LifeTech | My Life Capsule | Pam Moorhouse

Pam Moorhouse was born in the small town of Gumeracha, in the Adelaide Hills. Her mum was a General Practitioner, and a trailblazer of her time championing education for women. Her Dad was an academic in Australia and Canada which saw Pam move homes several times. Most of her primary school years were spent living on a hobby farm in rural Victoria. And, at 15, she left home to attend boarding school in Melbourne.

 Growing up Pam always wanted to be a pilot. She took her first solo aircraft flight at just 15 years of age; before she could even drive a car. She still loves to fly and intends to return to the skies as a hobby one day, after she has raised her two amazing little people; and has exhausted her energy and passion for solving big problems through entrepreneurship - if that time ever comes. Her entrepreneurial passion is today focused on her business My Life Capsule - helping people solve the problem of capturing and safely storing important life documents, so they can be easily accessed when they are needed - anywhere, anytime!

 We are privileged to share some of Pam’s journey.

Pam Moorhouse, Founder & CEO My Life Capsule helping people “Get it Together”

 What gave you the idea for My Life Capsule?

When my Father-in-law Kevin died, we had just seven days to notify his friends, find his critical information and piece together his life story before his funeral. It was a devastating time made worse because Kev hadn’t had an opportunity to easily share his critical information, documentation or life memories with his family.

This event made me consider the day-to-day and time-critical events that happen in my own life as an adult, a wife, a mum, a daughter and a business owner. When I looked at the problem from a cross-generational perspective, I realised each generation has its own life stage needs that are not being met in our modern society.

Our lives are so busy that we’ve traded face to face communication with short digital exchanges, and we are short changing ourselves in the process. I set out to develop a modern-day solution, a digital tool, to empower family connection and organisation across multiple generations. 

Any key stats, data, reports, research you can provide to give flavour to the opportunity/problem?

In 1967, two psychologists, Holmes and Rahe, developed a stress scale. They identified 43 significant life events that may affect every human life. These events may be positive or negative experiences such as; marriage, divorce, death of a loved one, pregnancy, a new job or finishing school.

These 43 events have four things in common - emotion, logistics, paperwork and a strong correlation to personal stress. In 53 years, the likelihood of every one of us experiencing at least the majority of these significant life events has not changed. Unfortunately, neither has the way we deal with or prepare for these events.

The 43 life events are not restricted to any one country, race, gender or religion; as such a solution which assists humanity in preparing for and addressing these events is a global opportunity.

What does My Life Capsule do? Who is the solution for? What problem does it solve?

My Life Capsule empowers family connection and organisation with secure digital life vaults that enable individuals and families to capture important documents, data and memories; relieving day-to-day and time-critical administration; privately, securely and centrally.

Capsule holders connect and share individual items with family, friends and trusted service providers, using bank-level digital security vaults and world-class customised sharing and consent protocols. My Life Capsule connects families across multiple generations and helps manage emotional and logistical requirements at every stage of life.

 Adults - Capture milestone moments, organise day-to-day and time-critical information, documentation and data; such as a passport, travel itinerary, medical prescription or power of attorney. They connect and share with family, friends and trusted providers. For this generation, digital products are part of everyday life; however, ease of use, integrity, privacy and security of our digital information has become increasingly important.

Children - Busy parents can easily record and organise their child's health and immunisations records, artwork, activities, school photos and reports, photos and videos of milestone moments; to be shared privately with their inner circle. Children’s capsules can be developed over years and gifted to a child on a milestone birthday, like handing over the baton to continue their adventure, armed with lessons and critical information of their childhood.

Elders and Grandparents - Organise and share critical information with their family and trusted providers; while planning for the future and capturing precious life memories to relive and share with loved ones at their discretion.

For businesses, such as Insurers, Financial Services and Corporate Enterprises, My Life Capsule enables an unprecedented level of scalable client engagement. Consumers with an emotional connection to a brand have a 306% higher lifetime value, for professional services and corporations My Life Capsule presents an opportunity to offer a value-add service to fosters brand loyalty, humanises customer relationships and extends market reach.

