Celebrate Life Co. Aims to Bring Cemeteries into the Twenty-First Century

By Thomas A. Parmalee

When Nicholas Allan’s mom asked him to do her a favor – leave some flowers at the headstone of a beloved family friend – he said what any good son would: No problem, Mom.

But when the former Adobe sales operation analyst went to search for the grave, he could not find it.

There was no information on Find a Grave, no one at the cemetery office to help and no maps available to make his task easier.

He left with the flowers still in hand, unable to make his delivery with the feeling that he’d let his mom down – and a nagging thought running a loop through his mind: There has to be a better way.

He began looking into how cemeteries operate on a larger level and concluded that many of them have neglected to join the 21^st century.

As he learned more, the 28-year-old also discovered that he had a passion for learning about the lives and legacies left behind when someone dies.

“I thought about all the people who have left an impact and who could have an impact on us – on other people beyond their families,” he said.

In 2023, he founded Celebrate Life Co., which is based in Salt Lake City and aims to revolutionize cemetery care with innovative add-on services that enhance and personalize the memorial experience. He serves as the company’s CEO.

According to the company’s LinkedIn page, “We seamlessly blend technology with tradition to ensure that every tribute is beautifully maintained and easily accessible.”

Allan stayed on at his job at Adobe for a while, operating Celebrate Life as a side hustle, he said. As it began to take up more of his time and as more clients signed on – it’s now working with a few dozen cemeteries – he left his full-time job to give it his full attention.

Early on, he got a lucky break when he was attending a family gathering and reconnected with a former Boy Scout leader of his, David James.

“He had enjoyed a successful career in web development at Microsoft, and I told him about my project,” he said.

A couple days later, they grabbed lunch together.

“Little did I know, I was stepping into the Shark Tank,” Allan said, making a reference to the hit reality show where entrepreneurs seek funding. “He asked me about my goals, my revenue expectations and the major blocks that were preventing me from where I want to be. He became an angel investor, which has helped me get to the stage where I am – and we continue to be business partners.”

As to how Allan is positioning the company, he’s focusing on serving cemeteries and then helping them connect directly with consumers, which holds revenue implications for Celebrate Life as well as its clients.

“Because we sell software to the cemetery and get them organized and digitized, it opens up the door for us to go straight to the consumer,” he said.

A video highlighting what Celebrate Life Co. has to offer outlines how it all works.

Some of the services Celebrate Life offers families include delivering flowers and headstone cleaning. Families can also opt for a flag to be placed on a grave on Veterans Day or a wreath around Christmastime. To fulfill these services, Celebrate Life can partner with third parties or with a cemetery in house.

The revenue sharing opportunity can vary because every cemetery is different, but generally, Celebrate Life will take 10% of any sales made to consumers via its platform.

“But that can be negotiated,” Allan said. “For instance, we just did a deal with a cemetery that did not have much initial capital to invest in our software. So, we are taking a larger portion of business-to-consumer sales until we hit a certain threshold, and then we will go down to 10%. We can get creative in various ways to get everyone to the point of where they want to be.”

While the company is still in its early stages, its flagship service is digitizing cemeteries to improve the consumer experience, which also paves the way for cemeteries to become a storefront.

By weaning cemeteries off paper maps and giving them the tools they need to provide a digital experience, Celebrate Life Co. aims to help them become more successful and profitable, Allan said.

That matters even if it’s a nonprofit cemetery, he said.

“Even those cemeteries have costs to worry about, such as maintenance and buying a new lawnmower,” he pointed out. “So many cemeteries are struggling to stay afloat.”

Typically, the cost of Celebrate Life software is $500 per year. Cemeteries pay an additional one-time fee for Celebrate Life to digitize maps and bring them online. The cost depends on the size, quality and format of their existing maps.

“Setup costs typically range from $400 for smaller cemeteries to $10,000+ for larger properties requiring extensive digitization and mapping,” Allan said. “We base it off the number of burials and digital pins that we have to place.”

Once mapping is complete, families can easily find the graves of loved ones and walk to them using the GPS coordinates on a smartphone’s navigation feature, he said.

The company also offers a memorial tribute option for families, which it provides for free (beyond a small storage fee if a memorial includes a large number of videos and photos).

“I am really passionate about the tributes and memorial aspect,” Allan said. “Whenever someone is visiting a cemetery and it promotes that they can create a profile for someone, they do it most of the time.”

Asked what makes Celebrate Life different, Allan said that competitors are focused more on the cemetery management side of things.

“While we definitely offer a tool to get cemeteries into a more digitized space, we are leaning much more into the cemetery experience,” he said. “We want to create a better experience for people visiting cemeteries. So, we are more public-facing and plan for the cemetery to have a relationship with the community.”

Celebrate Life serves cemeteries nationwide as well as in the United Kingdom – and Allan expects to start serving clients in Australia in the near future He thinks the future for his company is bright.

“People who have been willing to take the chance on this have loved it,” he said. “We are opening the doors for them to become profitable and to help get them into the twenty-first century. We are getting them off paper maps, so that once they leave the business or pass it down so others can take over, they’ll know everything is going to be OK.”