I started Storyborne because of a promise, not a business plan.

My wife serves on the National Campaign Team for the Wounded Warrior Project. Last year she was selected to represent WWP on a group cruise with wounded warrior ambassadors and their partners. During a stop in Cozumel, we decided to buy the whole group matching wrestling shirts. I’d picked up a lucha libre mask just because I liked it — had no idea Roberto had bought the same one. After dinner one night, the group wore the shirts to the talent show to cheer on the others performing. A few drinks in, Roberto and I put the masks on too, right there in the crowd. That’s where it started.

Somewhere in the laughing that followed, the joke turned into a promise — that he’d get to be a race car driver, for real, because Shield Maiden Racing was never just about racing. It’s about giving people a reason to keep showing up.

I couldn’t build him a race car that week. But I could build him something just as real: a piece of art that turned that photograph into proof the promise was already true. That piece became the first Storyborne. It’s dedicated to him — Army Corporal Roberto Cruz-Arocho — because some promises are worth putting somewhere you can’t lose them.

Everything Storyborne makes works the same way. You bring us a photograph and the reason it matters. We build something out of it that outlasts a camera roll. That’s the whole company, and it always will be.

— Maverick McMahon, Founder