Art Shaikh describes himself as an "accidental founder."
After his father passed, leaving him things to do on his behalf, in 2020 Shaikh founded CircleIt, a digital platform used in part to send gifts, flowers, personalized messages and more from "beyond the grave." Now Shaikh's too "emotionally involved" not to help others along on a similar journey.
His latest venture is DigitalWill, an all-in-one death tech solution that launched last week, providing a will, obituary and funeral planning platform that ensures an individual and their loved one's final wishes are carried out.
"Seventy percent of Americans don't have a will," he said. "Just Google how many celebrities have died without a will. There is something about people that is hard for them to think about it, and that is what we trying to change."
The platform helps users capture their final wishes, personal messages, important documents and online account access.
Shaikh said the idea for DigitalWill was spurred by what CircleIt users said they wanted. The app was downloaded more than 10,000 times in 37 countries in its first two days. But with more than 180,000 customers pre-registered for the service, Shaikh expects DigitalWill to reach a quarter-million users by the end of the year, making it the largest will administrator.
Launching in a down market
Contrary to how Shaikh describes his entrepreneurial journey, the timing of DigitalWill's launch this month was no accident.
Last year was a down market in general for venture capital firms, but the $20.6 billion in new funds raised by VCs in the final quarter of 2022 was the lowest amount raised in a quarter since Q4 2013 and a 65% drop from the same time frame the year before, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Rather than raise funds in a down market, Shaikh decided to work on product development — which is one reason he feels much better about fundraising heading to the spring.
"Last year when we were building this product, the VC climate was horrible," he said, likening investors to ticket "scalpers." "They wanted to undervalue you completely and get the best possible deal and that environment is no longer there."
Shaikh said there is a hungry appetite from VCs — who don't make any money if they have idle cash sitting in their money market account — to deploy capital into "real technology" like DigitalWill.
"Now the money is very selective, going into places that actually solve big problems," he said. "Before they were just throwing money at everything."
