Funerals are sad by their DNA so why do we purposefully make them sadder? Wear grey, stand straight, sob into a tissue, sing a hymn no one knows a word to, have a plate of sausage rolls at the wake and head home. #sendoff
I know that sounds like I’m trivialising a difficult time but have you ever met someone who has wanted a standard, sad funeral? Probably not, so why is it the norm?
We came up with the idea for DEATH.io because we believe funerals are celebrations of life. They should be a great hurrah that reflects the person who has died and are woven with those unique specks of brilliance that will have everyone remembering it for years.
That’s where DEATH.io comes in as we’re not about the off the shelf funeral ideas. We’re about everything else.
Absolutely, we should all be more open about our funeral planning. The problem is we have a tendency to think that death is a thing for old people (it isn’t) and the irony is, we never truly feel old so we don’t always tackle this mortality matter when we’re in the best position to.
Death’s rarely fun but we’ve all got to face it sometime so it makes sense to get things in order sooner rather than later to help take the burden off loved ones in case something unexpected happens. What's more, it's easy to do and it takes just 3 minutes. Honestly.
I know that because we created our Farewell Wishes tool to do exactly this. Just go to www.myfarewellwishes.com, answer ten multi-choice questions and we’ll email you a neat doc with your preferences to then store or share with a loved one.
Oh and It’s 100% free so why wouldn’t you?
We’ve only been live a few months but it’s starting to look like people who use death.io are more likely to sit around the 50-65 year mark but saying that, we get the full gamut of death positive customers. In fact, the oldest person so far to have recorded their funeral wishes on our Farewell Wishes app was 80 years old.
We moved in to Desklodge in September 2017, our website went live in October and since then things have moved pretty, pretty fast. It seems people can’t get enough of death… In that time we’ve launched our Farewell Wishes web-app, we’ve expanded our team and we’re about to launch a new service at the end of March. Xmas occurred somewhere in the middle but things moved too quickly to tell when.
In a start-up with a small team you’ve got an awful lot to know and deal with which can feel pretty overwhelming. In a co-working space, everyone around you is in the same situation albeit at different points on the jungle run so when you’re facing those pitfalls more often than not you can find someone nearby who can point you towards the best way of getting around it. Honestly, this is invaluable and has saved me a lot of time and money in problem solving. Big shout out to the guys at Huggg, Shiptheory and MySociety for all the help and support.
Desklodge is just damn cool. It gives me a Google-esque space to inspire and grow a team (not to mention impressing a client or two) without the hefty overheads. Believe me, when you’re dealing in something like death, the BEST place to have a serious conversation is in a booth themed on Lego with the words ‘Everything is awesome’ emblazoned on the wall.
Not having to deal with those disparate costs of running an office ourselves is lovely too. Plus, the coffee is pretty damn decent and had it not been for Desklodge I would never have discovered a love for Yoga. Awesome place.
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