Michael Eisenberg 

Tell us about Empathy, what you set out to do and where you're at right now and why you think it's so important.

Ron Gura 

Empathy is the friend you wish you had. When you lose a loved one. That's what we want it to be. And that's what we're building. We understand it's a very lonely moment in life, by definition just lost a loved one. And we want to help with the full range of grief and estate needs. And we don't think you can decouple the two. We strongly believe that grief is made hard by logistics, and logistics are made so much harder by grief. So you have to come up with one comprehensive solution that will be both your headspace for grief, but also TurboTax for Estate Settlement, because you eventually want to save people time and money and headaches. And if we do that, then we take this inescapable part of life, and we're humanizing it will make loss a little bit less hard. Hi, I'm Ron Gura. I'm co-founder and CEO at Empathy, and my core value is empathy.

Michael Eisenberg 

What a surprise. It is a pleasure to introduce to Invested Ron Gura, co-founder and CEO of empathy. at.com. Rod is a tech entrepreneur who has brought his love for developing empowering products to startups and major international corporations. As Senior Vice President at WeWork he oversaw a global r&d center of 250 team members responsible for the tools and systems that help the company scale operationally. Previously, Ron served as an entrepreneur in residence right here at off. Prior to that Ron served as a product director and general manager at eBay, leading its business incubation organization, Ron joined eBay as a result of the 2011 acquisition of the gifts project, a social commerce startup, where he served as co-founder and CEO. Ron, welcome to Invested.

Ron Gura 

Thank you. It's great to be here.

Michael Eisenberg 

It's great to have you back in the office. By the way, I couldn't remember they asked me, How do we know each other? By the look on your face, you're also not sure how we know each other.

Ron Gura 

I remember the first meeting. It was definitely here on the Boulevard. And you were definitely with that iconic scarf

Michael Eisenberg 

on Rothschild Boulevard. So it must be in the winter, but I don't know,

Ron Gura 

you know, who technically made the introduction. I'm gonna guess it's Eden, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna look up this. I'm gonna look this up later.

Michael Eisenberg 

You still have your calendar from back then?

Ron Gura 

Yeah, I can do it. Yeah. Wow. That's

Michael Eisenberg 

impressive. Okay, so we started here on the Boulevard, and you joined? You know, before we get that, what would you say are kind of the core values broadly that animate you.

Ron Gura 

Now, use the word empathy, not just as a brand, but as a core value. But I do think it has a lot of virtues. It's not just about compassion, or about kindness, I think it's about putting yourself in someone else's shoes. And that translation of empathy, I wear very comfortably, because it's also about product. It's also about talent acquisition.

Michael Eisenberg 

But what about product and talent acquisition has to do with empathy.

Ron Gura 

So the basic of every product manager, every designer, is to put yourself in the customer's shoes, like say you're working on a web page on a mobile app design, even writing content for the CTA on a button. What would the consumer feel? What would the consumer understand what type of concerns they might have, at this stage? What information is lacking? So the ability to imitate someone else's thought process is very productive, and very helpful for sales, for hiring, for design, for product management, but eventually it's a very simple human ability.

Michael Eisenberg 

Not everybody has that trait of being able to kind of put themselves in somebody else's shoes. You know, the rabbi's famously say that one should not judge their fellow until you've been in their place, and most of us haven't been in our fellows' place yet. How do you develop the ability to when you call empathy and in your own interpretation to to put yourself in somebody else's shoes to the point you can develop products for them, you understand what they're thinking when you recruit them? Where does it come from?

Ron Gura 

I think to be honest, it's very self serving as a young, short child. You use different things that you come across to get what you will Want. So as the youngest brother, or the shortest kid in, in the class or so you understand like you need to find your angle in order to really influence the situation. A lot of people take that to humor. And that's how they get attention, or get what they want, eventually, they can't have the most force or the most influence. I think, if I'm over analyzing it, that a young child understands, I can anticipate what's in it for someone or what would motivate them. And of course, completely different jargon, it would not be about us talking about conducting business, but it would be like hope, what he really wants is to be the goalkeeper. Oh, what this kid really wants is just to be included, doesn't really matter if he's getting this is getting the blue collar or not, or whatever that is. I think it was self serving, it was a tool, it was a tool, I need to improve in order to have more influence about this situation.

Michael Eisenberg 

So is it a value or tool?

Ron Gura 

I think empathy is a value and you break it down. It has components, tools, and virtues.

Michael Eisenberg 

Does it have vices ever also, what's that? Does it have vices ever also, like, you know, it's a tool and you can kind of figure out what people want you can manipulate people to right?

Ron Gura 

Yeah, I guess in a way, the sales oriented approach of putting yourself in someone else's shoes is about manipulation. But manipulation, of course, should be authentic in a way that it's also only playing with the weights, and not with the essence.

Michael Eisenberg 

Yeah, I think that's a really important point. By the way, I've always thought that you were very authentic. As a person, we'll come to talk about that more, we talk about empathy. But that line of what you know, you call the weights rather than essence or degree, versus what the foundational principle is, is a hard line. And by the way, it's getting harder, I think, as the world evolves, because there's so much more polarization out there. So how do you figure out, like when you're putting yourself in somebody else's shoes, shoes and trying to get at something, whether you've crossed the line? Is it just a degree, you know, the weights or

Ron Gura 

think there's a very clear red line? If you need to remember what was said? Or if you keep notes in to say, oh, that's what that's the number I gave them or that was that was the thing I said, then it's the essence was not true.

