By Thomas A. Parmalee
If you know someone who needs their estate settled, think twice about volunteering for the job.
Alexandra Mysoor, who once offered to settle the affairs of a close family friend, learned that the hard way.
When it was all said and done, she had spent about 900 hours on various tasks, but it was through that work that she saw an opportunity to help others. And as someone who started a successful ecommerce company and has been an adviser to numerous company founders, she knew she was the one to do it.
With a little help, of course.
After studying the problem, she connected with Hugh Tamassia, a technology and finance veteran who has held senior roles at JPMorgan Chase & Co., American International Group and Acorns.
Now, backed by $5.5 million in a seed round of financing led by San Francisco-based Initialized Capital, with support from Magnify, Scribble, American Family Ventures and Alumni Ventures, the duo has launched Alix, which Jon Fortt, a CNBC news anchor, said could be thought of as “the TurboTax of estate settlement.”
The company promises to save families hundreds of hours that they would normally spend handling the estate of a loved one. Its website states that its team will reduce the time spent on settlement tasks by up to 85%.
Alix, so named because the company’s founders wanted a name that evoked feelings of a trustworthy friend, is cultivating relationships with funeral homes throughout the country, said Mysoor, who in addition to serving as the co-founder and CEO of Alix is on the board of directors of Security National Financial Corp., which trades on the Nasdaq under ticker SNFCA and offers various life insurance products, including funeral plans.
“The number of funeral homes we work with changes on a daily basis,” Mysoor said. “We are currently working with over 50 funeral homes across the United States, supporting funeral staff in strengthening long-term relationships and differentiating themselves in today’s competitive market. We’re excited by our continued growth and partnership with funeral homes, and we can’t wait to further build upon this as we move forward.”
The company is open to growth and expanding its impact, Tamassia said. “While we currently operate primarily in the United States, we believe Alix’s empathy-driven services can provide exceptional support for families, funeral homes and aftercare providers everywhere,” he said.
Mysoor, whose parents are from India but who grew up in Minnesota, was a premed student at University of California, Berkeley before she changed tracks and embarked on a career in digital marketing. She landed an internship at an agency that worked with Apple, and it was there that she rubbed elbows with the likes of Steve Jobs as “a fly on the wall” early in her career.
“After being at Berkely and exposed to all things Silicon Valley, I knew I wanted to be part of this in some way – and I had to shift in that moment,” she said. “I felt compelled to get an internship somewhere, and the first one I found was at a digital marketing agency, but I had to be housed at Apple’s campus.”
In her early 20s at the time, she absorbed all she could relating to creating new categories and putting consumers first, she said. She’d go on to start her own digital marketing agency at age 24 before teaming up with her husband, Prashanth Mysoor, to start Generation Orange, one of the world’s first environmentally-conscious baby products companies, which became one of the first third-party sellers on Amazon.com.
Along the way, she has also started other companies, such as Par Avion Tea, a luxury high-end tea and tea-infused beauty products company, and done consulting work for various companies, sometimes in exchange for equity — a move that’s paid dividends.
Asked about what it was like observing Jobs, she said, “Just being in the room was super exciting for me – he really cared about hearing what other people thought, and he wanted them to have a point of view.”
She became – in her words – “an accidental entrepreneur” after realizing that a contractor she supervised who worked at home and fewer hours than her, at that, was earning more money.
A light bulb went off in her head: She could enjoy a happier life and be more successful as a consultant. “I realized if they could do it, I could do it,” she said.
Her co-founder, Tamassia, got his start in business working at fintech startups and ended up working for JP Morgan & Chase in various roles, including chief technology officer, before spending time at AIG and Acorns.
He worked at JPMorgan during its most exciting period – “when it really wasn’t the best bank in the world and Jamie Dimon was putting the pieces together,” he said.
When he was approached by Mysoor, he did not have much experience with estate settlement but found it to be a fascinating problem. Even better, it was a challenge he saw as “very solvable” through technology.
The Great Wealth Transfer
The opportunity to help families settle estates – and the role that funeral homes could potentially play in that process – cannot be overstated.
About $84 trillion in assets will change hands over the next 20 years, according to Cerulli Associates, a consulting firm. About $72 trillion will primarily go to members of Generation X (those born between 1965 and 1980), millennials (1981-1996) and Gen Z (1997-2012). Most of that money will come from baby boomers.
One of the ways to help smooth that transfer is with the proper financial technology, which is what Alix has been laser-focused on, Mysoor and Tamassia said.
“How are you going to transfer that wealth itself?” Mysoor asked.
Moreover, the idea of a company holistically helping families through the process is something that is new, Mysoor said. She observed that most executors tend to be women, often the oldest daughter of the deceased, who take on a caregiving role when family members age.
While it is partially powered by artificial intelligence and other technology, Alix prides itself on relying on a stable of advisers that work directly with family members to help them through the estate settlement process, Mysoor and Tamassia said.
“We talk a lot about technology internally, but these automations are in the back end to make our care team better,” Mysoor said, noting that it has lawyers, certified public accountants and individuals with a background in funeral service on its care team.
“We have people – humans – who are really extending the journey of where funeral directors are working with families,” Mysoor said. “It is this handoff of a baton.”
