Why I built Kinship Trees

By Akeel Din, founder of Kinship Trees Austin, Texas · October 2026

Every family has a keeper of the stories. In mine, it was my Uncle Z.

Growing up, I spent hours listening to him bring distant decades back to life. I learned early that family history isn't just a list of names and dates. It lives in the details.

Years later, when I finally sat down with a notebook to capture those stories, it struck me how much was already slipping away. Memories fade, and the details nobody captures disappear with the people who carried them.

Around the same time, I came across a faded family photograph from the 1940s with no names on the back. Someone in my family once knew who those people were. Now nobody does.

Our history was everywhere, and nowhere

Then at a big family gathering, as stories were told around the table, people reached for their phones. Out came old photos, short video clips and voice messages that people had saved for years. It was a wonderful evening, but it highlighted a problem. Our family's history was scattered across dozens of phones, group chats and cloud accounts, and none of it was easy to share.

I looked at the family tree apps that were out there. They were good at capturing facts and dates, but they missed the point. What we had been passing around that table were the stories, the voices, the shared memories. There wasn't any app that brought a person's story to life with color and vitality.

So I built Kinship Trees.

A person, not a row of dates

In Kinship Trees, every person has a profile that reads like a short biography. You attach the original photos, voice recordings, video clips and documents directly to that person, and their life comes together on a timeline. Uncle Z isn't just a name in a box. Generations he's never met can hear his stories in his own voice, and see him in his photos and videos.

Built to be filled in together

Nobody knows everything about a family, so Kinship Trees doesn't ask one person to do it all. You can invite your relatives and each of them can add what they know. Mom adds the stories, an aunt adds the photos, a cousin scans the documents. All of those phones at the table become one shared archive.

Whoever adds a file chooses who in the tree can see it, so a private letter can stay private while the reunion photos are open to everyone.

If you already have a family tree somewhere else, import it as a GEDCOM file and start from there.

What we promise

• Free to start. Build your archive and invite your family without paying anything.
• No ads. Your family's memories are not a marketplace.
• Your data is never sold. Not to advertisers, not to AI companies, not to anyone.
• It stays yours. Export your tree as a standard GEDCOM file at any time, and your original files are always yours to download.

Who it's for

Kinship Trees is for the person who has the box of old photos and isn't sure what to do with them. It's for the person who keeps the family group chat going and organizes the reunion. It's for the person who wants an easy, trusted way to store and share what can never be replaced. You don't need to be a genealogist. You just need someone you want to remember.

Get started in five minutes

1. Add one person you knew. A grandparent is a good place to begin.
2. Add one photo and the story behind it. Who is in it, where it was taken, what was happening.
3. Invite one relative. Ask them to add what they remember.

That's an archive. Everything else grows from there.

The names on the back

I still wonder who is in that photo from the 1940s. I built Kinship Trees so the next generation never has to wonder about our photos.

Start your family's archive at kinshiptrees.com.