Michael Eisenberg 

That's great, that's a great heuristic.

Ron Gura 

Because then it's basically not authentic anymore. You're just messing with something to create a new reality. And I think a lot of early time, early stage founders, by definition, are doing sales across the board and overstepped that, that line. Now, I actually want to ask you, you meet tons of early stage founders. Some of them are better communicators than others. But you also get to judge them in a way in the kind of test of time and see a year later, not if they succeeded in doing what they said, but if they meant it. So how do you judge it when someone says, I'm going to build this thing, but I'm never going to compromise on X, Y, and Z? Or I'm going to get this executive to join me because I'm going to promise them XYZ. So when you see it, you want the founder to be successful in that transaction. But where's your line?

Michael Eisenberg 

First of all, it is really difficult. That's the first thing. And by the way, I thought I was interviewing you and not not not the opposite. But okay, it's a conversation. The element of trust is so critical. And building a startup is so critical, I think in the investor entrepreneur relationships, that you know, when somebody oversteps the line in what I would call the heat of the moment, perhaps because it's kind of such a roller coaster, these startups versus I missed something in their personality. When I first invested, look, you don’t have endless amounts of time to make investment decisions. And I consider myself a reasonably good early judge of character. But we don't get it right all the time. We get it wrong sometimes, and this is a pressurized environment, and people also perform differently when the pressure heats up. There's a famous line from the rabbis who says we don't judge a person because so which means in his cuppa or when he's drunk Vicki so and in his pocket, meaning when he's under financial stress who because so in his anger when he's angry, I actually think you actually learn a lot in those circumstances and that we can judge people because when they're under extreme pressure, oftentimes the true person comes out the kind of true essence of the person comes out. And, you know, one slip up is one thing, multiple slip ups is a fraying of trust, and that ultimately goes sideways. But you know, interestingly, you, you, you're an empathy guy, and now your company's called empathy, which we'll come back to, but your first company was called the gifts project, which is also something empathetic people wanting to give gifts to others. Where did the idea for the gifts project come from? And why did you start with gifts?

Ron Gura 

So for the gift project, it was very straightforward. My sister in law was living in California at the time with my brother. And she was learning more about the let's call it westernize, gifting culture, wedding showers and baby registries and a lot of things we just don't have here at all. And she came up with an early version of the need to do a many to one versus just many too many. And that was basically a core, an early version of what later became group gifting. And I do feel like gifting is a beautiful, ancient it's a it's a beautiful thing that has been around since the Romans. And it's something that was never unlocked.

Michael Eisenberg 

Why is gifting important?

Ron Gura 

Because it shows customization, it shows you care.

Michael Eisenberg 

Really, maybe it just shows that I feel obliged to give you a gift. A lot of it is I think that's kind of the whole cultural element showers. Really a shower, another another one, right, where I got even engaged in giving presents, and the honeymoon. I mean, really,

There's a good point there. I feel like, by the way, I'll tell when I was getting married, they told me, you know, there's the engagement ring in his wedding ring. And then there was this whole thing, the Orthodox Jewish world of New York, which was, you know, and you get a watch from the inlaws. And you get to this and you have to get the wife looked at this, this is nuts. Like, why does your force gifting that's doesn't show anything,

Ron Gura 

especially because financially it becomes a burden. Yeah. And they, the people who make up the benchmarks, are incentivized to say you should invest X amount of salaries or, you know, why amount of money. But when you kind of summarize everything I know about gifting into, you know, just maybe one under one minute, I would say there's definitely a spectrum, with maybe a few dimensions here. That is about how liquid it is? Is it? Is it cash? Is it an Amazon gift card? Is it a gift with our return policy? Or is it something DIY that you made? And how personalized is it? Is it something I made? Think think think about like the most iconic, Western visual of gifting. A young child walks down the stairs, usually in an American movie, it's Christmas. And they see the Christmas tree and a lot of gifts. And he opens up the big box. And he sees something that is father handmade for them. For example, that would be the perfect example of a scheduled triggered, personalized surprise gift. You can still take some elements of this like it's not it's a gift, but it's not a surprise. It's a gift. But I'm asking you for your size first. It's a gift, but it's actually cash. And it will still be a gift. What I've learned in a few years working on this is if you change more than one thing, then the mind does not see this as a gift anymore. Interesting. You can say it's a gift, but it's not just from me. It's a few of us. It's a gift, but I want to tell you, I'm buying it for you. But once it's like too many things connected. It's becoming this, like you said, a transaction of cultures.

Michael Eisenberg 

You sold the business to eBay. It's fair to say it wasn't a great business. Is that fair? Yeah, it was a good idea but not a great business is that yeah, we

Ron Gura 

were doing nice revenue but most of it was from eBay, right million dollar in revenue for early stage, but it was from I think 850,000 was coming from the acquirer. So

Michael Eisenberg 

Gifting turns out to be a hard business. Like there's been a bunch of attempts at this from, you know, gift cards and gift card breakage. I think there's something called like something monkey at some point, right? First Round Capital back,

Ron Gura 

and Karma

Michael Eisenberg 

Karma. There's been a bunch of these, and they turn out not to be great venture backed businesses.

