Founder Collective and Boston Seed Capital bet on death tech and
Balter’s vision that, “Death is the New Wedding.”
Mylestoned Inc., a Boston based startup aiming to reframe death through the communal transformation and discovery of memories, announced they have closed a $1.5 million seed round led by Founder Collective, Boston Seed Capital, Converge and notable angels.
“Let’s face it, Graveyards are rarely visited, and they’re pretty damn spooky. Cremation is rising, religious views are changing and the taboos around death are falling away , ” Balter noted. “It’s time for a new model that allows us to celebrate the spirits of our loved ones, both at the time of death and for decades beyond.”
Mylestoned’s beta product enables easy memory submission via a conversational text messaging interface and delivers back a meaningful collection of memories for contributors to view and share. New memories can be added at any time. In future releases, locations, dates or events relevant to the person or memory will trigger memory recollection.
Michael Troiano, CMO of Actifio and a Mylestoned Advisor, recently lost a close friend. He reflected, “Social media is loose, mundane, and transient. Memorializing the people we love is intimate, profound, and forever. The former is perfectly fine as a distribution channel for outputs of the latter, but not a place to withdraw from the everyday noise of life for a few moments of deep reflection.”
Mylestoned aims to take grieving and memorialization out of the social newsfeed where “likes”, emojis, and wellintentioned comments trivialize meaningful memorialization and can sometimes lead to awkward interactions. It will also enable friends and acquaintances to prepare tributes that can be delivered and shared sensitively to family at funerals and beyond.
“At Founder Collective, we look for deeply passionate entrepreneurs unafraid to take risks. Dave’s vision is provocative and game-changing – he
is pushing the boundaries of how we view death and the deceased,” said David Frankel, Managing Partner at Founder Collective. “And, it certainly doesn’t hurt that Dave has successfully disrupted
industries before.”
Dave Balter is a wellknown Boston-based entrepreneur and investor. His previous companies Smarterer, a skillsassessment platform, was acquired by Utahbased Pluralsight for $75 million in 2014 and BzzAgent, the word-of-mouth marketing company founded in 2001 was sold to dunnhumby, a London-based
data-science company, for $60 million in May 2011.
About Mylestoned
Headquartered in Boston, Mylestoned is reframing death through the transformation and discovery of dynamic, meaningful digital memories. To try the Mylestoned beta product, go to http://www.mylestoned.com
