Seattle digital wills and estate-planning startup Tomorrow acquired by life insurance provider Ethos – GeekWire

Some of Tomorrow’s services, as seen on the company’s website. (Tomorrow Image)

Tomorrow, a Seattle startup that helps people set up digital legal wills and trusts, has been acquired by life insurance provider Ethos, the companies announced Thursday.

Founded in 2016, Tomorrow’s iOS and web apps offer online estate planning services without the need for a lawyer. The company has seen usage skyrocket since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and more than 600,000 users have created legal wills.

Ethos was also founded in 2016 with a similar goal to make it easier to make estate-related decisions, and provide life insurance online. The company issued $13 billion in life insurance coverage last year and was valued at $2.7 billion in 2021. It raised over $400 million from Sequoia Capital, Accel, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, GV, General Catalyst and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation. Revenue and users grew by more than 600% year-over-year in 2021.

Tomorrow raised $17 million from IA Capital, Allianz, Aflac, Sinai Ventures, and Seattle’s Flying Fish. The startup employs 20 people, who will join the 250 employed by Ethos, which has offices in Austin, San Francisco and Singapore.

Tomorrow CEO Dave Hanley. (Tomorrow Photo)

“Tomorrow’s iOS and web apps will continue to provide legal wills, trusts, healthcare directives, powers of attorney and medical consents,” Tomorrow CEO and founder Dave Hanley told GeekWire. “The Tomorrow apps will continue to operate under the Tomorrow brand for now. That may change in the future.”

Hanley founded Tomorrow after he lost both of his parents unexpectedly. He wasn’t prepared for the financial and legal processes that followed, and realized that many others probably weren’t, either.

His previous startup, Shelfari, was acquired by Amazon in 2009. He sold social media consultancy Banyan Branch to Deloitte Digital in 2013, where he stayed for nearly three years before co-founding Tomorrow.

Ethos is interested in becoming a more comprehensive financial tool for families, who normally only interact with a life insurance company at the time of sale and when the policy needs to be enacted.

“Tomorrow’s goal of creating a fast, easy, and transparent way for people to secure their financial future and protect their families is directly in line with Ethos’ goal of protecting the next million families,” Peter Colis, Ethos co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. “We were impressed by the team’s customer focus and product platform — having digitized a traditionally slow, paper process — and we’re excited to have the Tomorrow team join us.”

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.