By Thomas A. Parmalee
Charlie Greene lost his father, Donald Freeman Greene, at 10 years old, when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field near a reclaimed coal strip mine in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 11, 2001.
“He was traveling from the Tri-State area to San Francisco to go on a hiking trip with his brothers,” said Greene, now 34.
For Greene’s father, it was meant to be a well-deserved break from his job as executive vice president and chief financial officer of Safe Flight Instrument Corporation, which manufactured aircraft safety systems and has since been acquired by The Loar Group. A licensed pilot by the age of 14 who had a passion for flying, one can only speculate that the elder Greene may have sensed something was seriously wrong on that flight before his fellow travelers – and if you enter his name on Google, you’ll find numerous theories that suggest if the heroes who died had regained control of the aircraft, they knew exactly who could land it safely.
His son thinks it makes sense.
“My dad was the only person on that plane other than the professional pilots who had a pilot’s license,” he said. “Yes, I feel entirely confident that if given the opportunity, he could have successfully landed that plane.”
Fifteen years later – when Greene was in his mid-20s, his mother, Claudette, was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer.
There were so many questions he had never asked his dad, and he began to think that he may lose his mom, too.
“So, I Googled ‘questions to ask a parent before they die,’” he said.
In academic terms, he began to conduct what would be called an oral history interview with his mom.
“My perception was I would get a lot of stories recorded of when I was growing up,” he said.
Over the course of multiple interviews, however, she shared things he’d never heard before.
“And I wondered, ‘Why did it take my mom getting cancer to learn all this?’” he said.
He also asked another question: Could he help others capture and preserve the memories and stories of people they love while they are still alive?
The seeds of what would ultimately be Remento, which offers individuals the chance to record memories that are then turned into a hardcover, keepsake book, had already been planted.
Looking Back
Other seeds pertaining to memory, loss and the legacies of our loved ones had been sown years earlier, and they had been growing in Greene since he became a boy who should never have lost his dad.
“I grew up with parents who were freakishly in love with the camcorder,” Greene said. “They had one of the first ones you could hold in your hand … and they filmed an outrageous amount of my childhood.”
A few years after his father died, he digitized the family’s content, after a museum that wanted to learn who Donald Freeman Greene was as a person reached out to the family.
As he looked at videos and photos, what surprised him even as a young teenager was that it was not the “milestone moments” that stood out and brought him to tears.
Rather, it was the footage of his dad “just being a guy,” including a video of him holding Greene as a baby in his arms for the first time and munching on a bagel at the family breakfast table.
“I saw him in a way I had never seen before,” Greene said.
Long-form video, he found, was a critical way to way of “keeping him alive.”
The Birth of Remento
Eventually, all the ideas that were simmering in Greene’s head surrounding legacy, memory and family gave rise to Remento.
The name combines “re-” and “memento,” emphasizing the idea of revisiting and preserving memories through storytelling.
But you’d be wrong if you assumed that was all he was focusing on.
Either before or in the early stages of starting the company, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Brown University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
He also held a variety of media and storytelling roles, including as a speechwriter in the Obama Administration and as public affairs director at 21st Century Fox.
He also was a consultant with Burson-Marsteller’s crisis communications team and held multiple roles at NBC News.
From his resume, it’s clear he could have followed his heart down any number of paths and been successful, but he chose to focus on Remento, eventually pitching his idea on Shark Tank in a bid to raise money to sharpen the company’s focus and turbocharge growth.
The “sharks” were visibly moved by his story and thrilled to learn that his mother is in full remission from her cancer, but they did express concern about the substantial amount of money he’d already raised and mostly spent: $4 million, split between three institutional investors and 10 angel investors.
On the show, however, Greene noted that other than seeking an additional investment from a “shark,” he didn’t foresee having to raise more money.
The judges were pleased that Remento was on the verge of profitability: When Greene appeared on the show (which aired March 7, 2025), he projected $1.5 million in 2024 sales and $4.6 million in 2025 sales.
Mark Cuban, a self-made billionaire entrepreneur who built and sold Broadcast.com and owns the Dallas Mavericks, offered Greene $300,000 for a 10% stake in the company, which Greene accepted.
Appearing on Shark Tank and having the chance to work with Cuban were huge wins, Greene said.
“Going on Shark Tank dream of a lifetime,” he said. “Every entrepreneur spends time watching the show – and it was an incredible opportunity to share the why behind our company.”
