A few years ago, Sam Gerstenzang sat in a funeral home after the death of his grandfather. Gerstenzang’s family was asked to choose between “Silver, Gold, or Platinum” packages. The pricing was ambiguous, the logistics were overwhelming, and the final result felt like a generic, expensive commodity that failed to represent the man his grandfather actually was.
In that moment, “you’re in a very tough spot mentally and emotionally,” Gerstenzang recalled about the experience. “To feel taken advantage of — and then feel that the person you love isn’t being honored the way they should — it’s not a good feeling.”
The experience left the serial entrepreneur so disappointed that he felt compelled to offer others in similar situations better options. So in January 2024, he teamed up with Emma Gilsanz to launch New York-based Meadow Memorials, which describes itself as a “contemporary funeral home without the home.”
When a person is overcome with grief, making so many decisions related to what is often the biggest unplanned purchase of many people’s lives can be daunting. Meadow aims to make it as simple as possible by allowing families to arrange funerals over the phone or online. The startup also partners with a curated set of venues so funerals can happen, for example, at a wedding venue that’s only booked on Saturday nights or at a local chapel rather than a funeral home.
“Because we’re software-enabled and not stuck in the way things used to be, we can offer honest pricing and unmatched hospitality,” Gerstenzang told Crunchbase News in an interview.
Meadow recently raised a $9 million Series A funding round led by Lachy Groom and Haystack, following a $2 million seed round in 2024, it told Crunchbase News exclusively. Uniquely, the initial capital for both Meadow and Moxie came from the founders’ own permanent capital firm, Boulton & Watt, a vehicle they use to lead their own seed rounds.
Lower costs, more software
Meadow operates by stripping away the most expensive part of the business: the real estate. By forgoing physical storefronts and using software for administrative tasks, Meadow claims it can offer dramatically lower prices.
The national median cost of a funeral with a viewing and burial in 2023 was $8,300, while the median cost of a funeral with cremation was $6,280, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.
Meadow says that its services are significantly more affordable. A typical funeral can cost around just $1,300, according to Gerstenzang.
“There are a lot of markups on coffins [at funeral homes], because of the increased rate of cremation,” he explains. “So a lot of funeral homes really want you to do a burial. They want you to do an elaborate service because that’s how they make their money. And there’s a ton of markup embedded in that.”
From fintech to funerals
Gerstenzang is no stranger to scaling complex systems. An alumnus of payments giant Stripe, where he led product teams for consumer payments, he and Gilsanz in 2022 also co-founded Moxie, which helps nurses open medspas. In founding both companies, Gerstenzang has noticed a pattern: highly regulated markets that impact millions of people but haven’t seen meaningful innovation in decades.
In the funeral industry, he saw a landscape dominated by private-equity rollups. He claims that some large corporations buy up local family funeral homes, keep the original names on the doors to build false trust, and then quietly hike prices.
Meadow’s business model seems to be resonating. The company grew its revenue 3x from 2024 to 2025 and is on track to triple it again in 2026, according to Gerstenzang. The company worked with more than 400 families in February alone, he said.
After becoming the largest independent funeral home in California, the company recently expanded into Texas and Washington, with Arizona and five other states on the horizon this year.
Today, nearly a third of Meadow’s business comes from “pre-planning” – from people who, for example, have just navigated the process of burying their own parents, and want to spare their children the same burden. It also offers both a direct cremation and a funeral, depending on a family’s wishes.
“We fundamentally care about the quality of what we do,” Gerstenzang said. “We believe we can actually increase quality as we scale because our software allows our team to spend their time working directly with customers, rather than dealing with paperwork the same way it’s been done for 50 years.”
Semil Shah, founder and general partner at Meadow investor Haystack, noted that that his firm was also among the earliest investors in DoorDash and Instacart.
Backing ‘broken, unsexy’ industries
“We know when there’s a broken, unsexy industry that hasn’t adapted to serve the modern consumer,” he wrote via email. “Meadow’s combination of software operations with unmatched hospitality is exactly what the deathcare industry needs and what families deserve.”
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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