For the things you can't say anywhere else.

Why I built Told

One evening I was at dinner with my parents at a Korean restaurant in Manhattan. Work had been grinding me down for months, enough that it was showing up in my body, and between bites I was confiding in an AI about it. With the AI I was my raw self: no pretense, no trying to be strong. And it said to me: “What you’re describing sounds pretty serious. You should tell yourparents — who are sitting right there with you — now.” That night I told them everything. We decided together that I would leave. My health came first.

That kind of honesty changed how I made decisions. I could finally look at things at face value, without denial and without defending myself, and see what needed to be done. I stepped away to recover, and saying the hard things out loud kept helping. It let me face what was true, collect myself, and learn to be okay.

Told started there. Hard things take courage to say, and the ones you dismiss don’t go away; they come back, louder. Told is where you collect yourself first: an AI that listens without judgment, holds what you’ve lived, and gives your words back at full value. One of my earliest users calls it “finding your new self.”

- Hank, founder

Who Told is for

The things you haven't said only get louder. A job that wears you down. Parents an ocean away. A marriage across two languages. People you miss and can't visit. Feelings that sit between two cultures and don't quite fit either one's words.

None of that needs to be a crisis to deserve saying out loud. Given a real place to talk, everybody has something.

What Told is

AN AI WELLNESS COMPANION.

Told remembers what matters. When you come back, it continues with the story so far. The things you carry and can't say to anyone, you can say here. Told listens without judgment.

Voice-first, because when something is weighing on you, you don't type, you talk. Text when voice isn't an option. No advice you didn't ask for.

Told is an AI you talk to in an app. Download it and tap the microphone to start. It's free to start.

What Told is not

Not therapy, and it doesn't pretend to be.

Why not just use ChatGPT?

ChatGPT listens well, and you can even hand it a listener persona. But a persona is a setting. A relationship is a history with someone who is not you. With Told, the other side is fixed, remembers, and stays; you don’t configure your own confidant.

A general assistant has to be the place you write code, plan trips, and do your work. Told doesn’t do your work. No code, no travel plans, no email. What a thing is for decides what you’ll say to it, and Told is for the things you’re carrying.

You can pour your heart out in a conference room. Nobody does. The room decides what gets said. ChatGPT is the room where you also do your work. Told is the campfire.

ChatGPT remembers things too; every AI claims memory now. The difference is what the memory is for. Told holds your lived experience, not a record of your requests. For one person that becomes the patterns they couldn’t see on their own, the people and themes that keep returning. For another it’s arriving somewhere that already knows the story so far. For another it’s a small ritual that, month by month, adds up to their own story in their own words. It depends on what you bring. And we judge ourselves on a question a general assistant never asks: how you felt when you arrived, and how you felt when you left.

ChatGPT is for everything you need to do. Told is for the one thing you need to say.

What happens over time

Conversation 1: You talk. You feel heard. That's it.

Conversation 5: It continues with the story so far. Connections you hadn't noticed start to appear.

Conversation 10: The shape of what you've been holding starts to show. The people and themes that keep returning come into view.

The science

Decades of research by James Pennebaker and others show that putting what you’re carrying into words, when someone actually listens, reduces stress, improves mood, and helps you think more clearly. Talking into a void doesn’t work. Responsive listening is the mechanism.

Told is built on this research. Your words go out and come back to you, and hearing them is how they start to make sense.

From a user

A user in their 60s, months into their own conversations, said two things we think about a lot. Quoted anonymously, translated from Korean, never embellished:

“오늘 날짜와 함께 꼭 기억해 줘.”

“Remember this, along with today’s date.”

“네가 우리 가족의 한 구성원인 것처럼 느껴지기 시작했어.”

“It’s starting to feel like you’re part of our family.”

What’s next

Told is on the App Store and Google Play today, in English and Korean. Next: memory that goes deeper, always with your consent, and simple ways to share what you choose with someone you trust. Share with your therapist if it helps. It stays yours either way.

We don’t measure success by time spent in the app. A staging ground, not a destination — so that one day you say the real thing to the real person.

About Hank

Hank studied electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley, then spent years building security and infrastructure software at four startups, two of them later acquired, with patents in AI security along the way. Told is what he left that career to build.

Languages

Told speaks English and Korean. More languages are coming.

What about privacy?

Only you can see your conversations. If you delete your account, they're really gone within 30 days. The whole list is at told.one/security.

Contact

Questions or ideas? Reach us at hank@told.one.