We’d been working on LifeMemory for a lot longer than that, but the last two months were intense: polishing the pitch, improving the app, late nights redoing the same slides, messages back and forth at midnight. The same question circling back: are we actually building something that matters?

Then that evening at Startupfest, on stage, under the lights, hearing our name called.

LifeMemory had just won the cross-category Impact Prize at Cooperathon, one of the largest entrepreneurship innovation competitions in Canada. Over 1,100 participants, 180 teams. Dan and I looked at each other, barely believing it.

The Impact Prize recognizes solutions that create significant social, environmental, or economic change while remaining economically viable. That’s exactly what we set out to build with LifeMemory. Hearing it said out loud, in front of that room, does something to you.

On stage, we wore t-shirts we’d had printed for the occasion. They said Everybody dies, but dies was crossed out, with lives written just below. We didn’t want to lead with death. We wanted to lead with life. Every life matters, and that’s what we’re here to preserve.

That’s exactly what we came to present: an app that captures your stories, the way you tell them, your personality, and turns it into a book that sounds like you. Not just what happened to you. Who you are.

The jury could have recognized something else. The mechanics, the execution, the market. They recognized the impact: what a family gets back when the book arrives in their hands. A voice they keep hearing, long after.

That landed harder than any number or pitch-deck line could. We thought about our own families. My mother, in Florence. Dan’s notebook, written at night for his kids. It confirms what we’ve believed since the first coffee where we told each other our own stories: it’s not the performance that counts. It’s what stays.

The prize comes with a grant, which we’ll use to accelerate the next steps of development.

LifeMemory’s official launch is in September. The waitlist is open now for anyone who wants to follow the journey and be the first to know.

Thank you to the jury and the whole Cooperathon team for their support throughout this journey. That night, on that stage, we didn’t just win a prize. We felt someone else see what we’re trying to build.

Yann & Dan, co-founders of LifeMemory