Ron Gura 

Why? Well, I'm still getting, you know, every few months, one of the venture capitalists that he's hearing gifting pitches with, I remember a guy that had something I'll give him a call, by the way, sometimes from your partners here at Aleph, as well. And it's interesting, I think it's still unlocked. 

Michael Eisenberg 

You think it's unlocked or still locked? I mean, it still needs to be unlocked?

Ron Gura 

That's the essence. I think it's a problem. I'm not sure it needs to be solved, though. Interesting. As founders, it's not enough to just look for a great problem. You need to find something that needs to be solved. And ideally, there's more than one reason why you need to solve it, more than just financial reasons. But it's actually meaningful, it's actually moving the needle. I think gifting should be messy. It should be messy. Yeah, you should think hard.

Michael Eisenberg 

I don't want human interactions to be messy, right? So, therefore, we shouldn't look for a technological solution, an easy solution.

Ron Gura 

Usually, you want to take the mundane parts of transacting or shipping or packaging, and maybe those you can automate. But the thought process, like, 'What should Michael appreciate now when he's sick at home and I want to surprise him?' That should be me thinking hard, thinking messy. The second it becomes a one-click button, it's not going to be as meaningful to you either, because you're going to know. So I am hoping that all these showy and just flashy gifts would gradually decline in excitement, even though I'm not sure that's the trend. And people will be more authentic about gifting as well. But I don't think it's a problem that needs to be solved right now.

Michael Eisenberg 

That's actually a great segue. I'm not much of a gifting guy. It's not my thing. And I'm bad at it. My wife would say I'm terrible at them. I forget to give people gifts. We have wedding gifts that probably haven't been given. She's very good at it, so it's excellent that they say you always have to marry the opposite.

Ron Gura 

Yes, a strong average.

Michael Eisenberg 

No.

Ron Gura 

Well, in the house, you need a strong after

Michael Eisenberg 

The house is showing average. Yeah, I think it's almost fair to say that you've been, in your family of companies, focused on life events. Gifting happens around life events. And now Empathy.com, or Empathy, which is focused not on death, but on some level, after death, as opposed to afterlife. By the way, this is not something metaphysical. This is really about the real hard messiness and complexity in humanity for next of kin dealing with the passing of a loved one. Why are you so drawn to these life events?

Ron Gura 

I think that as humans, we need a common denominator. What's the biggest common denominator in terms of a human story, other than birth, and loss? That's the one single thing that is inescapable, that we're all going to have. And that makes life events, including some that most of us will have, not all of us, like a wedding, or our own child, etc., really good stories and really meaningful moments of truth. And I think a moment of truth, like a birth or a loss, a life transition basically, has a lot of emotion. And that makes it not just very meaningful, but also a great story that a lot of people want to be part of."

Michael Eisenberg 

So, when we first sat down to talk about empathy on the porch over here, just outside, I think you said to me, "It seems like you're probably not going to want to be a part of this because it's dealing with an unpleasant topic. And by the way, had you come to me about gifts, I would have thought, 'I don't want to be a part of this.' But trying to help people cope with loss feels like a much better and more important mission for a company." This really kind of speaks to the point you made earlier about stuff that is routine, but messy should be automated, while stuff that is authentic or needs to be authentic, should be handled in a more human manner. I think I also said at the time that this is the perfect case for a company. There's this phrase, I go back to the rabbis again, there's only one thing, this is called in Hebrew "lessons Shall I met", which is kindness, which is truthful, authentic, which is how you help deal with loss and people who pass away because they can't return the favor, ever. And so, I was immediately taken by this difficult idea. By the way, parenthetically, the other thing Ron obsessed about, other than next of kin dealing with loss, was elevators. But that's for a different time, maybe. So tell us about Empathy, what you set out to do, and where you're at right now, and why you think it's so important.

Ron Gura 

Empathy is the friend you wish you had when you lose a loved one. That's what we want it to be. And that's what we're building. We understand it's a very lonely moment in life, by definition, you've just lost a loved one. And we want to help with the full range of grief and estate needs. And we don't think you can decouple the two. We strongly believe that grief is made hard by logistics, and logistics are made so much harder by grief. So, you have to come up with one comprehensive solution that will be both your headspace for grief but also TurboTax for estate settlement. Because you eventually want to save people time and money and headaches. And if we do that, then we take this inescapable part of life, and we humanize it, we make it, we make loss, a little bit less hard, it's always going to be hard. You and I, and you know, some of our best friends run companies that are fun, and perky. They're pink, they're purple. They're flashy, they're funny, and I love those companies. We don't get to be that, we get to be the serious, complicated, messy, human, but hopefully, extremely empowering brand that is helping you in your most challenging moments when really like, you're basically facing not just the terrible loss, but also in a way you're contemplating your own self mortality. You understand in a way, let's say you lost a parent, something about us. It's acknowledging the fact that in many ways we are next. And there's something about that, and God forbid, unnatural loss that is even harder. In Hebrew, it has its own words, because it's so, so different than the natural life cycle. So that's what we set out to do. And you know, painful words. It has more painful words about the unnatural losses of children or siblings, right? 

‍

Michael Eisenberg 

‍

Maybe, yeah.