Tamassia agreed, adding, “Our customers don’t have to care about AI and shouldn’t care,” he said. “It is important to us and how we run our business, but we are leading with expertise and humans. We keep the AI behind the scenes and don’t talk about it too much with our customers.”
As it stands now, most families simply feel overwhelmed when it comes to settling an estate, Mysoor said. They may go online and find some type of checklist, but there are few tools that do the heavy lifting.
Alix does not just automate the discovery aspect of estate settlement, but it actually settles the estate, she said.
“You can’t transfer something you don’t find, but once you find it, who is going to do the work?” she asked. “We do that work. People come to us for peace of mind and certainty.”
The Details
On the Alix website, you can find a detailed list of tasks that the company handles for families – everything from searching for unclaimed assets to negotiating and settling outstanding debts, putting together an inventory of assets, preparing the final income taxes of the deceased, distributing money to beneficiaries and everything in between.
“We are not a fiduciary or a CPA or a lawyer,” Tamassia said. “I think people feel like when they are settling an estate, you need those, but that is a very small percentage of the time.” He added, “Most people can settle an estate by themselves without the help of lawyers, CPAs and fiduciaries. And we can do all the work that people could do on their own but should not have to do.”
When a family uses Alix, no money comes out of the executor’s pocket, Mysoor said. “From our team’s decades of professional and personal experience settling estates, we understand every family and every estate isn’t cookie cutter,” she said. “This isn’t one-size-fits-all, so neither is our pricing. Instead, we price our services at 1% of the estate. This ensures fair and comprehensive services, with fees deducted directly from the estate, not out of the executor’s pocket, to accommodate the unique nature of each family and settlement.”
Alix stands ready to help all families, Mysoor said. “We support every family that comes to us, no matter the size of their estate,” she said. “When getting started with Alix, all families are connected directly with our Care Team, which conducts research into the size of the estate, the discovery process, and the needs of the family. After this is completed, we speak in depth with the family about whether Alix is the right fit for them. We are built on empathy and a shared understanding of how difficult this process will be so if Alix is not the right fit for a family at this time, we guide them through what their next steps will look like, free of charge.”
The company is working with funeral homes to spread the word about Alix to families, but it does not view funeral homes as selling the product.
Rather, the founders of Alix view funeral homes as a resource that families may consult when they have estate settlement questions.
For example, someone may go back to the funeral home to get a death certificate, and they may suddenly start to think about all the estate settlement work they must do when a funeral director tells them they may need more than one copy.
That would be a great time for the funeral director to suggest Alix as an option, Mysoor said.
As to how that relationship between a funeral home and Alix looks like, Mysoor said, “Alix provides support to funeral homes through a partnership model that considers a variety of factors, ensuring tailored assistance to each firm.” She added, “Like every family, every funeral home is different. We approach every partnership as a tailor-fit, considering the size, scope, and impact Alix can have on each funeral home’s community when determining partnership details. Factors such as the firm’s reputation and community trust play a significant role in determining the nature of support provided.”
There is not a “cookie cutter way” to work Alix into the conversation with a family, Mysoor said.
“Funeral homes know their families best,” she said. “We have a menu of options that may help them, but we really trust the funeral home. There are some that do a great job with aftercare and have a cadence in which they get to know families. And they know when to bring it up. The trusted referral is a tremendous opportunity for both of us.”
Families can watch a video highlighting Alix during their arrangement conference. Additionally, the Alix team shares handouts that give information on what families can expect during the estate settlement process and how Alix can help.
For funeral home staff, Alix tries to make things as easy as possible – staff can simply share the resources with families during the arrangement conference and then let Alix know if a family is interested in speaking to the Alix team before they get started with the process. This video provides some background on the Alix Care Team.
“We try to figure out what you do or do not know about the estate, and it becomes threads for us to put together a plan,” Mysoor explained, noting that an initial conversation usually lasts 45 minutes or an hour.
Once that plan is in place, Alix schedules a follow-up meeting with the executor. “You can download our app, but it’s not for everyone,” Mysoor said. “You are not just dropped into an app – we view our app as connective tissue when you are not talking or working with our care team.”
There are sixteen full-timers and a handful of advisers that work with Alix, including three full-time staff with a background in funeral service, Mysoor said.
“That was extremely important to me,” she said. “People have been doing this for generations, and their wisdom is super important … from day one, we have had funeral professionals by our side trying to figure out how Alix could be the connective tissue in aftercare.”
Asked whether Alix plans to team up with preneed insurance companies to bundle its service with policies, Mysoor and Tamassia said they are always open to growing the business and finding new avenues to support families in need. Currently, they have focused their attention on families who are looking for at-need services but have received “a tremendous amount of interest” from preneed insurance companies, leading the pair to believe this is an area ripe for exploration.
“We actively help funeral homes by handling essential post-funeral tasks, and, in turn, have seen how our comprehensive aftercare helps funeral homes increase their preneed sales by maintaining and strengthening relationships across generations,” Mysoor said. “Educating families on the benefits of preneed planning during their post-funeral interactions, we’re able to drive families back to the funeral homes where they had positive experiences.”
So far, the founders of Alix are excited about the reception the company has received and are bullish about the future.
A lot of people think that when you complete estate planning, everything is fully taken care of,” Mysoor said. In reality, a trust or will is just a paper map that leads you on a digital scavenger hunt. It won’t do the work for you. With Alix, we’re taking on that burden for families.”
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