Start-up Society #90: Cake
Keeping the American Dream Alive
Welcome to the 90th edition of Start-up Society! This blog highlights some of the most exciting start-ups in the country striving to keep the American Dream alive.
Make sure you check out the previous issue, if you have not already, here!
Back in Start-up Society #61: The Death Tech Issue, we covered Cake — a company focused on end-of-life planning. This week, we are doing a podcast and summary article double feature for our new installment of Meet the Entrepreneur featuring Suelin Chen, Co-Founder & CEO of Cake!
For the full conversation, tap into the podcast here!
What is Cake?
Cake is the world's largest platform for end-of-life planning (EoLP) and post-loss support. Everyone experiences this difficult but important aspect of life. When the company was first founded, we discovered that nobody thinks about EoLP regardless of the fact that people deal with loss every day. We’ve grown our platform from 0 to 40 million people in about two years. We don’t need to convince people that the problem we are solving is important, but we need to be thoughtful as to how we approach this problem. The whole point of end-of-life planning is to honor life, which is a positive thing. Cake is more about life than it is about death.
How do you maintain your connection with users?
It is a relatively low-frequency use case product. However, what we have found is that engaging with mortality and death is actually more frequent than we think. Everyone dies only once, but people touch death many times throughout their life. People are pulled into the sphere of end of life more often than we like to think. The length of relationships we have with customers is quite long, although the “value” of the product isn’t unlocked until the end of life. However, there are lots of ways for users to get value out of Cake today, people find value in thinking about the end of their lives today. When you remember that your life is finite, it can help you focus on what is most important to you and motivate you to spend your time in a way that is most in line with your values. As human beings, we often think about life short term but not as much long term (such as in decades), and Cake can bring that thoughtfulness to our users.
Why did you start Cake?
I always knew that I wanted to do something in healthcare. My undergraduate degree and Ph.D. were earned from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where I studied medical technologies. I wanted to help people live healthier and longer lives. I realized that business is the main way to bring technology to patients. I also saw that most medicine/treatment was focused on extending life to those who are close to death. No matter what everyone still ends up in the same place at the end of their life, it seemed crazy to me that there was no support for families when they had to deal with loss and I saw that the healthcare system is not incentivized to offer that support. I also experienced loss in my own family and I learned how much conflict and stress surrounds death. There is not enough innovation around planning for death vs the amount of innovation on planning for life. Only now are we focusing on solving problems for seniors and EoLP because there are a lot of founders who are aging and also the access to venture capital is diversifying and expanding, meaning that so are the problems that are being solved.
You got your first angel investor check at 9 months pregnant, can you walk us through your fundraising experience?
Only 2% of venture funding goes to women founders. It's interesting that lots of founders found companies at the same time as starting families. There is a stigma that this is not possible, but we are seeing more and more examples of amazing founders also being amazing parents. Life experience in general, parenting or otherwise, increases empathy and makes for better entrepreneurs. My message to investors out there is that you don’t truly support women unless you also support mother entrepreneurs.
Personally, I am much better at prioritization after I became a mother and knowing how to differentiate between important tasks and non-important tasks is a skill that every parent learns, which is critical to building a company. If you want something done, give it to a busy mom!
The 2045 initiative is the idea of downloading human consciousness to immortalize people. What are your thoughts on this topic?
In the longevity death tech economy, there is a camp of people who want to try to make us live forever. At Cake, living longer, healthier, and more enjoyable lives are things we 100% support, but we pragmatically believe that, at some point, our physical bodies will pass. 100 years ago, when someone passes away, you would have to go through a box of papers to learn about them. Nowadays, my grandkids might google me to learn about me. How do you curate your online presence to reflect who you are after death? What is consciousness? These are really difficult and abstract questions. We help people navigate end-of-life and in theory, as these longevity or immortality companies prove themselves out we can also help those dealing with mortality and death connect with those solutions if it is right for them.
What’s next for Cake?
We are excited to use our data expertise to match people to solutions and plans that are right for them given their situations. We want to help people at scale and it's really an access issue. Cake should be a trusted source of guidance for all who are dealing with any aspect of end of life.
Thank you for reading this article! Feel free to leave a comment, clap, and follow.
Authored by Arteen Zahiri, Rumeer Keshwani, Elham Chowdhury, & Julian Ramcharan
