Our Investment in Lantern

End-of-life is obviously a difficult time for all, especially for loved ones left to manage affairs.  

Yet what is under-appreciated, until experiencing it, is how challenging and overwhelming that point of need can be - leading up to it, in the moment, and for the months afterward.  

Today, we are proud to announce that 2048 Ventures has led a pre-seed investment in New York-based PBC, Lantern, alongside FJ Labs, Amplify, and Kairos.

A variation of Ben Franklin’s quote is often overused “... in the world, nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes”. To that end, and because of the boomer population, death rates are growing - with over 60 million estimated over the next 20 years in the US alone (US Census); yet, grievers do not have a single resource to address their time of need - to guide them through the overwhelming logistics associated with end-of-life (e.g. planning a funeral or cremation, body disposition, settling bills and closing accounts, publishing an obituary, settling the estate, etc.).

We invested in founders Liz and Alyssa because of their passionate and purposeful pursuit of solving this inevitable pain. They’re driven to ensure that post-Lantern, everyone will have the tech-enabled platform assistant that Liz could have used when her 96-year old grandmother passed away in early 2018. Liz and Alyssa’s backgrounds and tenacity are ideally suited to win in this space, and they’re just getting started.

Today, Lantern has pre-launched its early product, a smart checklist to manage the entire process, at any phase - and the ultimate vision is to offer tools and services covering every phase of end-of-life.

And because of the founders’ mission to serve all, the initial Lantern checklist tool is free for all.

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