3x Thesis: Digitizing the Funeral Industry

Morbid margins, minimal tech, and a $100B generational wealth transfer.

The funeral industry is one of the last remaining consumer sectors untouched by modern technology. It’s awkward, analog, and full of friction. And that’s exactly what makes it interesting.

Let’s start with the basics: the average cost of a funeral in the U.S. is now $7,848 (NFDA, 2024).
Cremation services average $6,280. Yet most of these transactions are still being run through pen-and-paper systems and clunky phone calls to book a time slot. Y
ou can plan a wedding online in an hour. But to bury a loved one? You’re still playing phone tag with the guy who hasn’t updated his website since 2003.

This industry isn’t small either. It generates over $20 billion annually, and is sitting at the intersection of two massive macro trends:

• A generational transition of wealth and ownership as Baby Boomers age.
• A digitally native next-of-kin making purchase decisions under stress, and with expectations for convenience.

Over 60% of funeral homes are independently owned, many by aging operators without succession plans. This is an acquisition landscape ripe for consolidation, but traditional rollups haven’t cracked the customer experience, which remains inconsistent and emotionally exhausting.

Here’s the thesis:

Step 1: Acquire regional funeral homes in fragmented markets with strong local reputations but underdeveloped operations.

Step 2: Centralize back office, call center, pricing, and vendor coordination (flowers, headstones, obituaries, etc.).

Step 3: Layer on a digital front-end that enables online booking, memorial personalization, and seamless coordination of logistics.

Step 4: Build a scalable acquisition funnel through SEO, performance marketing, and pre-need planning tools.

The value creation comes not from financial engineering, but from modernizing the entire customer journey. It’s what DTC would look like if it met death care.

Think Toast meets Carvana, but for the least digitized consumer experience left in America.

It won’t win awards for glamour. But it will print cash.

High average order value, little price sensitivity, recurring referrals, and a lack of sophisticated competitors.