Our Story
Some words can't wait. And some arrive too late.
Last Word started at a restaurant. I was out to dinner with my wife Kim when a loud table nearby was ruining the evening. I turned to her and said, “I wish I had something I could give to the server to hand to them — something they wouldn't see until we were gone.”
That impulse — the need to say something you can't say in person — stuck with me. And as I thought about it more, it connected to something much deeper.
I'm a veteran. I lost my dad to cancer the day after I came home from my first deployment to Iraq. There were things I never got to say to him. Things I'll never hear him say to me. I've been in tears building this product, wishing it had existed before he died — so I could hear his voice one more time, get some of his advice, even if it was the same thing he'd said a hundred times before.
That's why Last Word exists. Not just for the funny anonymous notes at restaurants — though those matter too. But for the deployment letters a soldier leaves for their family. For the birthday message a grandfather records for a grandchild he may never meet. For the words that are too important to risk never saying.
The most important things we ever need to say shouldn't die with us.
— Timothy J Young, Founder & U.S. Military Veteran