Adelle Archer (Eterneva) - From Ashes To Diamonds, A New Way To Honor Loved Ones and Experience Innovation

Adelle Archer is the founder of Eterneva, which celebrates remarkable lives by making diamonds from Ashes. Eterneva was featured on Shark Tank, in which Mark Cuban joined other incredible angels and VCs as an investor. This episode focuses in the end of life space.

You can follow Adelle on Twitter @adellearcher. You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb and for episode annoucements, you can follow @consumervc.

A couple books that inspired Adelle are Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss and Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. A book that inspired her personally is The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.

In this episode you will learn -

1. How she started Eterneva? How consumer attitudes and cultural traditions around death changed over time and what opportunity did she see in this market? What is it about the work she's doing is disruptive? How is she changing the deathcare space? Where does she envision Eterneva being in five years?
2. How does she market such a sensitive topic? What's been the most surprising and unexpected insight / learning she's had in building Eterneva so far? What is experience innovation? In the very beginning she bootstrapped to $1 million. What was your launch strategy and how was she able to find product-market fit? How did she think about her target demographic? Fundraising strategy?
3. What led her to going on Shark Tank? What was her strategy for Shark Tank? How did she think about value add when it comes to investors, were there particular investors she was targeting?How she is thinking about growth today? Has she been able to expand into different demographics? How is she thinking about channel diversity & distribution? How is she thinking about customer acquisition today?
4. Is she focused on top line growth or profitability? What are some ways or strategies that she implements in order to get a pulse on your customer? How does she constantly monitor the customers' preferences and needs? How has she approached COVID and what is her focus during this pandemic? What’s one piece of advice that she has for founders who are fundraising?

Full transcript

Mike Gelb 0:00 Hello and welcome to the consumer VC. I am your host Mike Gelb, and on this show we talk about the role of venture capital and consumer facing startups. Our guest today is Adele Archer, founder of a turnover, which celebrates remarkable lives by making diamonds from ashes. A turnover was featured on Shark Tank in which Mark Cuban joined other incredible angels and VCs as an investor, Adele story and why she chose to found a company in the end of life space, I think it's just fascinating. To be honest, it's not a space that really came to mind before meeting Adele. So lots of learnings and takeaways from mine. So without further ado, here's Adele. Thank you so much for joining me today. How are you?

Adelle Archer 0:49 I'm good. How are you? I'm

Mike Gelb 0:51 Tell me a little bit about how you started your innovative venture.

Adelle Archer 0:58 We celebrate remarkable people and pets when they pass away by making diamonds from ashes or hair. And now as you can imagine, that's probably not something that you would ever expect getting into a 10 year old Adele and say, What do you want to be when you grow up? But you know, I think it just more than anything, you know, when you look back on your life, sometimes there there is a common thread that connects at all. And so, you know, for me, I have my MBA and entrepreneurship, you know, knew I was going to be starting my own company and I worked in tech for a couple of years. And originally the company that I was working on was a lab grown diamond company. Just thought that was really interesting technology. And as we were starting this company, though, I had a really close friend and my business mentor actually get diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and she passed away. So total, like personal side of my life was trying to figure out how to honor Tracy and you know, just I think when you lose some Someone really remarkable, you know, you go on a quest, you're like, what, like, what can I do that is really deserving of her. So probably five months of research did not find anything, and was just blown away by just what felt like a total lack of options and lack of innovation. And, you know, it's just shocking to me how little has been done in this space, you know, for something that affects all of us. So, it was really over dinner one night with a diamond scientist, that he even mentioned, that this could be done, there was one company that was doing it at the time, I went to go start the process completely as a customer, and, you know, just in my experience, you know, kind of connecting with them. And, you know, it was just it was very transactional. It was not, you know, the experience I kind of wanted with somebody with that was going to be the guardian of my ashes and, or my loved ones ashes. So that was really the point that we kind of looked at this and go, gosh, you know, this is a space that really, really needs just a better experience for people and this feels like an amazing option. Why don't we focus here, so try You was the first time and we made and we refocus everything to be you know completely about celebrating someone's life

Mike Gelb 3:07 that's amazing and really inspirational how you took a really close friend's death and made it you know, an experience for you that that you know, you can remember and cherish for years to come in creating a diamond out of out of her ashes. I also didn't know that lab diamonds were were a thing whatsoever. So talk to me a little bit about how you think about consumer attitudes and cultural traditions around debt has changed a bit over time. And what what opportunity Did you see in this market,

Adelle Archer 3:38 a lot of great businesses are built when you are the customer to start out, you know, you're just so intimately aware with what the pain points are that you're solving. But it was just really remarkable to me, I think there has been such a shift in how we think about death. You know, and wanting things that are more personal and more meaningful, you know, we're not as traditional anymore with you know, just how kind of the the different traditions you're seeing a huge shift from burial or cremation, for example, in 1980 were like 10% cremation, and we're approaching 70% in the United States, like, that's how fast is the thing. And I think as more people are, you know, potentially more spiritual versus, you know, religious, they also are just kind of like, you know, allowing themselves to be more open minded to what are my other options and what feels like personal and special and meaningful to honor my loved one versus what's just always been done. And so I think as people are asking that the industry hasn't adapted or responded or you know, really created things that you know, kind of meet that need. So, I think there's a lot of opportunity to give people better products and give people better experiences in this space.

