I’ve since learned that the surviving spouse or responsible family member has to tackle 20-50 tasks immediately and through the first days of their loss. It’s challenging to be rational and organized whilst lost in the darkness of bereavement.
Hey, I didn’t take the time to sign up but went through everything from the outside and it looks very well thought out. You definitely covered the areas people would need to be organized for admin after a death.
You request was about testing functionality but my mind went directly to how will you get this in front of people when they need it?
To me the marketing will be the biggest challenge. To me it seems like a huge market with only one defining characteristic, a death in the family.
If you sell through the services a person requires like funeral homes after the fact, the sale could be challenging because, the sale price would be too low for someone else to promote it. If you advertise, your CAC would be too high at your price point.
The app looks useful, no doubt. The challenge will be getting it in gront of people at the time when their minds are clear which is the planning phase. But your pricing is not set up for that. Your pricing is set up for catching executors at the time of death of their loved one.
I don’t have a good marketing answer but I would figure this out before spending a lot more time on the app.
Good points above on marketing. In addition to the funeral homes mentioned above, senior living homes, hospice care companies, estate lawyers could also be potential partners.
Agreed, all potential partners but why would they promote the app? There would have to be some value for each partner. What is in it for them? This is where the work needs to go now.
He’s got a sufficient MVP. Go find those influencers/partners and do the market research. If he’s going through partners, he will need to solve a problem they have.
Maybe this is a SaaS product that can be used by a partner for their end customer so it becomes B to B, not B to C. Maybe its a white label sale. That would change the whole app structure. So tweaking it any more before he actually finds out who the customer is and gets it into their hands seems like a huge waste of time and resources.
Realistic market positioning will be key, otherwise there will be a semi-useful app that no one knows about because you can’t get in front of the right prospective customer at the right time. Or you can’t charge enough money for it to make decent margins.
Your responses in creating this app/platform kernel is a wonderful memorial to your loved one.
I will review. I have had several similar events in the last year and have also developed something along these lines.
Thank you for your service.
Great application! I didn’t sign up yet but will look through this more this evening.
In addition to being a vibe-coding swiss army hammer, traveling across the US working on the power system, and beta testing weather models, my family owns a funeral home. Aftercare is something that varies widely based on the provider, the software they use, the state, etc.
I’d love to help you test this and make it better as time permits. I know a lot of the inner workings of case processing and work with Passare (funeral home management software) as a beta tester. I really think you have something that could either go to market easier or be sold to a larger provider pretty easily!
You guys have given me a lot to think about in regards to:
Product-market fit
Go-to-market fit
@nontraditionalr, your comments regarding the marketing challenge of the right audience at the right time are spot on. I had not thought of this difficulty–it is like trying to snipe an ephemeral target. Targeting a guaranteed common point of after-loss contact makes sense, which is the funeral homes.
I’m assuming, whether planned or not, all/most deaths go through funeral homes.
So, perhaps I should pivot to a B2B SaaS for funeral homes. Perhaps it should be a vendor management system (VMS) that allows funeral homes to create after-loss accounts on behalf of their bereaved client(s). Those clients may then use the current application features to get organized. The VMS features for the funeral homes would allow them to manage their bereaved clients and also vendors (florists, priests, caterers, and other supply line business associates).
I have not at all researched the competitive landscape of funeral home SaaS/VMS to determine potential product-market fit.
@denton1 , I’d love to get your insights. What does the FH industry have that works well (bright spots)? What is needed or does not work well (pain points)?
