Startup Co-Founder - AI-powered digital death planning wealthtech

OUTLINE JOB DESCRIPTION

Startup co-founder for Inheritly: Death & taxes, transformed.

Role: Co-Founder – AI-powered digital death planning wealthtech

Purpose: Build & launch a high-impact, high-commerciality venture helping families grieve in peace with AI-powered digital death planning for families & their advisers. Initially in UK, but scaling to Europe in the near-term, too.

Package: Initially sweat only, but significant equity as co-founder, plus startup founder salary subject to funding round.

Base location: Initially home-based, UK based (with travel to London UK for Team collaboration).

Start: ASAP.

To apply: apply through LinkedIn, or contact pete.lawson@arkventure.studio with a Covering Letter (max 1 page) and CV.

Reporting to: ARK CEO in the short-term; very quickly, part of the startup Board.

Responsible for: all aspects of the startup, alongside 2 existing co-founders (one tech, one partnerships / sales), with particular emphasis needed on fundraising and product.

Venture Overview

Inheritly is a venture studio built B2B2C pre-seed venture tackling death planning, with meaningful proof-points and an exciting path in the coming months:

✔️ Early VC investment, with appetite to follow-on

✔️ Clear painpoints to solve, large TAM, and compelling GTM

✔️ Early product (hand-cranked) being tested with dozens of users

✔️ 7x higher user engagement than typical legal or financial services

✔️ Prototype done, and being moved from Figma to code

✔️ Proof of WTP via early revenue from one of our 3 revenue models

✔️ First B2B GTM partners onboarding, including large global insurer

✔️ 2 x co-founders on board (looking for 3rd to complete team)

✔️ Test version of our AI LLM technology tested

Inheritly helps families prepare for the future with confidence, with AI-powered digital death planning for families & their advisers.

Little else hurts like losing a loved one. And on top of the emotional grief:

• Hundreds of hours for death admin
• 9+ months of probate
• 10k wills contested a year
• Family tension
• Tax bill cashflow hit

We are transforming death & taxes with inheritly:

• Save 100 hours of death admin
• <3 months of probate on key assets (like life insurance)
• Reduce will disputes by 75%
• Families united
• Tax bill minimised

The pain: Planning for death is complex and costly, with unclear steps and disjointed legal and financial processes. Customers seek simplicity, while advisers struggle with an advice gap.

Our solution: A simple and engaging digital estate planning platform that empowers advisers to help clients prepare – with tools, insights and solutions to help them each step of the way.

Early evidence of PMF: Our death preparedness tool works as an effective hook to attract and engage clients, with quantifiable evidence that it is driving action and is receiving strong feedback from advisers, as well as clickthrough rates from users that are 7x higher than average legal or financial service ads.

Large market: While we are still refining the near term TAM, long-term this is a massive multi-country opportunity. The $3.8bn global estate planning market sits at the apex of the $18.3tn great wealth transfer, with opportunities to tap into adjacent markets.

Efficient scalable channels: Our B2B and B2B2C GTM should be highly efficient and we are in discussion with 4 design partners plus a large global insurer, validating the financial adviser fit.

A big vision: We have a long-term plan to capture large parts of the value chain, transforming our unit economics and expanding our TAM exponentially. This includes massively disrupting the estate planning industry and transforming it from a manual to a digital model, lowering prices for customers, making it accessible to the mass market, and transforming service experience.

Co-Founder Overview

Are you a serial entrepreneur looking for the next thing to build, and eager to build a venture with purpose and scale? We\’re on the hunt for a dynamic and proven entrepreneur to join a 3-person founding team for our venture, Inheritly, which is being built within the ARK Venture Studio.

We have two co-founders on board:

• Distribution, partnerships, sales, legal & financial advisory: a serial entrepreneur with deep experience and hands-on knowledge of the financial advisory, wealth and asset management, legal services and estate planning sectors. Strong on sales, partnerships, and dealmaking, and best in 0-1 and 1-10 stages.
• Technology, AI & engineering: a former tech entrepreneur with senior engineering experience at Amazon and Fidelity. Hands-on coder with a preference for 0-1 and 1-10 stages, but with strong experience of building and leading engineering teams in 1-10 and 10-100 stage organisations.

We are looking for a third co-founder that brings particular strengths in three areas: Fundraising, Product and Operations. Ideally with experience in wealth management, financial advisory & estate planning sectors. And with a good understanding of technology, user experience & marketing.

This new co-founder will join the existing team immediately (part-time is fine at this stage), supported by the venture studio team who have built the venture to its current state, to help with three things:

• finalise the product prototype (already fairly detailed in Figma, with detailed workings held in Excel mappings), and
• help drive the final pre-seed funding round (along with venture studio leadership support), due around end Q1.

Once funding is closed, this will become a full-time, full-throttle role, with a startup founder salary paid from the funding round, and meaningful equity.

Why join as an co-founder:

To the right candidate, we offer a unique opportunity to a fast-tracked, de-risked, and heavily-supported venture:

• De-risked venture: significant market testing and validation already done, including 7x higher than average user engagement, and first revenues in the bank.
• Initial funding in place: existing work has been funded by an institutional VC, with interest in the next round from them and several other investors.
• Equity participation: meaningful share of the cap table, alongside co-founder salary.
• Prototype & technology already in test: digital product, AI LLM and customer experiences already at prototype stage.
• Distribution partners signing up: draft LOIs with target B2B2C buyers and design partners, plus active engagement from a very large global insurer who has appetite to embed Inheritly as a value-added service in millions of life insurance policies.
• High calibre founding team in place: strong commitment from existing co-founders, and sophisticated venture studio support team in place.

Our ideal co-founder must-haves are these:

• Startup fundraising: they must have proven experience in successfully fundraising for previous startups, ideally across multiple rounds, and from institutional VCs and angels
• Zero to Product Market Fit and revenue: they must have all the scars from founding startups as an entrepreneur, and a passion to build impactful, valuable businesses. They must have demonstrable track record of pivoting to find and evidence product market fit. And they should have got to revenue. Our existing co-founders bring this experience, too, but it is a must-have for us in this additional role.
• Digital product leadership: they must know how to build, iterate & manage disruptive digital products.
• Building disruptive tech-based solutions: they must be able to point to the 0-1 and 1-10 stages of helping building tech-based products and services that disrupt a market (not looking for a coder for this role, though).

Sector experience is important:

• Must-have: Wealth management OR financial planning OR estate planning OR wealthtech OR legaltech

We are looking for someone who is eager to get their sleeves rolled up, is happiest working as a co-founder with other high-calibre peers, and who is looking to take on a de-risked startup as a founding team member, with a fast-start required.

A different sort of company

ARK builds companies to tackle systemic risks to people and planet. ARK is a sister company to Ninety, an established insurance innovation specialist consultancy, working with large global insurance brands, and competing successfully with Big 4 consultancies. We are motivated by the belief that solving systemic risks is key for the flourishing of people, business and the planet. We are passionate about innovating new risk solutions and safety nets to be better and more sustainable for all. Both ARK and Ninety are wholly owned subsidiaries of a registered social enterprise, Ninety CIC, which uses business to achieve a philanthropic mission. As such, 90% of our distributable profit goes to charitable or social impact causes around extreme poverty, with the other 10% being shared amongst staff as a profit share. Our philanthropic vision is to give £1bn to social causes over a 30-year timeframe. Buy-in to our vision and cause is an important part of feeling part of the team at ARK and Ninety.