The Challenge
The death care industry is a $106.3B market, but it's built for people who can afford $7,000+ funerals and have the cultural framework to discuss death openly. For millennials, Gen-Xers, and especially BIPOC communities, traditional end-of-life services are financially out of reach and culturally alienating.
Existing platforms like Cake and Everplans focus on documentation and planning for people who already have resources. They don't address the fundamental question: How do you make death planning accessible to communities that have been excluded from these conversations?
The challenge was building a product that could serve underserved communities without requiring upfront capital I didn't have, while also validating whether people would actually use a death planning tool.
My Approach
I took a deliberately scrappy 0→1 approach:
Problem Validation: I conducted interviews with 15+ people who had recently lost loved ones, focusing on BIPOC millennials and Gen-Xers. The insight: People wanted to plan, but existing tools felt like homework. They needed something that felt like reflection, not bureaucracy.
MVP Strategy: Rather than raise funding to build custom software, I used Bubble.io (a no-code platform) to ship a working MVP in 3 months. The product focused on one core job: help people document their end-of-life wishes in a way that felt meaningful, not transactional.
Go-to-Market: I competed in pitch competitions and won $35K in non-dilutive funding. This validated the business case and gave me runway to iterate without taking on investors or debt.
The Outcome
Product Impact:
- Shipped working MVP using Bubble.io in 3 months
- Documented end-of-life planning tool with focus on sustainable/eco-friendly alternatives
- Zero custom code required (demonstrated no-code expertise)
Business Impact:
- $35K in pitch competition funding (non-dilutive capital)
- Validated product-market fit through user testing
- Positioned for expansion into marketplace model
What I Learned: The biggest lesson was about resourcefulness vs. perfection. I could have spent 18 months raising funding to build custom software. Instead, I shipped an MVP in 3 months using no-code tools and validated demand before writing a single line of code. For 0→1 products, speed and learning matter more than polish.
