Investors include venture capital firm North Base Media, led by Marcus Brauchli; American Public Media; Jonathan Alter; Dick Costolo; Julius Genachowski; Gary Ginsberg; Larry Hackett; Jon Miller; and Lauren Zalaznick
Founded by Journalist & Digital Content Trailblazer Steven Waldman, LifePosts Provides Simple Collaborative Storytelling and Sharing Tools to Enduringly Commemorate People and Events in Our Lives
Launch Partnerships include Huffington Post, American Public Media and Dodge Foundation
VIDEO: https://explore.lifeposts.com/about-lifeposts/
New York, June 22, 2016 — LifePosts, a new platform that empowers people to create, share, and preserve tributes and commemorate milestones for loved ones, announced today that it has raised $1.2 million in seed-round funding.
LifePosts is founded by serial entrepreneur, respected journalist and best-selling author Steven Waldman. Investors include North Base Media, led by Marcus Brauchli, the former Executive Editor of the Washington Post and Managing Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Lauren Zalaznick, a long-time media executive who has shaped some of the strongest brands in television and digital media, is a lead investor and Senior Advisor to LifePosts. Additional investors participating in the angel financing round include Dick Costolo, former CEO of Twitter; Jonathan Alter, author and journalist; American Public Media, producers of A Prairie Home Companion and Marketplace; Julius Genachowski, Managing Director of the Carlyle Group and former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission; Gary Ginsberg, Executive Vice President of Time Warner; Larry Hackett, former editor of People Magazine; and Jon Miller, partner at Advancit Capital and former head of digital at News Corp.
LifePosts also announced its first three media partnerships with Huffington Post, American Public Media and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. Huffington Post and American Public Media both used LifePosts “tribute wall” tool for Mothers Day, Fathers Day and Memorial Day. The Dodge Foundation is underwriting an effort to provide the tools to local news sites.
“LifePosts will ensure that every person’s life story can be beautifully told, vividly celebrated and permanently preserved for future generations, which is what local newspapers once tried to do and existing social media should do but doesn’t,” said LifePosts Founder and CEO Steven Waldman. “The stellar group of investors and strategic partners demonstrates an unfailing belief in the power of human storytelling in the digital age, and I am thrilled to have so many excellent partners with us at launch.”
“When someone with Steve’s track record develops an idea, you listen,” said Marcus Brauchli, co-founder of North Base Media and the former editor of both The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. “When we saw what he’d built and understood the vision behind it, we were quickly convinced of its potential. LifePosts addresses important emotional and social needs— the way we celebrate, honor and remember lives and the milestones that define them.”
“In an era in which many of our experiences are fleeting, LifePosts gives everyone the ability to permanently memorialize their loved ones,” said Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor-in Chief of The Huffington Post. “LifePosts’ tools helped my sister and me capture our mother’s wonder and wisdom, and it’s been truly heartwarming for me to see people honoring their family members using LifePosts on The Huffington Post.”
“Every person deserves to have their story told — and the stories of regular people’s lives are often the most inspiring. That’s been a real commitment for APM for years, so we’re thrilled to be working closely with LifePost to help families capture these stories. LifePosts is a breakthrough in collaborative storytelling,” said Jon McTaggart, President of American Public Media.
(Waldman’s opening essay explains the origins of the idea: https://www.lifeposts.com/p/milestone/157/lifeposts-birth/lifestory/ )
How LifePosts Works
LifePosts rests on four pillars that guide the user experience on the platform:
Create: LifePosts’ design tools make it easy for users to create tributes for any event or loved one in their lives, with the choice of their own or a pre-set milestone.
Collaborate: Users can designate trusted Co-Creators, such as family or friends, to build and contribute stories, photos, and videos for a LifePost together. The LifePosts platform is fully integrated with Facebook.
Share: Users can share their creation on social media accessible from the LifePosts platform.
Preserve: To ensure future generations can access public LifePosts, users can permanently preserve each tribute through the Internet Archive at no cost.
Milestones can include memorials (people or pets) as well as a wide range of celebrations, including births, weddings, anniversaries, graduations, retirements or any other significant moments.
LifePosts’ collaborative, interactive storytelling tools are crafted to make the process easy for people who are not professional writers or particularly tech-savvy.
LifeQs (Life Questions) offers a unique question-and-answer prompt system that turns simple comments from users into a compelling portrait of a person or event.
LifeTimeline breaks the process down into moments that can capture the details and progressions of a lifetime, or just the story of “a year in the life.”
LifeStory is a flexible article template, appropriate either for a short announcement or a long story.
In all cases, users can use a mix of text, photos, video, audio, documents and social media embeds (such as Tweets).
The LifePosts platform is borne out of Waldman’s rich perspective as a reporter, editor, digital media entrepreneur, and Senior Advisor to the Chairman at the FCC. In 1999, Waldman founded the “Web 1.0” platform Beliefnet.com, which pioneered many early approaches to creating high quality web content, including tapping into the incredible stories of its readers. After successfully selling Beliefnet and integrating it into its new parent company News Corp, Waldman became an expert on the transformation of the American news business and authored a landmark study for President Obama’s Federal Communications Commission about the changing media landscape in a broadband age. NPR called the report “one of the most comprehensive overviews of the US media ever produced.”
The Rest of the LifePosts Team
Waldman brought together an accomplished group of digital journalists, designers, and engineers to LifePosts.
Ju-Don Roberts, the COO, is the former managing editor of washingtonpost.com who led Montclair State University’s Center for Cooperative Media and has helped lead EverydayHealth.com, Beliefnet.com, J-Lab, the Online News Association, and the Poynter Foundation.
Ned Berke founded Sheepshead Bites and Bensonhurst Bean, award-winning local news sites in Brooklyn. He then served as Senior Editor and Associate Publisher at Corner Media after that company acquired his publications and was a founding board member of the Local Independent Online News Publishers association.
Aamir Rind, the Tech Lead, is a full-stack web application engineer, specializing in Python and Django. He has built applications for several startups, including Pipl.com and SlateUp.com.
For More Information
lifeposts.com / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram
Media Contacts
Stu Loeser – stu@stuloeser.com – (212) 858-9400
Khan Shoieb – khan@stuloeser.com – (212) 858-9400