Ron Gura 

And in our specific case, as a nation, it's also our national pathos library. That's, that's who we are. And that's what we do. And it's very different than Memorial Day, like in many other countries.

Michael Eisenberg 

So take a second and just describe as an empathetic product manager, how you went through thinking what can be automated and what needed to be humanated. And how you kind of couple and decouple at times the grief and the logistics in a digital product. I mean, it's a digital product.

Ron Gura 

At the end of the day. They're not equals. So the emotional part comes first. And at the end of the day, when you need to choose a brand. It's not it's not you know,

Michael Eisenberg 

It's a turbotax. It's not turbo probate. Exactly. Yeah.

Ron Gura 

The first thing is acknowledging the situation, building a soothing workflow that is not adding more questions and adding more noise and more colors and more flashy items to your situation. It's all about taking it down. And understanding that things need to be very clear, but at the same time, many people don't want you know, too much fluff and too much emotional support, they really have an, you know, a set of tasks they need to get through in order to re engage with life. And the biggest help you can have is if you can be short, in frequent and accurate, and it's that broad array of needs. That is really the challenge from a product standpoint, how do you solve for both? And in a nutshell, I would say you want to take away the paperwork as much as possible. prefilled documents, don't ask the same question twice. Just kind of tell anyone's approach and leave time for the things that matter the most spending time with the family, just doing mobilization. Understanding what needs to happen and processing everything.

Michael Eisenberg 

You spent time, highly unusually, before launching the product, engaging the brand agency, everything down to the color scheme. You even invented a typeface? My memory is correct, right? I was on the board, we had to prove that. Why did you do that, like you invented a typeface for empathy?

Ron Gura 

Why? I think there are not too many companies taking a brand first approach. Thinking of Tel Aviv we barely see any of those. I would give our friends at lemonade a shout out and say I view them as a brand first company, I'm not sure that's how Daniel and Shai would describe it. And they definitely have a lot of deep technology. But the first thing you say is, this is who we are. And the reason you need to do that, in an area like end of life, is because the biggest force in this ecosystem is a version that is stronger than anything else, stronger than engraved, stronger than the paperwork. The reason that most of the vast majority of people don't do estate planning is just trying not to contemplate end of life decisions. Nobody wants to deal with it. Nobody wants to deal with it, nobody wants to

Michael Eisenberg 

pay is it's painful, because

Ron Gura 

it's, it's telling you that it doesn't matter. It's like it's reminding all of us that we're just human mortals. And we can't play the game of grief and of greed and, and fear. If we remember that. This is all just for a few more years. And it's very important to be able to deny it. It's a great force of human nature. And at the same time, it's a taboo topic. And taboo topics should be broken. Every single one of the taboo if you don't speak about problem, it doesn't mean it's gonna people suffer

Michael Eisenberg 

in silence from it. They suffer from their grief and silences suffer from the logistical hell. That is the paperwork, the probate, getting money out of locked bank accounts shutting down social

Ron Gura 

probate is crazy. If you Google probate, you're getting like, can I avoid probate? What is probate? Do I really need to go through probate? People hate it, it's just another year. And it's just a terrible process. If we, you know, you have probably, you know, tons of apps on your phone right now that will help you get stuff done. And I can probably choose one out of five apps to get a ride back to my office or five apps to get dinner tonight. But at the same time, we're not using all these workflows for such a big moment, big moment in life. Like, think about, break it down taxes. Technology is great for taxes. prefilling forms great, we do it every day, collaborating with other people on a complicated task, great, terrific workflows.

Michael Eisenberg 

And here you have multiple next of kin, oftentimes, you need to collaborate with

Ron Gura 

siblings and other family members and lawyers. And so why not just because it's a taboo topic, and we're not speaking about it, we're not going to leverage all the knowledge and capabilities and workflows that are already out there. And couple that couple those into a beneficiary next of kin oriented. next of kin centric product that can eventually save people time and money. Just put

Michael Eisenberg 

some numbers in this how many people die in the United States every day? 

Ron Gura 

Day would be 10,000. Give or take 10,000 people die a day. 

Michael Eisenberg 

By the way, I think a friend of ours at JP Morgan told me that JP Morgan loses something like 200 employees a day or some crazy number like that. It was 200 customers. I can't remember what it was. It was a large number.

Ron Gura 

Think. Yeah, I definitely don't want to recall the wrong number here. But I would say it's closer to 2000 customers a day. A day. That would make sense because Right. What's the market share for JPMorgan? Let's say 20% Give or take out of the 10,000. That's 2000 times a day that someone's going to knock on a door and say, You know what? I'm not a customer. But my dad was and I need to close the bank account. For example,

Michael Eisenberg 

How long does it take normally?

Ron Gura 

It's like 18 months median,

Michael Eisenberg 

18 months and how much money do you Assuming as locked in these accounts in the interim period when people are trying to shut down the accounts of somebody who passed away,

Ron Gura 

oh, they, then they, of course, their averages don't help here, right? Because it's, it's, it could be anything from nothing to millions. But at the end of the day, it's how much money you spend. We speak so much about the cost of living and the rise, the rising cost of living, but we hardly speak or give any thought to the cost of dying. When it's not a surprise at all, that we're going to need that money, not just for the immediate arrangements, and the lawyers and process processing and moving the house. And it's basically going to be a nice five digit number that an average American family is going to spend, they don't have that money on average, like it's very difficult.

