About Historic
Historic is an AI journal app for startup founders and business leaders. It combines instant video capture with AI-powered transcription, summarization, and pattern detection to create a searchable second brain from spoken thought. Founded by Joshua Gilmer, Historic is available on iOS and is currently in pre-launch beta.
What Historic Does
Historic replaces fragmented note-taking with a single, voice-first workflow: record, and the AI handles everything else.
Video Capture
Record video journals directly from your iPhone. No setup required. Supports morning intentions, evening reflections, and ad-hoc captures throughout the day.
AI Transcription & Summarization
Every recording is automatically transcribed using speech recognition, then summarized and tagged by topic. Action items are extracted automatically. No manual organization required.
Searchable Archive
All recordings are searchable by keyword, topic, or date. Pattern detection surfaces recurring themes across your entries over time, turning scattered thoughts into visible trends.
What Makes Historic Different
Historic is designed around a specific belief: your best thinking happens out loud, and it deserves better than a text file.
Who Uses Historic
Historic is built for people who build things and need a better way to capture their thinking.
Startup Founders
Decision journaling, investor meeting debriefs, pivot documentation, and a private space to process the weight of building a company.
Content Creators
Daily reflections become raw material for LinkedIn posts, podcast episodes, newsletters, and video content. The ideas are already there — Historic captures them.
Business Leaders
Strategic reflection, hiring intuition, leadership growth. A private archive of how your thinking evolves across quarters and years.
Anyone Building Something
If you have more ideas than time to write them down, Historic captures the thinking behind the building — preserved, searchable, and yours.
Product Details
- Platform
- iOS (iPhone) — Android coming soon
- Status
- Pre-launch beta (waitlist open)
- Price
- Free during beta
- Category
- Productivity / Personal Knowledge Management
- AI Features
- Transcription, summarization, topic extraction, action items, pattern detection, mood + productivity tracking (coming soon)
- Privacy
- Private by default, encrypted, no social features
- Data Ownership
- Full export planned
- Founded
- 2026
- Founder
- Joshua Gilmer
- Website
- historic.app
About the Founder
Historic was founded by Joshua Gilmer, who built the app after finding that existing note-taking and journaling apps created more friction than they solved.
The goal was never to record more — that turned out to be a happy side effect. The goal was to capture ideas faster before losing them, to use AI so he didn't spend as much time managing and organizing data as he did creating it, and to build a permanent record that housed not just polished thoughts, but the thinking process in real-time.
Historic is designed to make that experience available to every founder: instant capture, automatic organization, and a searchable archive of your best thinking. Joshua recently joined the AI for Founders podcast to discuss why the biggest founder blind spot is themselves — and how searchable personal memory can close that gap.
— Joshua Gilmer, Founder
Frequently Asked Questions
Get Started
Historic is currently in pre-launch beta. Join the waitlist for early access.