Today one of our investments went live with their site and I am really excited for the team. I had a chance to back Woody Levin, the founder, a few years back over a dinner at Henry’s Hunan in San Francisco. I passed and Woody built a great business that was purchased by $IGT. He did not hold a grudge and even invested in our first fund Social Leverage. In fact, we ate at Henry’s Hunan together last night! When he presented Estate Assist, Tom (my partner) and I immediately got it and invested. He raised enough capital from a diverse group of investors to get Estate Assist in the public hands and cut some amazing partnerships for distribution, including PerkSpot and WeWork. I love this whole service and it feels much like Lifelock did in 2006 when I wrote that check.
There is some great press today with the launch from TechCrunch and Pando. As for the description of the Company, I will use the words straight from the team:
Estate Assist Launches to Help Everyone Get Organized, Prepared, and Protected
Estate Assist stores and organizes financial, digital, and personal information with bank level encryption and identity theft protection
San Francisco, CA — October 1, 2014 — Estate Assist, which launches today, provides a complete solution for safekeeping and organization of online assets and important life documents, and provides a backup for our collective poor memory about where our assets are—and who gets them if something should happen to us.
While the digital age has created massive amounts of personal online account information, there is no clear way to safely store, organize or even remember the details of our digital lives. Just think of what’s needed at any given moment: passwords and logins for email, cloud storage, social media accounts, health records, banking and other online databases. For most of us, offline storage of important documents is equally disorganized. Could you easily find your will, insurance policies, financial documents, children’s birth certificates, social security card, mortgage or rental agreements?
This information overload has created a national memory loss crisis. According to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA), in 2011 there was over $41.7 billion waiting to be claimed, and by 2013, that number had risen to $58 billion.
“I had the idea for Estate Assist when I watched my father struggling to find paperwork after my grandmother passed away,” said Estate Assist Founder and CEO, Woodrow Levin. “I decided there had to be a better way for all of us to organize our assets. Then it occurred to me that it’s not just end-of-life critical to have fast access to key information—it’s day-to-day critical for all of us, at any age, to have one safe place to store our assets and important documents Estate Assist wants to help simplify life planning, so we can all spend more time just living.”
Estate Assist uses bank level security methods while storing members’ financial assets, digital assets, and important life documents with its Estate Assist Safe product. Estate Assist Safe gives members one place to store copies of everything, and the ability to easily designate trusted recipients with whom they can share their information immediately or at a later time. “We wanted to make sure that you could add a spouse, son or daughter, best friend or even an attorney or accountant to your Estate Assist Safe so that if anything unforeseen happened or you were out of touch—on deployment for example—there would be an easy way to access your important papers and account login information,” Levin said. “You have absolute control over when to share your information, and how much information you want to share.”
Along with Estate Assist Safe, members also have the option to sign up for Estate Assist Safe Plus, which includes comprehensive identity theft protection and full service identity restoration. According to Ponemon Institute’s research for CNN money, up to 432 million personal accounts have been hacked in the past year, with 47% of U.S. adults having been victims of personal information exposure. To combat this growing criminal trend, Estate Assist secures members’ financial and credit information with a $1 million Estate Guard Guarantee.
Estate Assist has partnered with PerkSpot (used by Yahoo, Chevron, Walgreens, Southwest Airlines and more) and their 1.2 million employees to offer Estate Assist as a preferred benefit option, and WeWork has provided each one of their over 15,000 members with their own Estate Assist Safe. Additional partners include employee benefits company Spotlite, the benefit solution company BenefitHub (Dell, Costco, Sprint Citi, Verizon), the 4 million military and first responder members of ID.me, and Optima, which is offering Estate Assist as a paid benefit for employees.
“Key moments in life bring increased responsibilities,” Levin said. “Whether it’s marriage, a new baby, retirement, a work transfer overseas or military deployment, the most important thing each one of us can do is to keep our financial assets, digital assets, and important documents safe and secure—and when we want, make those documents easily accessible to our loved ones. Estate Assist is here to help everyone get organized, prepared and protected.”
Estate Assist offers memberships with a 30 day free trial at sign-up. After the free introductory period, members pay $4.95 per month for Estate Assist Safe and $9.95 per month for Estate Assist Safe Plus with identity theft protection.
About Estate Assist
Estate Assist offers a life planning and identity theft solution that includes the secure storage of important personal, financial and digital assets that can be accessed and updated at any time, and shared with designated trustees or family members. Estate Assist is helping everyone prepare for tomorrow, today. The company is based in San Francisco, CA. Learn more at estateassist.com.
The post Estate Assist – Get It Now. appeared first on Trends... Find them, ride them and get off..
