Death Tech — 5 Startups That Redefine the Way We Deal With Death

Death is a sensitive topic. But isn’t it a part of life? We think and talk so much about our future and plans for it, and death is also a part of this future. It’s okay to talk about death and make some arrangements for it during life. It’s even prudent and caring towards your beloved ones — to think about them coping with your death. 

With these thoughts, we move on to discussing the death tech industry. This time we want you to meet 5 startups breaking the taboo on talking about death and changing its perspective. Shall we?

The London-based startup, Farewill was founded in 2015 by Dan Garrett & Tom Rogers. It’s an all-in-one platform for all financial and legal services for writing wills and dealing with all the paperwork after death. 

Farewill offers a “simple way of dealing with death” by helping and guiding you through a will-writing service, probate, or funeral service. 

In 2019, the company wrote 1 in every 10 wills throughout the country, and today it continues to be the UK’s best-rated will and probate provider. It won National Will Writing Firm of the Year in 2019, 2020, and 2021 at the British Wills and Probate Awards. 

In 2022, Farewill partnered with TSB bank to offer their customers access to easy will writing and probate services at exclusive discounted prices. 

Pella Frost, Director of Everyday Banking at TSB:

“Having open conversations about what you want to happen when you die can often save a great deal of time, money, and distress for your family.

“Farewill will make this much easier by helping our customers feel more confident and prepared about the future knowing that their estate will be taken care of.”

Guardian Angel was founded in 2016 by Sam Grice, who lost his mother and found himself in the difficult situation of arranging all the outgoing processes of managing funerals. 

Sam created Guardian Angel to ease all the arrangements people have to deal with after their loved ones die and arrange your own funerals the way you want it: “It’s about having your funeral how you want it. It’s about allowing people to open up and giving them the freedom to do that. It’s about allowing people to write a will in the way that they want. Guardian Angel’s mission is to make death easier.”

With this online consolidated death planning tool, people can get complex help and support in dealing with all the post-death chaos:  

Personalized memorial websites: Users can create a memorial page to share memories, photos, and stories of the deceased with friends and family.

Funeral planning: Guardian Angel assists users with organizing and planning funerals, offering various funeral services and personalized options.

Grief support: The platform connects users with grief support resources, including articles, support groups, and professional counseling services.

Financial assistance: Guardian Angel also provides resources to help users understand and manage financial aspects related to funerals and estate management.

In 2021, Guardian Angel closed £1.1 million in an early seed funding round which was led by investor Fair By Design along with participation from institutional investors Ascension Ventures, GC Angels, Accelerated Digital Ventures, and key angel investors such as Andrew Weisz (early Hopin investor) and Rod Bulmer (an ex-CEO at Co-op Group).

Founded in 2013, Spain-based startup Bios Urn is about mindfulness death — it aims to turn people’s or their pets’ ashes into a tree after life with the world’s first biodegradable urn. The prototypes were created in 1997 and went to market in 2001.

Though a lot of time has passed since the launching of Bios Urn and its design changes, the core focus is still the same — ”to add meaning to this process of life, and return to nature.” It’s all about the circle of life — what once has been the “end of life” becomes its beginning.

Considering our ecological situation, Bios Urn is a genuinely sustainable invention of a symbiosis between design and nature. 

Bios Urn was featured at the permanent exhibition of The Design Museum in Barcelona and the 2022 exhibition Full Circle: Design Without End at the Museum Of Design Atlanta (MODA).

​​Veronica Klucik, co-curator at MODA:

“A big idea in “Full Circle: Design Without End” is the importance of recontextualizing humans into the natural systems we are a part of. I think a major part of this is understanding how we fit into the circle of life, and the Bios Urn makes the connection between death and life very clear and joyful, making it a perfect fit for the exhibition.”

Founded in 2019 in Berlin by Dr. Emil Kendziorra, Tomorrow Biostasis specializes in secure human cryopreservation services. They claim to “preserve you for the future” by using state-of-the-art technology. 

The startup idea came from the founder’s desire to live forever: “One of the things that motivates me is the fear of death,” Kendziorra tells Sifted. “I don’t want to die.” Together with other doctors, engineers, and entrepreneurs, Dr. Emil aims to conquer death and give people an opportunity to choose how long they want to live. 

Tomorrow Biostasis offers a complex life preservation program, including cryopreservation, long-term storage, and revival. They work on a subscription-based pricing model according to which clients pay €25 per month for membership plus individual funding for standby & storage, which depends on their cryopreservation plan: 

Whole-body cryopreservation;

Brain-only cryopreservation;

SST (standby) only: for Europeans with a contract with another cryonics provider for long-term storage. 

The company’s standby dispatch teams are in 24/7 readiness. Once they get a notification that their client will be soon or already legally dead — they will be there within 2 hours to start the cryopreservation process. 

The startup had only one funding round — a Seed Round for an undisclosed amount in July 2021.

Obitt was launched on Product Hunt in March 2023 as the “ultimate digital cemetery” by Pride Mwapamba. It’s a social platform where people who lost their loved ones can gather and share memories & stories about them. In such a way, the founder offers you to celebrate their lives.

Pride Mwapamba lost his father in 2022 and struggled with organizing all the thoughts and memories alongside non-stop calls from his father’s social circles months after his death. That’s how he came up with a better way to let a loved one social circle on death. 

On Product Hunt, the founder mentioned the plans to monetize his startup: “Obitt is a freemium product, we intend to make our money through following:

commission on flower sales;

commission on fundraising campaigns;

paid services (will-writing, encrypted data storage);

cross-selling (life insurance, etc.);

targeted advertising (you will notice as much our main category are people, we do have many other subcategories).”