Michael Eisenberg 

How many cell phone accounts do you think Verizon or AT and T needs to shut down today from people who died?

Ron Gura 

I would keep it at the same as the top of the envelope calculation. Say, let's say Verizon has 25% market share. 18 t, I think has something like that as well give or take 30% 25%. So it would be something like 3000 phone calls a day that have no substance, no upsell, nothing good is going to come out of those conversations, it's going to be Hey, where's John? Like, now I told you John's not here, I need the credentials. Now I don't have the credentials. Like it just any technology can

Michael Eisenberg 

help with this, obviously, instead of having a human being so

Ron Gura 

these, these calls should never happen. Right? And definitely not for 42 vendors on average. So for example, did

Michael Eisenberg 

your vendors and accounts have to be shut down per person who passes away, on average, on average,

Ron Gura 

They have a lot more. But a lot of those just you know, people just keep going and it doesn't matter

Michael Eisenberg 

and the next of kin to people who survive, spend, what's the average amount of time there's been doing this for 120

Ron Gura 

hours, on winding down the affairs of the loved one, and I'm putting aside anything that is emotional, because that's just, yeah, grief has no timeline. And it's very different for different people.

Michael Eisenberg 

Now, you hired a Chief grief officer, David Kessler literally wrote the book on grief. That's an odd decision for a technology company that generally focuses on efficiency like and it's embedded in the app, many of his short podcasts on grief,

Ron Gura 

we couldn't be prouder to have a domain expert on grief and loss. Like David, taking an active executive role at the company. He literally wrote the books with Kubler Ross, on the stages of grief and finding meaning.

Michael Eisenberg 

And people spend time listening to these podcasts. A lot of time,

Ron Gura 

A lot of our engaged users are spending time, basically re engaging with life in a way in finding purpose and meaning. A lot of that is audio, like you mentioned, but also a lot of it is long form. People have a lot of questions when they lose a loved one. And right next to, you know, using our tools to deactivate accounts, or find out if they deserve money from Social Security or the veteran administration or automate another process. They then flip hats, usually for an hour usually at night. And then they read about grief and gender. And they listen to audio about grief and guilt. And people have a lot of questions

Michael Eisenberg 

stuff as we like to call it, a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff. So I want to kind of toggle on this issue of authenticity, humanity technology, what works to get something done and you know, clear my clutter or my paperwork, get that account deactivated. And I need my headspace and I need some help to grieve. So you launched a little service, which was chat GPT or AI, artificial intelligence to write obituaries and write these little things that people write for their loved ones. And when you call me tell me, you're gonna do that. I said, Oh, this is interesting. It will be a less authentic obituary, and you said something really fast? And you said, there's a lot of mental overhead in writing an obituary, and maybe if we can lessen that a bit. And so I mentioned both sides of this, which is, what was your thought process in launching AI, or chat GPT for obits. And the other side of it is that people actually react and say, Oh, thanks for listening to my burden or they say, this is not really who my mother or father or uncle was.

Ron Gura 

So, an obituary is a small yet meaningful part of the first chapter of winding down someone's affairs, everything about the immediate arrangements informing others. For the ceremony, the eulogy, they of course, will be cheering. And it's really just a portion of what we do and what we look at. But we did notice at our enterprise Premium accounts that get professional content writers to help them write the obituary and make sure they're happy with a perfect, ready to be published piece. What you really need to do is improve the input. And that is really great for AI. AI is really good. The AI output is as good as the input. If you ask Chet GPT, for example, a simple question, it's not going to be as good as if you're getting a more detailed one. And what makes a good obituary, at least in the American format, is making sure you haven't forgotten the basics, like Did he serve in the military? Did he leave anyone behind? Did you have any meaningful hobbies? In education, etc. So what we did is we took our regular enterprise offering and we sliced and diced a small part of it, and made that as a freebie for everyone to lower the barrier and democratize access to grief in that sense. Exactly. Because what you said, it looks like, I need to write an obituary, but many of us, not you, but many of us are not writers, and asking us on one of our hardest days in our life, to now take pen and paper and write the perfect piece that will ideally, remember, our loved one perfectly has a lot of unneeded pressure, right now we need some guidance. I'm not saying let's outsource this thing, what the AI would do is bring you a really nice draft, really nice draft instead of someone charging you.

Michael Eisenberg 

Like when people think about this,

Ron Gura 

you can look at the reviews for that specific tool. It's great, it's 4.8, people really appreciate that. It saves them more than anything else. At time and money. It's a really difficult day. But I do want to make sure that it's decoupled from our arbitrary tool, which is in the enterprise offering this is where an expert content writer writes one for you.

Michael Eisenberg 

So I want to go back to talk about we said about earlier, empathy and recruiting people, it's part of what helps you in your toolkit, probably working at empathy is not for everybody, you need a certain amount of mental fortitude, and, and, and empathy for, for the clients that you're dealing with and the customers you're dealing with, who comes to work at empathy? Why do they work with empathy? And how do you know if, if they're cut out for this?

