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The Founder's Story: Why Richard Built So Tell Us from Munich in 2026

There is a graveyard of unheard WhatsApp voice notes somewhere between Munich and Krefeld. Richard knows this because he helped fill it.

His family is 600 kilometres away. A weekend visit every few months, and in between, the usual debris of a group chat: a meme, a quick reaction, a voice note that never quite gets listened to. Real life slipping through, quietly, message by message.

So he built something. Not a startup. A letter.

The Problem He Recognised First in Himself

Richard is the founder of So Tell Us, a private recurring email letter for small groups. But before it was a product, it was a frustration he could name precisely.

Group chats are not bad because people stop caring. They are bad because the format works against depth. A question gets buried under three reactions and a photo of someone's lunch. A voice note sits unlistened to for a week. The conversation moves fast and says very little.

Phone calls are better, but they need scheduling. Everyone has to be free at the same time, in a quiet place, with the mental space to actually talk. That is a lot of conditions to meet.

What Richard wanted was something in between. Slower than a chat. Easier than a call. Something that asked a real question and waited patiently for an answer.

Building It for His Own Family First

The first version of So Tell Us was built for the M. family. His family.

Three to five warm questions arrive in everyone's inbox every few weeks. Each person answers in their own time — a sentence, a photo, or a voice note. On a fixed send day, one quiet letter arrives with everyone's answers inside.

No app to download. No notifications. No feed. Just an email, arriving when it is ready.

He built it in Munich. The servers are in Germany. Every subprocessor is EU-based. No ad tracking runs inside the app. The letters never train AI. These were not afterthoughts. They were the point.

When you are building something for your own parents, privacy is not a feature. It is a baseline.

The Detail That Changed How Phone Calls Felt

Anna from Düsseldorf put it plainly: "Since we started, every phone call begins differently. No more 'all good, and you?' — now it's 'so tell us, how was that thing with...'"

That is exactly what Richard had been trying to describe. The letter does not replace conversation. It gives conversation somewhere to start. When you already know your sister laughed at a dachshund on Mönckebergstraße who refused to walk because his stick was too long for any door, you do not need to warm up. You already know what to ask about.

The questions do that work. They are warm, specific, and low-pressure. One sentence is enough as a reply. Skipping a round is fine. The letter arrives anyway, with whoever answered.

Why Voice Notes Became a First-Class Format

Something Richard noticed early: some people write easily, and some people talk easily. Forcing everyone into text loses half the personality.

So voice notes became a proper reply format — not a workaround, not an attachment. A first-class option. When a voice note arrives, it is automatically transcribed so it reads naturally inside the compiled letter. Jonas from Köln answering in the car on a Wednesday. Eight seconds. His father singing an old hit completely wrong, three verses, with conviction.

That is a story. It fits in eight seconds of audio and about two lines of text. No other tool in this space handles that format the same way.

Small by Design, Not by Accident

So Tell Us holds up to five people per group. That is not a limitation of the infrastructure. It is a decision about what intimacy requires.

Five people means everyone's answer gets read. The letter feels personal rather than broadcast. The questions can be warm and specific rather than broad enough for an audience.

If you need more than five, Richard will sort it out personally. You can write him directly at richard@so-tell-us.com. That is not a support ticket. That is just how he runs it.

What He Committed Not to Build

The "what it isn't" section of the So Tell Us website reads like a list of promises.

No social network. No public profiles. No streaks, no likes, no scoreboards. No sponsored questions. No push notifications. The email is the only nudge.

These are not preferences. Richard frames them as constraints — things the product will never become, not because they are technically impossible, but because they would break the thing that makes it worth using.

That kind of commitment is rare in software. It is easier to say "we value privacy" than to build a product that structurally cannot violate it. So Tell Us does the second thing.

Who It Is For

The person who starts a group usually already knows the problem. She is the one who organises the Christmas call, who remembers to ask about the job interview, who notices when it has been three months since anyone really talked.

She uses WhatsApp because everyone does. But she finds it hollow. Full of messages, short on real conversation.

She is not looking for another app. She is looking for something that asks a good question and waits.

So Tell Us also works well for adult children who want genuine ongoing contact with parents who are not on social platforms but can use email. The zero-notification, email-only design removes the participation barrier entirely. No account needed for recipients. No app to install. Just an email, arriving every few weeks, asking something worth answering.

For those thinking about how to keep close relationships meaningful across distance, tools like Locket Widget offer a visual complement, letting family members share real-time photos on a home screen widget. For people managing communications across multiple family groups, RPLY by NOX provides a unified inbox to keep different threads organised. And for those who want to save and revisit the messages that matter most, Bunko offers a way to archive cherished exchanges. These sit alongside So Tell Us rather than replacing what it does.

For people drawn to privacy-first ways of maintaining meaningful relationships more broadly, Series takes a similar philosophy into a different context.

The Price Is Honest Too

€5 per month for the whole group. One person pays. The other four use it for free. No credit card to start the 14-day trial. Cancel in two clicks.

That is the whole pricing model, listed plainly on the website because Richard wanted it to be easy to decide.

A Letter He Needed, Now Available to You

Richard built So Tell Us because he needed exactly this letter. Not a better group chat. Not a fancier video call. A letter, from the people he loves, every few weeks.

It is live now in English at so-tell-us.com and in German at erzaehl-doch-mal.com. Two minutes to set up. The first letter goes out within two weeks.

Start a group — 14 days free.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Richard, the founder of So Tell Us?
Richard is a Munich-based developer who built So Tell Us for his own family after finding that group chats and infrequent phone calls were not enough to maintain real connection across 600 kilometres. He runs the product independently and can be reached directly at richard@so-tell-us.com.

What problem did So Tell Us set out to address?
Group chats move fast and carry little depth. Phone calls require coordination. So Tell Us sits between the two: warm questions arrive every few weeks, everyone answers in their own time, and one compiled letter lands on a fixed send day. No scheduling, no noise.

Why does So Tell Us have a cap of five people per group?
The five-person limit is a deliberate design choice, not a technical constraint. Keeping groups small means every answer gets read and the letter stays personal. Groups larger than five can contact Richard directly for a custom arrangement.

Why did Richard choose to build it as an email product with no app?
He wanted something that worked for everyone in the group, including people who are not comfortable with apps or social platforms. Email requires no installation and no account creation for recipients. It also removes push notifications entirely, which was central to the product's philosophy from the start.

How does So Tell Us handle voice notes?
Voice notes are a first-class reply format. When someone records a voice note as their answer, it is automatically transcribed so it reads naturally inside the compiled letter. No other tool in this category currently offers voice note replies in the same way.

Is So Tell Us private and secure?
The servers are in Germany. All subprocessors are EU-based. There is no ad tracking inside the authenticated app, and letters are never used to train AI. The product is private by design, not just by policy.

How much does So Tell Us cost?
€5 per month for the whole group of up to five people. One person pays and invites the others. There is a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, and you can cancel at any time in two clicks.