The Dad Tapes

For the moments you won't be there for.

Two minutes at a time, a father records what he'd say at the moments that are coming. The first heartbreak. The morning of the wedding. The night nobody can sleep. Each tape is sealed for its moment and opened when it comes. Not one day before.

Leave the first tape Press play on one

Two minutes. One moment. Your voice, kept.

Open when

A tape is one moment, said out loud.

You won't know the details. You don't need to. Speak to what's true about that moment for anyone, and say it the way only you would.

Two cassette cases on a wooden shelf in late light, labeled by hand: first heartbreak, and your wedding morning — Labeled by hand. Opened by him.

Nine of seventy. Scroll them.

Seventy moments, written as prompts, so you never sit in front of the camera wondering what to say. You answer the questions your kid will ask someday. You answer them now.

An old shoebox of worn cassette tapes on a bed, their labels scrawled and fading

Why this exists

Everything else gets left behind by accident.

There are thousands of videos on your phone and no one but you knows which ones matter. There's a voice memo you meant to send. There's the thing you'd say to your kid at eighteen, and you'll say it at eighteen, unless you can't.

Your phone has a setting for what happens to your photos. Your password manager has a page about it. Neither of them knows your son's wedding day or your daughter's first night in a new city. Nothing you own can wait for a moment.

The Dad Tapes can.

A box of tapes nobody labeled is just a box.

Press play

This is what one sounds like.

A sample tape, written for this page. Yours will be in your voice, with your kid's name in it.

00:00

Tape 05 · A regular Tuesday

Written, not recorded. Nothing here is a real person's tape.

How it works

Three parts. The third is the hard one.

A phone propped against a mug on a kitchen table at night, a cassette beside it

You record.

One prompt a week, by text. Prop the phone against a mug, talk for two minutes, done. We ask the questions your kid will ask someday, so you can answer them now. The videos already on your phone come in too.

A cream envelope sealed with red wax stamped K, an old brass key resting on it

You choose a Keeper.

A person you'd trust with the spare key. A sibling, a friend, a grandparent. Not an algorithm, and not necessarily next of kin. The Keeper holds a sealed copy and the rules, on paper, in a drawer.

It releases when it's time.

Every tape carries its moment: a date, an age, an event, or your absence. Absence is confirmed by your Keeper, a human who picks up the phone. Never guessed by a machine. Never a day early.

Promises

What we promise, in writing, from day one.

An open kraft box holding three cassette tapes, a USB drive, and a card that reads Year one, 47 tapes — Year one, in the mail.

Your tapes are yours.Download every one of them, any day, as plain files that play anywhere.
Nothing releases without a human.Silence is a reason to check on you. It is never, by itself, a trigger.
A physical copy, once a year.In the mail, with a printed index. Some things should exist off the internet.
If we disappear, your plan doesn't.Your Keeper holds what they need on paper. The tapes don't depend on us being alive either.
Not content. Letters.We never sell your tapes, scan them for ads, or train anything on them.
Chosen, not default.The law hands your life to next of kin. Here, you decide who holds the key.

Why I'm building this

I own three gyms in New Jersey and I'm a dad to a little boy. This year I started lying awake over a list. Who would run payroll. Who could get into the bank. What would happen to the thousands of videos on my phone. And underneath that list, the real one: what I'd want him to hear from me at the moments I might not be there for.

So I started recording. Two minutes at a time, on ordinary nights, for a kid who will one day be a grown man with a question only I could answer. Then I went looking for the thing that would keep those tapes safe for twenty years and hand each one to him at the right moment. It didn't exist.

I'm building it. If you carry the same list, I'd like to build it with you.

LeninFounder, The Dad Tapes

Questions

The ones people ask first.

Is this only for dads?

No. The name is where it started. Moms, grandparents, godparents, the uncle who shows up: record. The tapes don't check your title.

I'm healthy. Isn't this a little morbid?

You're healthy, which is exactly when to record. The tapes aren't about dying. They're about being there for a moment you can't predict, in the voice you have today. Many of them will be opened while you're alive, by a kid who wanted to hear what you sounded like back then.

Who can see my tapes?

No one, until the moment you set. Not the Keeper, not us. In the full version, tapes will be encrypted on your phone before they leave it. Until then, the only thing we hold is the email you give us below.

What will it cost?

We'll tell you before we charge you a dollar. The first hundred help set the price.

Where we are

We're early, and that's the point.

The first tapes are recorded. The first version is being built for one family. We'll open it to the first hundred people who want to leave something behind on purpose.

You're in. We'll write when there's something to open.

Until then, record one tonight. Two minutes. Say the date, say their name, and say the thing.