Ron Gura 

I think, at the very early days, like telling the third employee and the second employee, that Yan, my co-founder, and I went to work on this mission, and this problem domain was indeed challenging. But after like the first 10 people, I definitely now basically 70 strong, it actually becomes a great superpower for for talent acquisition, because you have something that is mission driven by definition, you don't need to take a long minute and explain how is this helping, you know, users at the end of the day, Aaron, how is the infrastructure we're building here will help that machine and that back office and eventually will help the consumer or the small medium business? Now, it's very straightforward. We help families deal with loss. And at the beginning, eating there was a challenge, kind of refining the messaging. And now at this point, it's very rewarding, by definition, because you see those five star reviews coming in and you see what people are writing every day.

Michael Eisenberg 

But there's Is there a certain kind of person who comes to work with empathy? Or is it or can anybody do this now that we help families deal with it? I see people turn up to comfort people who are dealing with us. Not everybody can speak at these places. Not everyone knows exactly where their places it's

Ron Gura 

challenging. I would definitely set apart our care managers. That's our human centered, human centric call center that have dedicated care managers like your quarterback for loss, and they're helping you with all that everything the app can do for you. You have a 24/7 helpline they do they

Michael Eisenberg 

have a certain background or there's a licensed social worker.

Ron Gura 

There are also social workers. Yeah, so not anyone can be a licensed social worker, that's for sure. But designers, data people engineer EHRs, yes, many of them had a meaningful life event that gave them some perspective, interesting. Many of them a lot of the people who reach out to us every day. And frankly, it's challenging because someone would write me a long, detailed note. Like, they would write the CEO next to me. But in this case, it's not going to be about you, I have to work on it simply because I love music, they're gonna write to me, I have to work at empathy. Because I, you know, lost both of my parents or Oh, that's for betta, a child,

Michael Eisenberg 

How many of those do you get a week?

Ron Gura 

Probably 10, I would say,

Michael Eisenberg 

suffered loss, wow,

Ron Gura 

half of them would be potential care managers. But it's, you need to read it carefully. And you need to explain every single prospect even if you're not A, not even something we're looking for. It's not a huge coincidence, in a way, it's not like it's connecting us to. But at that moment, when you lose a loved one, you feel like this is a calling. If I'm in technology, and and this is a company that is dealing with that mission, then I need to be there. It's very strong once you're in the moment. And I see it with our enterprise clients, when I'm talking to a large employer. Or when I'm talking to a life insurance carrier, and the other person on the line was an executor, or his wife is currently being tasked with winding down her dad's affairs. It's a much, much easier call. But the question, but this is, but this is the whole point. Like eventually it's gonna happen. It's not about like, easy the right customer. It's like, is it the right timing? Right? And once they get it once they get like, Oh, if I buy these to my employees@checkout.com If I buy these for my employees at guest jeans, oh, you know, a few, a few brands that recently joined. Then I'm helping them bring their whole selves back to work. After this meaningful life event, by the way, very similar to what happened with maternity, if you think a decade back, maternity leave. Yeah, yeah, maternity leave and maternity care here. So maternity leave would be that time and, and pay and maternity care amazing companies like Clio and Maven, and others that are building a layer on top. So the employee could really reengage the fork fully. that's needed, not just for not only for this type of a life transition, but also for these type of left transition is the same.

Michael Eisenberg 

So there's a good transition to the business evolution here, right? Initially, you thought you'd at least start with kind of business to consumer download in the App Store. Kind of business. Over time, you've transitioned to more what we would call b2b to see which is your two sets of customers or life insurance companies. And then enterprises in the HR stack, right. Where they have maternity benefits maternity leave, and now bereavement leave. Take me through that transition from going from Okay, we're gonna be a b2c company to see eight we still need to focus on the consumer experience here because they are the consumer of this product, and we need to have empathy but I gotta go work through life insurance companies, some of the biggest in the United States and and enterprises. Take me through that transition as an entrepreneur and what it means for the business and and what are the benefits, for example, life insurance companies are getting out of it.

Ron Gura 

So when we got started, we knew this is a very broad and blue ocean. We knew there's not a single vivid brand in offline or online. There's nothing pre need before loss, estate planning or at need, when you need it. There was nothing financial, there was nothing emotional, it was all open. There was no technology, at least not nothing meaningful. Dot was at scale and a recognized brand that is handling the end of life category. And we did launch a direct to consumer product, but at the same time, we were having discussions with different enterprise companies in different categories. By the way, you'll remember a much broader list of categories and industries. Then the two focus categories we have now of life insurance and large employers. We were in discussions and commercial agreements with some of the biggest funeral homes in the United States. The top five hospice chains, Senior Living flower shops. And the reason is this is where a lot of the bereaved come to. And this is when they need help. When you zoom out eventually on direct to consumer yes or no, yes, yes or not like doing it or not. It comes to CAC and LTV,

Michael Eisenberg 

because customer acquisition costs and long term value.

Ron Gura 

Yes, I think when you have an infrequent product, like a Zillow, a TurboTax, and Airbnb, a Casper, Warby Parker, even if it's offline or online, when it's a brand that is infrequent, then it's, it's very, very challenging to do it without a good talk LTV ratio. And unlike NuMe, or headspace, nobody wants to be better at bereavement. Nobody wants to be a better executor. Nobody wants to be a better Griever people want to get it over with. Right. So it's infrequent by definition, but also something I want to get past this already. Exactly. You need it. So it's much closer to a turbo tax on that sense, but even more infrequent than Yeah, annual taxation, but 100% addressable like

Michael Eisenberg 

it's almost like a vaccination, I gotta get this at hurts, but I gotta get through it.

