As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and within those words lies a myriad of emotions, captured in that single moment. That memory.

We live in a world of instant connectivity. With innovations like social media, smart technology and the all the glories of the internet, shouldn't you be able to share those photos and videos and relive those memories whenever you want, wherever you want with the very people you created them with, in real-time?

That's what three Oberlin College scholar-athletes thought and decided to do something about it. Their answer: Storybook

Storybook is a consumer-oriented mobile app - a "truly social media platform" - that enables users to enjoy real-time documentation, sharing, and storage of picture and video media from multiple perspectives. The app focuses on sharing experiences through collaboration and creating a platform where users can access memories forged with friends and family in a single, centralized location.

But let's start at the beginning.

One night in the summer of 2015, Brandon McKenna, senior captain on the men's tennis team, and Matthew Fox, senior captain for the Yeomen lacrosse team, found themselves enjoying the night life in London, during their study abroad semester at the London School of Economics. 

Sitting around a pub table the next day, Matthew, Brandon, Brandon's brother and their classmates were attempting to relive the night before with multiple cell phones and various social media platforms.

"The idea started when Brandon and I were in London," said Fox. "The night after his brother's birthday, we were going through all of our social media outlets at a table and passing phones around to share each memory of the night before. We came to the conclusion, if we could streamline this process and have one centralized location or app, we could simplify what we were doing at the table."

As the idea continued to develop in the minds of Fox and McKenna, the two returned home from their semester abroad in London. Initially, the notion that started around that table across the pond grew through crowdsourcing the idea with friends, peers, and classmates.

"After talking with friends about the concept of Storybook, a lot of people said, 'apply for a loan or maybe the college has some service,' so LaunchU came to mind," said Fox.

The LaunchU program is a three-week entrepreneurial incubator over January's "winter term" designed to accelerate the development and launch of Oberlin student and alumni entrepreneurs, culminating in a public pitch competition. LaunchU guides entrepreneurs through a business-model innovation curriculum, developing skills and understanding in preparation for launching their ventures.

Fox reached out to John Knific, Oberlin College's Entrepreneur-in-Residence, founder of Decision Desk, and member of the LaunchU administrative team.

"John thought it was a cool idea, and laid out the things we needed to focus on initially," commented McKenna. "Early on, we got too features-oriented at one point so he pulled us back down. There were steps along the way where we were learning as we went, but John and the rest of the LaunchU team were a huge help."

With Knific's guidance and a touch of ambition, Fox, Zeliger, and McKenna applied for LaunchU in the fall of 2015.

"We filled out an application to LaunchU, and John helped us figure out what we needed to focus on and when" explained Zeliger. "When we began to focus on far off details he would be reel us back in and explain, 'you have no users. you need to learn how to clearly and succinctly communicate the apps value.' Conversations with John were great preparation for what LaunchU would be like."

Over the course of those three weeks, Matthew, Brandon and Soren were competing against other entrepreneurs. Though more than ten entrepreneurs were vying for the top prize of $20,000, the competition was not fierce, but more of a learning experience for the trio.

"It was cool to be in a small room with people you knew and were able to bounce ideas off of and let the idea process flow," said Fox. "LaunchU was very pitch-oriented, so during sessions you would go in and a panel would ask, 'who are you? what's your venture?' Everyday you were practicing telling people what your vision was."

Although they knew of Storybook's potential, the three aspiring entrepreneurs had trouble communicating their ideas and the app's capabilities to other people. 

"Coming in to LaunchU we struggled to convey what our idea was and we were pretty abstract in communicating it to other people," recalled McKenna. "At first it took a really long time to explain and just as long for other people to understand because it was still pretty ambiguous. LaunchU and John helped us bring that together. Once people understood, we got positive feedback, and people thought it was a great idea."

After three weeks of pitching their vision and attempting to win the approval from panels of potential investors, Fox, McKenna and Zeliger finished second amongst 12 competing ventures and were awarded a $15,000 grant to get help kick-start the development of Storybook.

"LaunchU was eye-opening. It was cool to see so many people from Oberlin in the entrepreneurial world," said McKenna.

Their success at LaunchU has done nothing but push the trio of Yeomen to work harder and continue to make Storybook a reality.

A few of months after their success at LaunchU, Fox, McKenna an Zeliger have added two members to the team, James Quintana, and Jacob Gilbert, both fellow Obies. Quintana will be the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in charge of the tech development, while Gilbert was brought on for the alpha phase of development and will be responsible for user interface design.

The $15,000 that Fox, McKenna and Zeliger received through LaunchU has already been put to good use. 

Initially the LaunchU grant has been used to pay James and Jacob, but as development continues, the remainder of that $15,000 will help set up the initial back-end servers and improve and polish the alpha as it progresses into beta phase. All of this expansion has also involved Storybook becoming a fully incorporated company.

"The future is looking pretty promising," commented McKenna. "We've garnered a lot of interest from people, and even potential investors as we move into our seed funding round. We (the Storybook team) really feel as though we're creating something that can not only be enjoyed by anyone who uses a smart phone, which is basically everyone in this day and age, but also something that will legitimately help people create, share, and relive memories in a more genuine and engaging way. We're all excited for what the future holds."

And why wouldn't they be excited for what lies ahead? In a little less than a year, three Oberlin student-athletes took a simple idea and with hard work, a bit of blind ambition and dedication to their vision, they are well on their way to having a tangible product with the potential to change the way we share our electronic lives and memories.

Think about it. Gone would be the days of people awkwardly crowding together for group photos for a few minutes so that everybody can get a picture on their phone. With Storybook, one phone captures a moment, forges that memory so that your personalized, private social network has instantaneous access to that photo or video, saved in real-time, and waiting to be revisited and relived.

Whether Storybook will become yet another LaunchU success story, only time will tell.

To read previous GoYeo Storyteller features, click here.