Pain Points Spark Entrepreneurial Inspiration
A few years ago, while preparing for his grandfather's funeral, serial entrepreneur Sam Gerstenzang felt a deep sense of helplessness. During a moment of profound grief, he was forced to choose from standardized packages labeled "Silver, Gold, and Platinum." He recalled, "The pricing was vague, the logistics were chaotic, and the final ceremony felt more like an expensive, cold commodity that failed to reflect my grandfather's personality."
This experience made him realize that the funeral industry not only suffers from severe price opacity but also lacks genuine respect for the deceased. To change this, Gerstenzang co-founded New York-based Meadow Memorials with Emma Gilsanz in January 2024. The company describes itself as a "modern funeral home without the storefront," dedicated to providing simpler, more controllable funeral arrangements for grieving families via phone and online platforms.
Stripping Away Real Estate, Driving Down Costs with Software
Meadow's core advantage lies in its decentralized and software-driven operations, which strip away the most expensive asset in the traditional funeral industry: physical real estate. According to data from the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA), the average cost of a funeral in the U.S. including viewing and burial was as high as $8,300 in 2023. In contrast, Gerstenzang states that typical services provided by Meadow cost only around $1,300.
Meadow breaks the traditional funeral home model—which relies on high-cost venue rentals—by partnering with non-traditional spaces such as wedding venues and local churches. Gerstenzang points out that the traditional industry often generates excessive profits by marking up physical goods like caskets and uses information asymmetry to guide customers toward expensive burials. By leveraging software to automate administrative processes, Meadow focuses human resources on customer service rather than tedious paperwork.
From Fintech to 'Death Tech'
As a former product lead at payments giant Stripe, Gerstenzang is adept at restructuring complex systems. He previously co-founded the medical aesthetics platform Moxie with Gilsanz. In Gerstenzang's view, the funeral industry shares commonalities with the sectors he has previously worked in: they are highly regulated, impact millions of people, and have lacked substantive innovation for decades.
Currently, Meadow's business model has been validated by the market. It is reported that the company's revenue tripled between 2024 and 2025, and it is projected to triple again in 2026. In February alone, the company served over 400 families. After becoming the largest independent funeral service provider in California, Meadow has expanded its operations to Texas and Washington, with plans to enter Arizona and other regions this year.
Capital Favors the 'Unsexy' Sector
Meadow recently completed a $9 million Series A funding round led by Lachy Groom and Haystack. Semil Shah, founder of Haystack and an early investor in DoorDash and Instacart, stated: "We know that when an 'unsexy' but broken industry fails to meet the needs of modern consumers, an opportunity arises. Meadow's combination of software-driven operations and high-quality hospitality is exactly what the death care industry desperately needs."
With nearly one-third of its business coming from "pre-planning" (where people seek to ease the burden on their children after experiencing the loss of a relative), Meadow is changing public perception of funeral services. Gerstenzang firmly believes that through technological empowerment, funeral services can become more transparent, human-centric, and affordable. This industry, once monopolized by private equity firms, is undergoing a profound, technology-driven transformation.