It started with a question. “Where am I going to put this?”

Followed by a worry: “I can’t lose it.”

All I knew was, if I did lose it, I'd be devastated. And here’s the rub. I knew my chances of success over the long run were low.

The “it” was a simple voicemail, a lowly audio file. The precious sound of my grandmother singing happy birthday to me. And as it turned out, that audio was the only recording of her voice that any one in my extended family had. It was as valuable as a jewel – to me.

We commonly think of cloud storage as a good thing. The more the better. It’s cheap and simple and provides us with a way to store our digital lives. The thought goes that if you save something to the cloud, then it’s safe. It’s backed up and will be easy to find later.

When personal cloud storage came on to the scene 15 years ago, that was probably true. It was a simple proposition. Just store it here. But at some point over the years, cloud storage went from being useful to being stressful clutter. The dumping ground for our digital lives.

And to be honest, I don't trust placing Grandma’s recording in my cloud, because my cloud is a mess. It's a mish mash of unorganized photos, videos, documents, screenshots, and other odds and ends scattered across various services and accounts.

I had a sinking feeling Grandma’s voice would get lost in there.

Cynically, I'm convinced that Google, Apple, and Dropbox like it this way, because the more messy my cloud becomes, the more I have to pay them for storage. Analysts predict that personal cloud storage will grow from $23B today to $139B in the next 7 years. That statistic proves my point. Messy pays big.

Here’s our thesis. The cloud storage market is fundamentally broken, and if we don’t fix it, millions of people are going to lose the very things they hope most to preserve.

We created Graceful because we believe there needs to be a new paradigm for personal storage. Not one based on a 60-year-old system of folders, but a whole new take. We found inspiration in the productivity apps that have revolutionized our work lives, such as Slack, Discord, Notion, and Figma. We asked ourselves, "What if we harnessed some of their organizational principles and applied them to consumer cloud?" The possibilities were exciting, and it spurred us to innovate in new directions.

The result: we baked a sense of collaboration into Graceful’s DNA because the best organizing happens together. We created roles and permissions because we know not everyone wants the same responsibility. We built in engagement and notifications because it should be fun and exciting. And we built Graceful as "All-in-One" because this isn't just about photos or videos. It’s about curating and storing anything and any file that’s important to you.

So when a family member asks: “Where's Grandma’s voice recording?” The answer will be, “It’s in Graceful.”

When they ask: “Where's the secret recipe?” Graceful.

“Where's the will?"

"Where’s the insurance policy?"

"Where are the photos of that family trip?"

"Where’s the email that Dad sent with story of his life?”

The answer is and always will be: "It’s in Graceful."

This is the future of organized storage – made easy.

Welcome to Graceful. Your family’s all-in-one knowledge hub.

Greg Rogers
Co-Founder and CEO

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