Mike Gelb 4:49 How are you thinking about different religions folks that might be more in tuned are more interested in in in these types of products for honoring loved ones that have passed away,

Adelle Archer 5:00 we needed to really learn, you know, when we first launched, we weren't sure how much religion was really going to factor in or not. And we've been surprised that it really hasn't factored in as much as we expected. You know, I think there, there are a few faiths that still tend to prefer burial to cremation. And, and if you face that, you know, if you're really kind of following the book, then you're burying, you know, but we saw the Catholic Church actually, you know, say give cremation, its blessing. And that was a huge cultural shift. You know, we see families of the Jewish faith tend to bury their loved ones, but they cremate their pets and so they come to us to do a diamond for their pet, for example. So I think we're just at this total, you know, kind of crossing point where there's just a lot of change that's happening and and I think it's going to look radically different even in the next five years is, you know, people are more willing and open to do cremations when maybe their entire family in the past buried for

Mike Gelb 5:57 one of the kind of like the main areas that you're kind of focus on that you think that in terms of differentiation and changing the actual death care space?

Adelle Archer 6:05 Well, and by the way, one thing that I wrote, I really should know as well is that we can do this from the, from the carbon in someone's hair as well. So somebody that is being buried, they can still do this process. You don't necessarily need to have ashes to do it. When you look across the entire death care space, and you pull really anybody that's kind of gone through it, a lot of the time, it's a certain kind of tone. And it's the experience that you have with, you know, different service providers or you know, different just kind of at every touchpoint across that experience, that it can be dark and overwhelming. And you know, in some cases depressing and I think a turn of A is really a massive departure from all of that we're very bright, or positive or celebratory, you know, we're never tone deaf. But I think there is always some levity to be had we talk about, you know, we're unafraid to Talk about somebody that passed away, but really focus on how to celebrate their life. And oftentimes, when our customer, you know, first talks to us about this process, we're not telling them about diamonds to start, we're saying like, hey, like, tell us about your loved one and what made them extraordinary. And that's like, the first time they've been asked that question, which is crazy. And so I think that there's just something really special that we're doing from everything from kind of the customer experience and service side all the way through to the brand side. You know, we have this kind of vibrant conversation that's happening on our social media, we're getting higher engagement rates, then Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift on a topic that's supposed to be really hard to talk about. So I think it really is kind of opening up that conversation and changing a culture around death, grief and remembrance, you know, from a brand side and this is a community you want to be a part of. And then on the experience side, it's really giving people you know, kind of a very special experience around the diamond that you know, will parallel process with their grief of it.

Mike Gelb 7:57 You You alluded to a little bit but you No, even though what you're doing is extremely positive. It's still obviously a very sensitive topic and wanted to know, you know, how are you thinking about weight, especially at the early stages? How do you think about marketing?

Adelle Archer 8:13 You know, this is certainly a huge part, I think of what has been a successful as we figured this out, you know, early on, one of our first investments we ever made was actually in our brand identity. This was back when we were like bootstrapping, and every dollar like really, really counted where we put that money. And I remember that was like, the first major investment we ever made was developing a brand book, but I think that's really important to be very to know what your identity is, as a company and what you know, you're really here to do. And for us, you know, starting out, we talked about remembering remarkable people, because that behind every diamond is an extraordinary person that you know, you're coming to us because they earned that diamond in some amazing way. So everything that we did you know, from us PR standpoint, from a social media, you know, advertising standpoint, was really telling the hero story of these remarkable people. It's not talking about ourselves, it's not talking about ashes to diamonds. You know, that's interesting. But I think, you know, what's more powerful is, is kind of humanizing these people. And that's something that people can really lean into, and they can find their loved one story, you know, in someone else's story. And we just found that those stories started catching fire, you know, and that became kind of our flywheel on social media is, you know, you put a video out there, and then it would just go and get shared like crazy, you know, across these tribes of people that, you know, say, Oh my gosh, my dad was just like that, you know, I are, so and so's dad was just like that she should do this, you know, for her dad who just passed. So I think authenticity is very key. And, you know, kind of anchoring yourself around what is the you know, bigger purpose that you're doing is a brand because that resonates with people and they'll talk about it.

Mike Gelb 9:57 That makes sense. And it seems like that was probably Part of the missing factor that you were seeing when you first tried to do this, it's talking a little bit about what's been the most like surprising and unexpected insight, or learning that you've that you've had an ability it turned out so far.

Adelle Archer 10:12 I mean, I definitely like we learned so much from our customers we very much are a company in a brand that's built on being incredibly close to our customer, and just always looking for ways we can add value and innovate based off of what we know. And, you know, one of the things that really blew us away early on, like this is a very intricate process. On average, our diamonds take about seven months to create. It's completely, you know, a custom made diamond