monthly fee. The company provides digital storage for photos, videos, and audio clips of family members so the family can view them now or in the future.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Worley said he jumped into action only after the Covid pandemic and the death of his mother-in-law in 2022., At that time, she decided to take a break from her 15-year public relations career.

In July last year they finally launched inalifeEquilibrium is expected to break in about two years.

“When my children were born and my mother-in-law passed away, I realized that my children would only know me as their father, and I wanted them to know how I was when I was little. I wanted That I, my son and Varley said, all members of our family will be missed in some way or the other.

Users can also pre-record messages for their loved ones that will be released in the future only at predetermined times or milestones.

Subscribers have the option to upgrade the service if they want to add more users or increase the storage space for their Memories.

For longtime Singaporean friends and business partners Haresh Tilani and Terence Chia, it was the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that inspired them to start their personal interview business.

folklore Provides an interview service between your experienced interviewers and the client's friends or loved ones that can ultimately be turned into a studio-quality podcast.

The business idea came almost accidentally.

“I just finished recording a podcast episode, and I suddenly thought it would be fun to ask my mom questions that I would never ask her — like what it's like to be 70,” Tilani said. “And he said things I never heard him say.”

Through that conversation, he learned that when he was younger his parents would move him and his brother into an empty apartment so the family could enjoy their own space. It turned out that they had bought their own apartment but couldn't live in it because they wanted to take care of their father's parents.

Those visits to the empty apartment were moments of temporary relief from the pressures of caregiving.

“That's when I came to know about my father,” the 40-year-old man said. “My father passed away in 2013, but I don't have anything that reflects his personality.”

That unplanned conversation with her mother in late 2020 not only gave Tilani a valuable insight into her father, but it also became a lifeline for her content business, due to the pandemic and the bankruptcy of a business associate. His plans had failed.

Tilani and Chia met when they were undergraduates at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. their business drowned in debt The video-on-demand streaming platform for which he created a TV series shut down in March 2020 — right when the pandemic first hit.

This made him realize that he needed to diversify his business and led him towards audio content.

Chia, who will turn 42 later this year, said, “We found a flaw in the Asian family: We don't talk to each other. But we will tell third parties that we love our mother. “

“It's easier to tell someone else that I love my mother than it is to say 'I love you' to my mother,” Tilani gushed. Set the proper context.”

Their folklore business has since expanded to include corporate clients who want to facilitate greater diversity and inclusion practices in their hybrid workplaces.

Their experience has inspired the duo to launch a community oral history project in Singapore, which aims to interview 60 senior Singaporeans to mark the Southeast Asian city-state's 60th founding anniversary in 2025.

For Tilani, a part of folklore will always be personal.

“As millennials get into their 30s and 40s, your parents get older and maybe you lose a loved one and then you realize that people aren't going to be there for you forever,” Tilani said. “I realized this when I got married two years ago, my wife never got to meet my father.”

“I can just show him pictures and little videos, and I'm pretty sure if I had a 30-minute conversation with my dad, he'd have a pretty good idea of ​​who he is.”