What is unique about My Life Capsule?

My Life Capsule empowers not only documentation and data storage for logistical reasons but also embraces humankind's instinctive and intuitive need for emotional connection at every age and stage of life. While we all like to share our favourite life moments, free social media sites, such as Facebook & Instagram, use our data to make us the product. I am delighted to be just one entrepreneur who is disrupting the social media age of reading, mining and selling personal data.

A user-first approach leads My Life Capsule with privacy-by-design & security-by-design principles whereby the user has 100% control over who sees their data, when and for how long. Thanks to our Internationally recognised and award-winning security and privacy decentralised architecture even we can’t see a users capsule content without their explicit consent. The user is in total control, and this is something that has only become technically possible in recent years.

 For Channel Partners, our sophisticated security architecture helps businesses meet the consent requirements of the increasingly relevant Global Data Protection regulations, including GDPR, Open Banking, P2D2 and Australia’s CDR.

Where do you see your proposition in ten years?

As a highly scalable Software as a Service provider, My Life Capsule has a bold global growth strategy. The idea of family connection and organisation transcends cultures, while digital services transcend borders, so in 10 years, we hope to see My Life Capsule supporting many languages, currencies and support services across the globe. 

If you are not from a Tech background, how has that impacted, and what do you bring to the table?

I hold a Master's Degree in Technology, albeit in Aviation, so I’ve had a steep learning curve when it came to setting up a SaaS business. My greatest leadership strength is my ability to motivate people who are smarter than me to share my passion and vision for something greater than us both. Every one of my incredible team at My Life Capsule encompasses far greater skills in their field of expertise than I do.

I’ve had a diverse background, from building a commercial aviation prototype at 21 to working in a corporate environment as a Crisis Risk Management Specialist and starting three other successful businesses.

The most significant value of my leadership for My Life Capsule comes from my personal experience with 35 of the 43 significant life events outlined by the Holmes & Rahe stress study. I have unique empathy and understanding for people going through various life stages. However, I also understand the intersection of risk and consequence and want to use my Risk Management experience to help us all be more organised and prepared for life’s most significant challenges. Like everyone else, I’m busy, and I want to adopt systems to make my life easier - I need My Life Capsule just as much as our customers do.  

Biggest challenge you have faced so far?

Funding a business is challenging for every entrepreneur. Funding a tech business, in Australia, amid a global pandemic, as a female founder, is even more challenging.

I’m still surprised only 3% of global, and Australian, VC funding has gone to female-only founded businesses. Yet, this year Forbes reported that companies founded by women deliver twice as much per dollar invested, and are more likely to exit and have a higher internal rate of return of 112% compared to 48%.

Creating a new concept, from scratch, and building it with world-leading digital privacy and security technology is no mean feat. The biggest challenge in building a global B2B2C business has been investors wanting to see Channel Partners ready to pay for the product before it is operational, and Channel Partners wishing to see a market-ready product before signing up. It’s a chicken or the egg situation, and finding a solution to this problem has required dedication, flexibility and raw grit to keep moving forward.

Example of a good result with My Life Capsule?

The success of our pilot software program in March 2020, and the exemplary customer feedback from this trial, validated our purpose and market fit. It generated real-life data and genuine customer feedback to guide the development of our software program to ignite family connection and sharing across generations.

 My Life Capsule has secured an outstanding collaboration with Internationally Awarded Digital Security Specialists, Meeco. Founded by fellow entrepreneur Katryna Down, Meeco has been trailblazing International digital privacy for a decade. Through our partnership, My Life Capsule is not only ahead of global privacy and data security rights; it is also being supported and championed by one of today’s most outstanding advanced digital technology businesses.