Ron Gura 

In a way, yeah, in a way. But it's still more process oriented, it takes longer, it's still a relationship, not a transaction, it's just not, you know, an annual thing, or something I need to do for many years in a row. So eventually, from a business perspective, when you want to make sure you have recurring revenue, and not a transactional short term business, you turn to the places where recently bereaved families go go through everyday, we call it RBF, recently bereaved family, this, this is the entity we get to empower this is our client, the family unit, not just the brother, or the sister, and the RBF is my client. And the entities that has the most recently bereaved families coming through them are, you know, the life insurance giants and the big employers

Michael Eisenberg 

and the life insurance companies deal with it daily.

Ron Gura 

So the top, the top five, could be even, you know, 600 life, life claims a day. They're talking about hundreds of 1000s of claims every year, but you're very accurate. Number: They know exactly how much they're going to have next year. And the year after

Michael Eisenberg 

your statistics work. The law of large numbers and statistics work. Yeah,

Ron Gura 

Think about life insurance. Life insurance is a very special insurance because it's the only one that the policyholder is not the beneficiary. Right? Life insurance is empathy, by definition, because you're doing it for someone else. There's nothing selfish about life insurance, you do get peace of mind out of it. But you're putting the money for someone else, the

Michael Eisenberg 

person who purchases the life insurance, purchase it for somebody else's benefit will not benefit

Ron Gura 

from this transaction. Right. And this is also how the authorities would look at that money and say, You know what, I'm going to tax you differently. Because this is not, you know, something you're doing for yourself. Everything is baked into the administrative aspect of this like is their gifting tax? And then is their inheritance tax? And is there Probate and Estate Tax like, this is different country by country and state by state? But at the end of the day, countries like Israel that don't have any of what I just mentioned, only do life insurance for mortgage

Michael Eisenberg 

right? Can you I'm sitting here and I'm asking myself, can you actually hope the answer is yes, but a much more nuanced answer. Can you actually scale the empathy? Like you're getting to large numbers of customers, you've got case managers and technology? Can you actually scale this human spirit of empathy, which is clearly part of the magic of your growth? You're going quickly.

Ron Gura 

So I think the challenge would be alignment on tone and voice, mold and scalability of compassionate care. Because there are a lot of social workers in the United States right now that are making less than $40,000 a year, less than $50,000 a year and would want to have a very meaningful career trajectory. And the challenge is how do you have a A strong back office that is taking away their mundane and helping maximize. Let's say they work X amount of hours a day, all of that x about face to face care, and taking away all the research and homework and answers, because that will cut the conversation.

Michael Eisenberg 

And that makes them more empathetic overtime you think and answers for tone of voice?

Ron Gura 

Yes, if I'm having a discussion with you right now and supporting you, over the phone, and we're really getting to a place where, you know, I understand why you're not getting any help from your sister. Or why is this emotionally hard for you to talk about with the surviving parent or whatnot. And then I need to stop that conversation and go to the government website, to check if you really deserve something, or what's the exact percent of if I have all that coming to me, and I can send it to you right after the call. And don't worry about it. Don't take notes just focus on this right now. This is just one example, how at the end of the day, the quality of care is going to be higher.

Michael Eisenberg 

Now one of these just said no just struck a chord with me, I hadn't thought about it before. So

Ron Gura 

there's just a great I'm gonna, we're gonna do a product session right after this. This is a board meeting

Michael Eisenberg 

and live. But you know, there's this graph that's been making the rounds for a while. I think it was the American Enterprise Institute that put it out first. And Marc Andreessen has been tweeting it around for the last bunch of days also, in which you see that the cost of everything technologically oriented has gone way down and across everything that the government's got its hands on, like education keeps going up. And it's bankrupting families, healthcare, education, etc. You just made a super interesting observation, which I hadn't thought of, which is we took social workers who are underpaid for being kind of the first line of defense for so many critical parts of society. And the job they do is an unbelievable yeoman's effort. And you said, well, they gotta go, you know, tick off a bunch of things on what's likely a lousy technology experience, government website, which saps their time, their energy, their tone of voice and, and their empathy. And we've automated that. Now. Not only that, but they can handle more cases in that way, and also occurs to me that by private enterprise and empathy.com, automating away with the government has not succeeded in doing have their own technology infrastructure, we can increase compensation for a lot of these frontline workers by simply making them more productive and not waiting for the government to do it, and that there's enormous opportunity to grow the economic pie is kind of what I've been talking about in my other field of interest, which is this notion I coined called covenantal. Capitalism, which is we can grow this pie using innovation and technology, basically, we get

Ron Gura 

more people to aspire to work in a caring environment, because it's not just about increasing the pie of dollars, pair employee, it's, it's about creating the incentives, and the lagging indicator of a teenager in Alabama right now, that he is aspiring to become a caregiver that is aspiring to become a nurse, that he is aspiring to work in a hospice and not just be a Tiktok influencer, because that's really the gap is where the gap is right now. And a lot of the aspirations are heavily correlated with the ability to make wealth,

Michael Eisenberg 

there's not a lot of empathy on Tiktok, I'd argue there's a limited amount of humanity on there also. But maybe that's for a different case. So there could be maybe there could be, I'm not sure the medium is well set up for it. But you just talked about this kid in Alabama aspiring to be a frontline care worker. And by the way, being a good well paying job with the right mission, etc. What drives you every day, and what gets you out of bed to get after this hard topic, challenging topic.

