Since receiving their $1,000 grant in February by winning the CESJDS Sharon and Jacob Benus (z”l) Social Entrepreneurship Program’s mini “Shark Tank” style competition. Golden Memoir, formerly known as Story Bridge, has been working to expand their business and assert themselves as a competitive member of their industry of biographies of older people.
Golden Memoir’s team of juniors Leo Steindecker, Coby Schlactus and Daniel Jacobson and senior Yedidyah Milner-Gillers participated in the Social Entrepreneurship Program earlier this year. Their product uses an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system that writes memoirs based on interviews with older family members and they are using their new money to invest in their product.
Golden Memoir has already spent some of the grant money on ways for their company to be more efficient and for them to increase their presence in the industry. For example, they bought a domain name under goldenmemoirs.ai that can be used to request their interview service and contact the leaders of the company.
One of their priorities has been increasing sales and gaining recognition, according to Steindecker. They plan to achieve this through innovating their field with more advanced AI systems and programs that are not feasible to implement until they have a set stream of money.
“We’re just working on more interviews, more business, making sure we know how we want it to work [and] making sure we can kind of beat down the system,” Schlactus said. “We need to understand how long different parts will take and make it more organized so we’re able to scale it.”
Even after the Social Entrepreneurship Program concluded, the school has remained an active role in guiding the students. Assistant Athletic Director and Social Entrepreneurship Coordinator Matthew Landy and entrepreneur Henrik Scheel, the sponsor of the program and one of their mentors, are still providing advice, though the students have final say in all decisions.
“I’ve told them that if they have any questions or concerns or anything with continuing to grow their brand or anything related to that, please come to me or Henrik,” Landy said. “But that is entirely up to them and their decision as a group …I’ve tried to make myself as available as possible to them, to assist them in anything.”
It has often been hard for the Golden Memoir team to dedicate time to the business as school takes up a lot of their time, according to Steindecker. They have made six sales so far, mostly to family members and are trying to find ways to expand their business without taking up too much of their time during a busy Junior year.
One of these products is a new premium AI service that can help Golden Memoir’s transcripts and final product be as clear and thorough as possible. Additionally, after many prototypes, the company realized that they needed a formatting client that lets them arrange their pages in a way that is suitable for printing.
“We have also bought a service called Atticus, which allows us to format, so once we have the biography, like all the pictures,” Steindecker said. “It’s like a formatting tool that allows us to easily format it. It does most of the formatting for us.”
Schlactus said that, above all, the most important thing for the company is helping people and learning from this opportunity. He said the whole group has learned a lot about business since beginning this program.
“I thought the whole opportunity in [the] entrepreneurship program is really awesome and new and I’m happy JDS branched out and created that because I think it’s very beneficial and I’m glad it’s gonna be continued,” Schlactus said.
