Minha Historia
Turn your parents' voice into a memoir book via WhatsApp
I built a service that turns your parents' voice into a hardcover book via WhatsApp
My mother is 72. One day I realized I could picture her face clearly, but I couldn't remember exactly how she tells a story. The pauses, the laugh, the way she says "you know what your father did that day..."
That's when I understood: voice is the first thing we lose when someone is gone.
So I built Minha Historia. Here's how it works:
1. We send one question per week via WhatsApp (the app your parents already use)
2. They answer with a voice note, like they would with family
3. We transcribe, edit, and turn 36 answers into a hardcover memoir book
4. Every chapter has a QR code that plays the original voice recording
Price: 99€ one-time (Portugal) / 114€ (diaspora). No subscription, no app to install.
The hardest part wasn't the tech (Shopify + WhatsApp Business API + OpenAI + Make.com). It was making it simple enough that a 78-year-old grandmother in a small Portuguese village could use it without help.
Stack: Shopify, WhatsApp Business Cloud API, Make.com, OpenAI, Brevo, Cloudflare R2, Airtable, Lulu.com for printing.
Currently paused while I focus on another project, but the system is live and working. Would love feedback, especially from anyone who's thought about preserving family stories.
1 Comment
What stayed with me isn't the book—it's that you're preserving a person's voice, not just their memories.
That's an important distinction. People can write stories themselves. What they can't recreate later is how those stories were told. That emotional difference feels like the real product.