When his father, Andrew Zuckerman, died suddenly in August 2023, Potomac entrepreneur Adam Zuckerman became consumed by the end-of-life and estate-settling tasks he had to complete on his father's behalf.
The work, which spanned hundreds of hours over several months, prompted him to wonder why there wasn't a centralized offering for all those forms and documents, some of which his father could have completed before his death.
So in November 2023, he launched Buried in Work, a D.C.-based startup that helps people making end-of-life plans navigate complexities like estate transition and probate. Its services also aim to ease the paperwork burden on family members who have lost loved ones.
And while still in its early stages, Zuckerman is already positioning Buried in Work as more than a repository for documents and forms for closing bank accounts or accessing life insurance plans and medical records.
On Thursday, the company launched a series of nine national directories for cemeteries, funeral homes, hospice and palliative care providers, long-term care hospitals and others, all of which are provided on the company's website for free. Buried in Work has also unveiled several card games for preorder that aim to prompt loved ones to share compelling stories and fond memories and, perhaps, bring families closer together.
"There is no one-stop shop where you can look at the entirety of what we are assembling,"he told me during a video interview. "We are now creating opportunities for people to find other service providers en masse that are specific to their needs."
Buried in Work's website also features free downloadable worksheets and forms to help those still living to prepare for the transfer of their assets. Available for purchase is a $399 self-guided estate preparation package, which serves as a central location for sensitive personal and financial-related information, medical information, directives and end-of-life wishes that are spread across two binders and a USB flash drive, all kept inside a fire- and water-resistant file organizer.
So far he said he's shipped under 100 of these units but the company is in the early stages of partnerships with six firms, two of which are based in Greater Washington, These partnerships include religious and faith-based organizations as well as law firms that could offer white-labeled versions of its product.
"The service providers that we're working with — whether it's pre-need insurance, funeral homes, estate planning attorneys, family law, financial planners — they're seeing this as a tool that can help them serve their clients better," he said.
Zuckerman, who previously served as the director of ventures and innovation at Discovery Inc. as well as an adjunct professor on strategies for innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, told me the average estate transition can take 570 hours to complete. In some cases, he said people who use the company's estate preparation product shave 100 hours off the process, though he stressed everyone's situation is unique depending on family size and asset ownership.
He declined to share revenue figures.
Zuckerman initially assembled the binders on his own but recently reached a deal with Beltsville-based District Photo to print and organize the documents.
Buried in Work's only other full-time employee is Sarmed Rashid, who is overseeing partnerships. He previously served in the Trump administration's opioid epidemic response unit. Zuckerman eventually intends to hire full-time staffers to handle sales and marketing efforts, work that has largely been completed by about a dozen contract workers thus far.
He said the company is entirely self-funded and isn't seeking outside investment at this time.
