Breathing Life into Death Care

My interest in deathcare is somewhat personal. Last month, I had to say goodbye to my childhood dog of 14 years. She had lived a full life, and I loved her deeply. It was also the first time in my life that I had experienced true loss. Sure, I had lost a distant relative, and have helped loved ones through grief in the past. But boy, it really hits you differently when it’s someone (or something) you see and interact with on a daily bases.

The experience got me thinking about what the experience must be like to experience the loss of a friend, sibling, parent or grandparent. When it happens, it is a sensitive and traumatic time for the family. But human deaths are much more complicated than animal deaths: see this checklist for what the immediate family needs to do when they lose a loved one. There are many steps involved - such as x, y, and z- and the process involves different stakeholders and is overall very manual and time-consuming. It’s basically the last experience any grieving family would want to go through, especially given that 80 - 90% of deathcare is purchased at-need, meaning at time of death.

Digging deeper, I discovered a broken and sometiems exploitative industry. 80% of the funeral homes in the market today are family-owned businesses who have been serving their communities for generations. But, they are slow to digitize, and run their operations with pen-and-paper processes. A large percentage of homes don’t have an online presence, and when they do, it looks like it’s from the 90s and there is no information on services or pricing. To transact and price compare, one must call various homes, and even then most won’t provide a quote over the phone. Price transparency, and therefore the ability to price compare, is non-existent in this market. As a result, a staggering finding that the same exact funeral service cost can vary over 200% in the same metropolitan area; meaning that walking to the home across the street can sometimes save you $2,000.

So why hasn’t this problem been solved yet? There are several reasons why it’s uniquely difficult to build a startup in this space. But to be honest, this market has been largely unaddressed by the entrepreneurial and venture ecosystems. Despite deathcare being a $27 billion market, less than $100M in venture funding has gone into the space to date. So while it may be easy to look at the hurdles and decide to give up on deathcare, my gut instinct is that not enough people have really tried yet.

This is a call to action for mission-driven entrepreneurs everywhere. It’s time for us to breath new life into deathcare. The process can and should be better - from a moral standpoint and from a business one.