Empathy Raises $30 Million for Grief Services

Empathy co-founders Ron Gura (right) and Yonatan Bergman. (Photo: Dedi Elias company pic)

Israeli startup Empathy which helps families navigate the journey they face after losing a loved one, just brought in $30 million in a Series A financing round, by Entrée Capital

This round comes just a few months after the company brought in $13 million in seed funding and brings Empathy’s total funding to date to $43 million.

This service is especially important during the Coronavirus era. So many people, all over the world, too many people, have been taken before their time due to Covid. And such unnecessary and senseless loss is the hardest for people to accept.

Have you ever suffered a loss? Do you know someone who is grieving right now? If so then you know that people who have just suffered a loss are not only in mourning, but usually find themselves needing to navigate all sorts of bureaucratic red tape. And then there are all of the menial tasks that need to be taken care of from dealing with closing bank accounts, ending all manner of subscriptions for telephones and internet and informing anyone who needs to know.

According to empathy, bereaved people spend over 500 hours, on average, dealing with immediate needs, like arranging a funeral and validating a will, as well as long-term processes such as estate administration, benefit claims, and property cleanout. Technology makes this bureaucracy more efficient – freeing families to deal with emotional repercussions, and to be there for one another. So this is where the company’s app comes in.

Founded this year by Ron Gura and Yonatan Bergman, two entrepreneurs with experience innovating a wide array of fintech and consumer sectors, Empathy’s technology-enabled platform is designed to guide families experiencing loss with purpose and compassion. The duo began their work together at The Gifts Project, acquired by eBay in 2011, and over the last decade have held various leadership positions including at PayPal, eBay, and WeWork. The Empathy team consists of a multidisciplinary lineup of professionals from the legal, accounting, product design, engineering, and cybersecurity sectors, as well as grief experts who came together to help families deal with loss.
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When someone passes away, next of kin are left with complex tasks to navigate, all while processing their grief. Our mission: to create a compassionate experience for bereaved families. #EmpathyApp investor @mikeeisenberg of @aleph spoke to @dansenor about how we’re doing that. pic.twitter.com/uqB7iTGf1l

— Empathy (@empathy_app) September 21, 2021

In a blog post, Empathy explained that the company is ever, “stretching and advancing, so we can continue to show up for families and bring them what they need: Adding more tools to our app, ever more advanced and innovative solutions for the challenges bereaved families face, which take even more tasks out of their hands and do them for them. And finding new and better forms of support that help grievers make their own way through this difficult process, to really feel, and discover, and even make meaning from their loss.”