About us

The family behind LifeLoom

LifeLoom wasn’t founded so much as it happened to our family. This is the story, told the way we’d want anyone’s story told: plainly, warmly, with the photos.

A 1970s studio portrait of two small children, a girl in a purple floral dress beside a younger boy in a denim shirt with a horse-print yoke. — Liane and Damien. The photo our mum kept.

It started with our parents

For years, the two of us said the same thing after family lunches: someone should really write down our parents’ stories. Theirs has been an adventurous life - Dad serving as a peacekeeper in Lebanon and Cambodia and flying with the army in Papua New Guinea, the two of them moving around the world as the job asked. There was never a shortage of stories. There was never a plan for keeping them, either.

A young man in army uniform and a beret sits in a dugout canoe on a wide brown river, smiling back over his shoulder, a thatched village on the far bank. — Our dad in his army days. His stories started all this.

A young man in dark military mess dress with a sash beside a young woman in a cream coat with a white fur-trimmed hood, both laughing. — Our mum and dad, early 1970s.

Then there was the practical problem. Our dad is a stroke survivor. Every memoir service we could find assumed the storyteller could type: question-a-week emails, written answers. None of it was built for someone like him.

An older man in a slouch hat with a Rising Sun badge, chin strap under his jaw, smiling directly at the camera against a dark background. — Our dad, now. He’s well into his own calls.

So Damien, who works in artificial intelligence, stopped meaning to and started building. His first call was to Liane. He knew this was exactly her kind of thing: something meaningful to do with your family, something that could make a real difference in other people’s lives. She was immediately on board. It’s fitting, looking back: LifeLoom began with a phone call.

What began as something for our own mum and dad became LifeLoom: a gentle service that phones a storyteller and simply talks with them about their life, then weaves the conversations into an heirloom book and a digital memoir their family keeps.

Our mum was one of the first storytellers. Her verdict after one call: “It feels like talking to a human, and it asks me really insightful questions.”

An older woman in a teal jumper and a bright striped scarf sits on a sofa laughing, a phone held to her ear and a cup of tea in her other hand. — Our mum, on one of her calls.

What we believe

The phone is enough.No app, no screen, nothing to type. If someone can answer a phone call, they can tell their story.

The family keeps everything.A printed heirloom book on the shelf, and a digital memoir the whole family can read, listen to and add photos to.

We’re honest about the AI.A warm, AI-guided voice makes the calls, and we say so on the phone as well as here. It listens, remembers what was shared last time, and asks the gentle follow-ups that draw a story out. We will never pretend it’s a person, and we never let it get in the way of the point: your mum or dad, on the phone, talking about their life.

Who we are

Damien builds LifeLoom on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, where he lives with his family.

Liane was the first phone call and the first believer: sounding board, tester, and the reason half the good ideas exist. She lives in the Southern Highlands, near our parents.

Our parents are in the Southern Highlands too. Their stories started all this, and their Living Memoirs are underway.

Damien and Liane together outdoors among pine trees, both smiling at the camera. — Liane and Damien, now.

The stories that matter most to us were always the ones down the hall and up the highway. Yours are the point of all this.

Read a sample Living Memoir See how it works

Ray is our sample storyteller, so that memoir is his rather than a real family’s. The shape of it is exactly what yours would be.