How a Solo Founder Built SaaS Selling to Funeral Homes

**Fexingo** (0:01)
So, we've covered a lot of niches on the show, tattoo shops, dance studios, pet groomers, even freight brokers. But I think episode 99 might be the one that makes listeners do a double take.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:14)
I'm ready. What is it?

**Fexingo** (0:17)
Funeral Homes, specifically, a solo founder who built a SaaS platform for independent funeral directors. His company is called Empathy Arrangements, not to be confused with the grief tech startup Empathy, and he launched it in late 2023 out of a spare bedroom in Columbus, Ohio.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:36)
Okay, that is unexpected. I think most people assume funeral homes are either big corporate chains or mom and pop shops that do things the way they've always done them.

**Fexingo** (0:46)
Right, and that's exactly the misconception. The industry in the US has roughly 19,000 funeral homes, about 85% are family owned, and the average location handles may be 100 to 150 services a year. It's fragmented, it's relationship heavy, and it's surprisingly paper based.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:06)
So the founder saw an opening.

**Fexingo** (1:09)
Yeah, his name is Mark.
I'm not using his last name because he's not trying to be a public figure. He spent about six years as a software developer for a health tech company, and then his uncle passed away. He was helping his mom with the arrangements, and he was shocked at how manual everything was. The funeral director pulled out a three-ring binder and a paper form for the obituary.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:33)
That's wild. In 2023

**Fexingo** (1:36)
Exactly.
So Mark started asking around. He found that most independent funeral homes use a mix of a legacy desktop application from the 1990s called Funeral Director's Assistant, and then paper or Excel for everything else. There's no cloud, no mobile, no integration with the cemetery or the florist. It's a classic underserved niche.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:58)
And he built a CRM specifically for the arrangement process?

**Fexingo** (2:03)
More than that, he built a platform that handles the entire arrangement conference. That's the meeting where the family decides on the service, the casket, the urn, the obituary text, the music, the catering. All of that is typically done on paper, and then someone types it up later.
Mark built a tablet-based interface that the funeral director can use with the family in real time.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:26)
That's smart. It reduces errors and saves time on data entry.

**Fexingo** (2:32)
And it creates a digital record that can be shared with the cemetery, the crematory, the newspaper for the obituary, the florist. He basically built a lightweight ERP for the death care process.
He told me his first six months were just him cold calling funeral homes from a list he bought from a trade association.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:51)
How did that go? Funeral directors are busy people, and they're not exactly known for being early tech adopters.

**Fexingo** (2:58)
Terribly at first, he got a lot of hang ups and a lot of we're fine with what we have. But then he shifted his pitch.
Instead of saying, let me modernize your business, he started saying, I can save you 90 minutes per arrangement conference that got their attention.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:17)
Because time is money, especially when you're a solo operator or a small team.

**Fexingo** (3:23)
Right. The average arrangement conference takes about two hours.
Mark argued his software could cut that to 30 to 45 minutes, and he priced it at $149 a month per location. That's about $1,800 a year, well under the 3000 average most funeral homes spend on all software combined.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:45)
So, it's an easy budget fit. No need to go to the bank or get board approval.

**Fexingo** (3:51)
Exactly.
He could sell to the owner directly, and the owner could say yes on the spot. That's a huge advantage in B2B SaaS. Within nine months, he had 40 paying locations. Not huge numbers, but enough to quit his day job.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:07)
And I assume churn is low. Once a funeral home adopts a system that's embedded in their client-facing process, switching costs are high.

**Fexingo** (4:16)
That's the thesis. He told me his gross churn in year one was under 5%.
And he's already seeing some referrals. Funeral directors talk to each other at state association meetings.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:29)
So what's the biggest challenge now?

**Fexingo** (4:33)
Scale. He's a solo founder, so every sale, every support ticket, every feature request goes through him. He's been averaging about four new locations per month, which is fine for a lifestyle business, but he wants to grow faster. He's considering hiring a part-time salesperson, but that's a big step for a bootstrapped founder.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:54)
And I imagine the sales cycle is still long. Even with the time savings pitch, funeral directors are cautious.