 Another significant achievement is our joint venture partnership with Australian based design and printing company, LoveJK. Led by CEO & Founder Jennifer Henderson, LoveJK is a rapid growth e-commerce business that provides My Life Capsule users with the unique opportunity to print and frame their precious milestone memories directly from their capsule.

 Our partnerships with Meeco and LoveJK are testament to my intent to utilise aligned collaboration to develop the world's leading minimalism, organisation and connection ecosystem; empowering family connection for generations to come.

In what ways do you think female founders are treated differently?

There are more men supporting women in business now than ever before; however, women are still under-represented.

My Life Capsule is a heart-led technology, and while the business case for using emotional client engagement, something that is generally fostered by female leaders, to build brand loyalty is evident there are few investors and only highly evolved and innovative businesses that recognise the power of this crucial element to keeping customers engaged and ‘sticky’.

 According to the Harvard Business Review, 93% of women have a significant influence on what services their family purchases. In my opinion, Investors and enterprises need to start paying more attention to attracting female-led businesses whose customers want products and services to help manage their busy lives when juggling family and work commitments.

Without more women in technology, with a seat at the table to design our digital future, we are buying into the inherent and unconscious bias against 50% of the world's population. This inequality doesn't make sense for humanity or modern commerce.

What is your focus now? And for the next couple of years? How has COVID impact your activity?

With our launch scheduled for early 2021, my focus is on building the most advanced software program to ignite and support family connection, organisation and private sharing across generations. We are in early-stage discussion with some of the world’s largest insurance, financial services, corporate and membership enterprises and are focused on providing both the end-user (consumer) and our channel partners with an unprecedented value proposition. We are also on the lookout for a Seed investor who is aligned with our vision and mission, to fund our international growth and marketing strategy.

COVID-19 has highlighted the need to stay connected with our extended families, accordingly, feedback and traction for My Life Capsule during the pandemic has been extraordinary. My Life Capsule was fortunate to be recognised on 7 National News as one business helping families connect with their loved ones during the pandemic with our pilot software program. While many companies are experiencing unimaginable difficulty, there is an opportunity for innovative businesses to lead the recovery of the Australian and International economy.

What tips would you have for female entrepreneurs?

Entrepreneurship is lonely. Find your crowd. Talking about entrepreneurship to people who can’t, or don’t wish to, comprehend the trials and tribulations of a start-up is like seeking encouragement from a goldfish.

Be you. Women no longer need to pretend to be something we are not. Women account for 85% of all purchases and drive 70-80% of all consumer spending, so being a woman in business is an advantage.

 Play to your strengths and trust in yourself. Women excel in communication; we listen and read body language; we use practical empathy to host open discussions. We are great negotiators, using trust and transparency to our advantage. We use our emotional intelligence, self-awareness and social skills to navigate difficult situations and to market to our customers. Most importantly, we learn from our mistakes without wearing a chip on our shoulders.

What are the one or two lessons/principles/ you carry with you into everything you do?

I pride myself on always being authentic, taking a not B-S approach to all things and maintaining the kind of empathy and drive that can see genuine social change. In my world business should always be a cause for the greater good - to make a positive difference in the world.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

 In 10 years, I would love My Life Capsule to be a global brand, never standing still and consistently making lives better. My children will have finished school, and I look forward to exploring more of our precious planet. I’d also like to become a start-up investor and help others on their entrepreneurial journey.

How do you balance your personal time and your ‘work’ time?

 My mind rarely switches off. However, I have to make time for my family, and this means working well into the evening after the kids are in bed.

 My husband, brother and best friend are all entrepreneurs, so we all weave in and out of business and personal conversations daily in a way that would make other peoples heads spin. 

 As an entrepreneur, I spend a lot of time in my head. This can be exhausting, and at times my thoughts become gridlocked and overwhelmed. I have been a student of Vinyasa yoga for four years which has a significant impact on my stress levels, keeps me fit and gives my brain space to unravel. A few hours on my yoga mat, or my mountain bike, renews my clarity and perspective and undoubtedly supports my ability to make the best possible strategic decisions.

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