Startups Look To Streamline Tasks Around Death And End-of-Life Planning

Earlier this week, we wrote about what startups are doing to help us live longer.

No matter how long we manage to extend lifespans, however, we won’t be around forever. And that brings us to our next startup funding topic: Innovation and investment around death and end-of-life planning.

Part of this was an excuse to re-use the above graphic, which had been mostly laying dormant since we last wrote about this theme four years ago. Additionally, however, there’s actually a fair bit of funding around this morbid topic.

In areas from green burial to wills and estate planning, startups have pulled in hundreds of millions for death-related business models. Using Crunchbase data, we put together a sample list of 20 such companies that raised funding in recent years.

Top funding themes

There are some companies in the list that best fit in a category of their own. One is Santa Fe, New Mexico-based Parting Stone, which turns ashes of loved ones into remains that look like smooth stones. The onetime “Shark Tank” competitor has raised over $4 million to date.

Others fit more easily into broader themes. A few categories we identified include eco-friendly burial and interment practices, digital tools to ease estate planning, and offerings to streamline funeral planning.

In the green interment area, the largest funding recipient to date is San Francisco-based Better Place Forests, which lets people spread cremated ashes underneath a memorial tree in a protected forest. The company has raised nearly $80 million in known funding to date and now operates 10 dedicated forests.

Better Place’s growth comes amid an increase in cremation. In the U.S., for instance, roughly 61% of dead bodies are cremated, per the National Funeral Directors Association, while about 35% are buried. By 2045, the group predicts 80% will be cremated.

For those seeking a more carbon-neutral alternative to cremation or burial, Seattle-based startup Earth has raised $10 million to offer a process it says will “gently transform a body into nutrient-rich soil.” Families choose how much soil they’d like returned to scatter or plant, and the remainder is donated to local conservation projects.

In a similar vein, Return Home, another Washington startup, has raised $2 million to offer a process it calls terramation, or human composting. The company is advocating to have the process legalized nationwide. (It is currently legal in several states.)

For those seeking a simplified approach to cremation, After.com has raised over $20 million, including a $10 million July Series A, for an online platform for arranging cremation and other after-death tasks in lieu of a traditional funeral home.

Estate planning

A large portion of death-related funding is also fintech- and legaltech-focused. In particular, financial and legal tools for end-of-life planning are attracting considerable investment of late.

It’s not too surprising. With an aging population and an unprecedented generational wealth transfer upon us in the U.S. and other countries, there’s more demand for services that put our finances and inheritance plans in order, per Wealth.com, one of the better-funded startups in the space.

Phoenix-based Wealth.com announced last week that it raised $30 million in a Series A led by Google Ventures toward its mission to “modernize and simplify estate planning.” The 2-year-old company markets its AI-enabled platform to financial advisers, who can use it to put together wills and estate documents.

San Diego-based Trust & Will has raised more than $48 million to date for a somewhat more DIY approach to estate planning. Customers pay a fee to use its software to create a will or trust-based estate plan.

A huge, slow-moving market

Looking ahead, it’s likely many startups will struggle to penetrate a tradition-bound sector like the funeral industry, which isn’t known for speediness in adapting to change.

Nonetheless, even the most traditional of industries must keep up with the times. Even the NFDA is on board with the concept, hosting an annual innovation award. (Finalists this year include a funeral home software platform, an app for managing family heirlooms, and a technology that allows families to control the visibility of a casket’s interior.)

The edge for startups, meanwhile, may be in making easier processes for tasks that people dread having to deal with but nonetheless will all have to face.

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Illustration: Dom Guzman