It's always good to see someone take a big swing and try something new, but I'd love to hear the VC case for this service. I have trouble believing that 1) many people will want this 2) churn rate won't be murderous.
Thus far (and, admittedly, it's early days), we are growing organically. When people are interview guests for an Artifact or listen to Artifacts involving, friends, family, or colleagues, they are becoming customers.
In this way, people are telling us that they can see a "constellation" of Artifacts around them and the people in their lives — and that they'll add to it over time. So, we might do an annual Artifact interview with your child from age 9 to 18, capturing their voice and their thoughts, and then you might sit for an Artifact with colleagues as a send off before leaving for a job, capturing that work together. You also might use Artifact to capture family heritage - with parents, aunts/uncles, and grandparents, and do so incrementally over time, etc.
So yeah, early days but this is what we are seeing. We'll be keeping our heads down, focused on providing quality service day in and day out.
I'll also say that (and this is off in the future), that we hope to bring this per episode price point down as we streamline ops. We really want our service to be accessible to all. Not there yet.
I also like to think about podcasting as the "modern" medium for oral history and story creation. At its core, we think about Artifact as a service that makes it easier to go deep - and it just so happens that this podcast interview setting seems to be a good way to do that.
If a "VC case" ends up supporting that goal, great. If not, so be it.
All that is both pretty straightforward and fun. If I hire Artifact to do this for several hundred dollars, I've essentially paid someone else to have the fun.
I may be an outlier but this inspires me to do something, not to buy something.
Will they necessarily talk to you, based on the relationship with your mother? Outsiders can often get info from people they wouldn't share with family members.
> All that is both pretty straightforward and fun.
Not for most people, and not with any reasonable assurance you'll get something 'good' at the end. Even scheduling time between multiple people can be a deal breaker. The OP had posted there never felt like a 'good time' to do it.
Asking good questions, prompting people who aren't great (nerves, whatever) can all add a lot of stress to the process.
I think you're probably a bit of an outlier. If it works for you, great, but... I know far more people that want the end result of something like this than have the time to do it.
I really appreciate.
I think it is a great idea for a product to be spec'ed into family lore :)
Your feedback is making me think that we're not doing a great job of making clear the importance of the role of the professional interviewer in what we create for our customers.
Separate from the important logistical aspects of our service that other contributors mention on the thread, our customers continue to share with us that the role of the professional interviewer is just really important.
This space that gets created between professional interviewer and guest makes it possible for the guest to go beyond that first question about, say, the relationship between two people, and get much deeper into particular periods in each others lives when that relationship has really mattered, and also sharing makes sharing lighter moments a lot of fun.
I'll just say that the art and skill of the follow up question is real.
I'd also say that if reading a bit about what we are up to inspires you to interview your mother's closest friends about her and their relationships, that means a lot to me and please go for it. Also, let us know how we can help!
Feel free to email me with any questions you might have as to how to best set things up: contact@heyartifact.com