Why I built Fablely — in 5 days, with $2,000, as one person.
No co-founder. No VC pitch. No grand 50-page plan. Just two real problems my own family had — and a 2026 toolkit that finally made it possible to solve them.
The two problems
Problem one: when my partner and I tried to name our daughter, every existing baby-name tool either gave us 50,000 alphabetical names or 50 "trendy 2024" names. None understood that we wanted something that worked in BOTH our cultural traditions, paired naturally with the surname, and didn't sound like it came off a Pinterest board. We spent six weeks fighting about names.
Problem two: a few months later, my grandmother passed away. I realized I had hundreds of photos of her, dozens of videos, and almost no audio of her voice alone — talking to me, telling me stories, saying my name. Photos preserve faces. Videos preserve moments. But the actual texture of someone's voice — the thing my ear most strongly identifies as her — was the one thing I hadn't thought to capture.
Both problems felt solvable by 2026 technology. Neither was being solved well by existing tools. So I built it.
What Fablely actually does
The naming tool asks five questions (gender, cultures you care about, style preferences, your surname, names to avoid). It returns ten names — not fifty thousand. Each name comes with its full etymology, pronunciation guide, current US popularity, sibling-name pairings, and a sentence about why this specific name fits this specific family. If you and your partner disagree, you both get a private link where you rate names independently — neither sees the other's scores until both have rated the same name. We then show only the matches.
The voice tool asks you to record 30 seconds of your real voice once. An AI (ElevenLabs Instant Voice Cloning) creates a personal voice model — used only for your own family stories, never shared. You can then generate bedtime stories starring your child's name, narrated in your actual voice. As your child grows older, the stories grow with them.
The Voice Vault is the part I built for my grandmother — or the version of her I'll never have. You record a voice message today, schedule it to unlock on a specific future date, and on that day it arrives in the recipient's inbox. Their 8th birthday. Their wedding day. The day they become a parent themselves. The technology guarantees no one — not even you — can play the message before the unlock date.
What I won't do
I'd rather be small and honest than big and slimy.
- I will not sell your voice data. Ever.
- I will not use your recordings to train general-purpose AI models that benefit other users.
- I will not implement dark-pattern subscription traps. Cancel in one click from your library page.
- I will not pivot to surveillance or military applications. (We get inquiries; the answer is no.)
- I will not let this product die quietly. If I ever shut down, every user gets 90 days of warning and a full data export.
The honest economics
This site runs on roughly $11/month right now (Vercel free + Supabase free + ElevenLabs Starter $5/mo + domain $6/mo). That's the full stack. Adding 100 paying users at $4.99/mo would put gross margin near 95%. There's no growth-hacking magic; just the fact that 2026 indie tools are weirdly cost-efficient and the AI APIs charge per-use.
I'm not raising venture capital. I plan to stay solo as long as the math allows. If the product finds the right ~500 families, this can comfortably support itself + me without needing to become "the next big thing." That's intentional.
If you want to talk
I read every email that reaches hello@fablely.ai. I respond within 24 hours, usually within 2. If you want to give me brutally honest feedback about the product, or if you're a journalist looking for the indie-tool angle, or if you're a parent who's already tried it and has thoughts — please write. The fastest way to make this product better is to hear from people who've actually used it.
The 5-day version of Fablely is what's live today. The 5-year version starts with your feedback.
— Gavin Wong
Founder, Fablely · gavin2640@gmail.com (yes, the real address, not noreply)