Betterleave to Expand to 12 States Following $2.4M Funding Round

The bereavement care tech company Betterleave has secured $2.4 million in a funding round led by Chingona Ventures.

Austin-based Betterleave Bereavement launched as a venture capital-backed startup in March 2022. The company’s bereavement care platform is designed as a benefit that companies can offer their employees who have lost a loved one, a pregnancy or a pet. The company also partners with hospices to bring this service to grieving families.

The recent infusion of capital will finance further development of Betterleave’s technology as well as fuel multistate growth, according to the company’s co-founder and CEO, Cara McCarty Abbott.

“We’re going to think about the evolution of the product and new features that we think are interesting and specifically how those features can impact the three major groups that we work with — payers, provider groups and the members themselves within our platform,” Abbott told Hospice News. “I think each one of those focus areas is going to get a significant investment to make sure that not only we’re delivering high quality care and measuring evidence-based outcomes, but that we’re also providing value across each of those three ecosystem chains.” 

The investment firms Bread and Butter Ventures, Vitalize VC, Coyote Ventures, Wisdom Ventures Fund also participated in the new funding round, as did AARP.

The Betterleave platform provides families with access to care coordinators and death care experts, as well as products and services designed to reduce the burden that accompany those losses. This includes assistance with funerals, memorials and estate services, financial planning and integrated grief care resources.

With the new investment dollars, the company plans to develop an analytics tool or dashboard designed to enable providers and payers to track outcomes across their patient or member populations.

“If you’re a really large hospice group provider and you really want to know the impact of your bereavement program, we can give you a one-stop shop view and a snapshot of the impact,” Abbott said. ”What’s the well-being? What’s the engagement? What’s the utilization? We can really give insights into what people are viewing and what’s having the most impact that each provider group can have on those members.”

Betterleave also plans to roll out personalized care plans tailored to each member’s bereavement experience and their needs. The plans would be based on data gathered by tools within the platform.

As Betterleave has grown, the company has developed a rising number of partnerships with hospices, health systems and insurance companies. Betterleave is in-network with Humana (NYSE: HUM), Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, Aetna, Cigna and UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH).

The organization’s co-founders are among a small but growing number of entrepreneurs seeking to revolutionize bereavement care through technology.

This budding industry includes a number of rapidly expanding companies of varying size and scale. Some, like Betterleave, have secured millions in investor backing. Others have emerged from the grass roots.

While consumers can access the platform nationwide, to date, Betterleave’s clients and partners have been concentrated mostly in the company’s home state of Texas. Now, armed with additional capital, the company is poised to expand to 12 additional states.

“This injection is going to take us and 5x our scale and our growth into more of a national presence,” Abbott said. “We’re really excited to be able to support some of those organizations that are waiting for us to get those payer contracts in place, and so this [funding round] is going to help expedite that.”