While Remento went through a couple different iterations before landing on its current model, no one has suggested that what it’s trying to do – help families get to know their loved ones and empower those who want to take control of their legacies – is trivial or unimportant.
The first version of the product, however, which was created in six weeks, is much different than what it looks like today.
The hard work entailed coaching someone over 80 to record their voice.
“The most minimal version of product was not set up for success,” Greene said. “We needed to meet people where they are and coach them through the process of sharing their story.”
Cuban understood the value of Remento immediately.
“He had already gone through the process of digitizing his dad’s stories,” Greene said, noting the billionaire ponied up a significant sum to do so.
“He saw something that had previously only been accessible to the rich and famous – something that could be put into hands of all of us,” Greene said.
Cuban, institutional investors and angel investors are not the only ones who have played a critical role on Remento’s journey.
Greene has also leaned on his co-founder every step of the way: Alexandre Massonneau serves as the company’s chief technology officer, overseeing all technical aspects of the product.
“The two of us met through one of my business school classmates, and he has been my right-hand in shaping every part of the customer experience,” Greene said. “At Remento, we’re always focused on building a safe, durable, and scalable infrastructure – and doing so in a way that leverages the most cutting-edge technology to make the experience as easy as possible.”
Aligning with Funeral Homes and Other Strategic Partners
As soon as Greene appeared on Shark Tank, potential partners began reaching out to him, he said.
“The outreach was coming from life insurance carriers and agencies, from financial planners, estate planners, and doctors that spend time thinking about medical directives and people in the preneed funeral space,” he said.
He learned that preplanning does not strictly revolve around arranging the logistics of what happens when you die.
“It is about giving family the gift to grieve when you pass without the distraction of thinking about 5,000 questions that will come up in a seven-day period,” he said. “It is about taking control of how you want to be memorialized as a gift to family.”
But he points out, someone preplanning should think about other things, too, such as how they want to be remembered.
“We started to think about what if Remento were able to partner in a preneed context … offering the ability of taking control of how you want to be remembered,” Greene said.
While Remento has teamed up with a direct cremation company, the company’s experience in working with deathcare professionals, so far, is limited – but that’s something Greene is eager to change.
He’s excited about working with funeral home owners who want to include Remento in a package to differentiate their service from others or as an option that families prearranging could pay for on their own.
Beyond helping individuals determine how they want to be remembered and forging stronger family bonds, Remento has achieved something special on a macro-scale: It’s created a repository of more than 1 million stories that have been recorded via audio or video. “It’s the largest such repository of people over age 50,” Greene said.
Inside Remento’s Storytelling Platform
Remento aims to make it “delightfully easy” for individuals to document their stories for future generations and for those they love.
The base price is $99 for a year of service, which includes a credit for a hardcover book that normally costs $69.
The average order, however, is $119, as many customers opt for add-ons, Greene said on Shark Tank.
Think of the product as a digital subscription that includes a physical element: a hardcover book printed in color on thick paper that captures someone’s story.
The way it works is simple.
“For instance, you may log in and set up your mom … mom gets an email that says, ‘Congratulations … your questions will arrive next Wednesday,’” Greene said.
She may opt for a question every other day, once a week or some other interval. They arrive via text message with a link, and when she clicks on it, she records her answer to the question. There is always the option to redo and resubmit an answer.
“Then you’re done,” Greene said, noting that the person speaks into a smartphone, tablet or computer. Their responses are packaged into the hardcover, keepsake book.
“What most people tell us they want in the book are the exact words that come out of storyteller’s mouth,” Greene said. “Then, they look at the transcript, and it’s so difficult to actually read.”
As a result, there are different modes for a book, including publishing someone’s exact words or a “clean” version that corrects grammar, punctuation and various errors. Books can be published in the first or third person, so it seems as if a professional biographer has written the book.
View a quick video of how it works here: How Remento Works: Preserve Family Memories Using Only Your Voice | 4-Minute Product Overview
While Remento has mostly been sold on a direct-to-consumer basis, the company also wants to work with strategic partners, such as funeral homes, senior living communities, hospice care organizations, elder law attorneys and others aligned with the preplanning and end-of-life space, Greene said.
Remento aims to give individuals the opportunity to share their stories “in a way that does not seem like an isolating homework assignment,” Greene said.
Individuals can choose from hundreds of questions – and if a family member buys Remento as a gift, they can ask their loved one to respond to specific prompts.
“The questions were all developed by our scientific advisory board — which includes specialists studying Alzheimer’s and storytellers,” Greene said. “We are also investing in technology to learn how we tell stories and to ask follow-up questions … the best question you can ever ask is the follow-up question. And the second-best question to a follow-up question is to have someone respond to a photo and ask them, ‘What is happening in this photo?’”
One of the most popular questions is: “What was your favorite room in your childhood home?”
“It does not feel overwhelming or intimidating,” Greene said.
Another question he loves is, “How did you get to school as a child?”
The key is to pose the questions in a way that’s not scary – and allowing people to respond by talking.
“For the vast majority of us, writing is something we do not feel comfortable with, or we are perfectionists,” Greene said.
While no writing is required, if someone answers the questions, it will still result in a hardcover book for the family. Each chapter has a QR code at the top, which can be scanned to hear the audio file or watch the video of their loved one responding to that chapter’s question.
“We’ve created a tangible version of someone’s legacy you can hold in your hands,” Greene said.
Two Moments
In reflecting on what he’s learned about his mom as he’s conducted his research, two “moments” stand out to Greene.
One revolves around a photo on display at his home growing up, showing his mom as a little girl sitting on Santa’s lap.
“I realized she did not have any other pictures of her without other family members other than that one that she had hung up … and I asked her why she liked it so much,” he said.
He never expected her response.
The person who had taken the picture was a killer, Greene said.
His mom went on to tell him a story about John Vollman, a former neighbor who had put the community through “an incredibly dark experience.”
“I wondered, ‘How on earth had I never had that conversation with my mom?’” he said. (View the picture and hear his mom talk about the story here.)
The second “moment” encompassed the process of collecting and sharing videos with loved ones, which spurred them to share additional memories, creating a “collective journey” he said.
In starting Remento, Greene’s goal was not so much to create a business but rather to replicate the value he realized when he heard so many great stories from his mom, he said.
“What I was doing with my mom was just talking to her,” he said. “I was using the cancer as a catalyst for having that conversation, but it did not in any way feel like an assignment.”
That was in 2017 when he was in pre-graduate school – it wasn’t until January 2021 when he incorporated Remento.
“I took a while for the idea to marinate,” he said.
Tying Preneed and At-Need Together
Remento is a simple idea and does not cost much to include in a package or for families to buy … but that doesn’t mean it can’t have a meaningful impact on a funeral home’s bottom line or on the customer experience.
As Greene sees it, a funeral home stands to enjoy tremendous benefits if it can encourage someone who has preplanned to capture memories and stories, as those can play a critical role in a funeral or celebration of life when a preneed becomes what the profession calls “at need.”
As an example, Greene shared the story of a gentleman who received Remento as a gift three months before dying.
While he only recorded seven stories on the Remento platform, each one became cornerstones of his memorial service.
“With Remento, it’s not only about creating a keepsake book product,” Greene said. “We want to redefine what memorialization looks like by bringing their voice into the process. Our bet is this would be compelling for families navigating grief.”
In other words, Greene doesn’t view the stories collected via Remento to be only of value to families – the stories could also provide funeral homes with the insights they need to craft creative funeral and memorial services.
“I get excited about using our product as a way to change the conversation of preneed to begin with … moving beyond thinking of it simply as how a funeral and cremation will be taken care of,” Greene said.
He wants to align with companies and funeral homes that look at preneed on a broader level – one that revolves around legacy.
“We want to be in the business of expanding our thinking about preneed,” Greene said.
That thinking, he said, should involve legacy, which is something he thinks about more than ever now that he’s taken on a job title even more important than co-founder and CEO: Dad.
“My daughter Sloane turns two in May,” he said. “Being her dad has been the greatest joy of my life, and it’s also given me a completely different perspective on time. You realize how quickly moments pass – how the way she says certain words, the way she laughs, the way she runs to the door when I come home – all of it is fleeting.”
It’s made him wonder what she’ll remember.
“Not just what I did, but who I was,” he said. “The sound of my voice. What I believed. What mattered to me. My hope is that I’ll live long into her adult years and have plenty of time to impart my values onto her. And if I’m not, well at least she’ll have my own Remento book.”
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