Ron Gura 

It's not hard for me anymore. It was in the early days. And you know, I had my fair share of loss myself. And I also know, the other founders in the limited ecosystem of end of life technology, and I can tell you, they won, I appreciate more, the ones I compete with. They're all mission driven, that nobody gets into this line of business. If they're not serious about alleviating someone else's pain, what makes you serious about it? What gets me out of bed very quickly, every morning is knowing that if it's going to be a good day, or a bad day, it was a fight we're fighting. It's kind of one of those things that you know, when you're truly mission driven, like it's okay even if someone else will beat you to it. As long as it's the right alignment of interest and everything we're doing is only to benefit other families.

Michael Eisenberg 

Can I ask you about personal grief and What drives it? Sure.

Ron Gura 

Look, it's I don't think a lot of you know, your listeners are aware. But in addition to my big brother Eyal, who was also very active in the local ecosystem, we had another brother, Amir was only for her who passed away out of have cancer at an early age, and it impacted everyone, of course, mostly, mostly my mom. And I can't say there's a single person in the family that wasn't heavily impacted. But she was so obsessed and hard at work to create a fun house, and a good healthy environment at the house that had to kind of hide the grief and the processing. And I can have two daughters, myself today, I can't even imagine the length and the challenges of raising two boys by her own. Once Amir has passed, and in many ways, Israel is a good place to lose a loved one.

Michael Eisenberg 

Yeah, we don't see on thing he put his fingers up to put quotation marks in terms of a right good place, quote, unquote,

Ron Gura 

loss can never be good. But I can tell you it's far more taxing in the US, literally. It's very, it's very challenging. And

Michael Eisenberg 

This was a more empathetic society. And it's more used to dealing with it, the density, the density,

Ron Gura 

You know, of course, religion has an aspect of loss. And there's a lot of beautiful things about Islam and Christianity, about loss. I think Judaism is doing exceptionally good work, and around loss and the culture, the customs of Shiva, very, very smart and very, very empowering. And once you study grief, you understand why, but at the end of the day, it's going to be hard. It's going to be emotionally draining. And growing up, I had a lot of questions about loss. And at some point, I even made my mom ward. And she took me to a few professionals to see if this is something I can please stop asking questions about. And eventually, like, ah, 12, I understood, nobody really wants to have that conversation with me. So it's not that it's not interesting to me, how come we're all playing this game without talking about, there's an end date. We're building these towers, we're starting these companies, we're going to school, we're playing these games. And I understood like, it's just not something people are comfortable talking about. And I stopped it. I never stopped thinking about it. But I stopped talking about it when I was here at Alif. Taking a full year January 1 until January 1 To think about big topics I cared deeply about when I went back to saying Wait, this is this is it. This is the single largest consumer sector that is untouched by innovation, like what are we talking about here? To make a difference? This is completely unspoiled by software, we're talking about what engineers could do all day, we're talking about what design could do. This is it this is the single largest place, the single largest sector that is untouched. Like if I can bring my knowledge, my experience and my ability to team up with resources and talent, and mash that together behind the brand first approach that will first find the aversion and make the sale rewarding place to work on a rewarding product for customers and a positive ROI for clients. Then I can't do anything better with my time.

Michael Eisenberg 

So your brother yells, also an entrepreneur, Your mom must have done something right.

Ron Gura 

Or very wrong

Michael Eisenberg 

to entrepreneurial what happens as well, were they feeding you?

Ron Gura 

Well. My mom is definitely an amazing intrapreneur she she ran a meaningful chain of pharmacies back in the 80s in Haifa, and while many people think we learned a lot from our dad was also a very meaningful intrapreneur and in the 80s in Israel, we were actually I didn't grow up with him at all. I did learn a lot from my mom. And if I have to highlight one thing is, you know, how you treat clients like, and it was never, you know, instead of us and instead of family time, but the privatization was clear that, you know, there's a late night call, pick up the call you take day, you don't take the call and you see what the client wants? And how can you help and, you know, we've seen a customer approach from a very early age, thanks to our mother.

Michael Eisenberg 

You have two daughters. So far.

Ron Gura 

Yeah, I, one of the things I probably was over secured about when I was without, if he's not just I'm going to start an in life, end of life company was also I'm going to beat you to it and have more kids than you. The physics here is my God, I'm gonna get in the way. But I'm on it. All right, good. Okay. So don't be don't be worried.

Michael Eisenberg 

I'm not worried. I'm not judgmental, either. But what are the values you want your daughters to grow up on? Whether it's not a physics problem, it's a biology thing. But that's a whole different conversation. And once you

Ron Gura 

say physics, it sounds right. Think there's a lot of nice words I can use to say all I want them to be unconditional in caring and eventually what I want them to have and what I want people to say about them. And even selfishly, what I want people to say about me, when I'm not here, is just being a good friend. I would love people to say no, during their life, and after that my daughters or good friends to the people around them.

Michael Eisenberg 

Before I get to my rapid fire questions, I have an observation. You're already asking the rapid question. No, no, you're answering them short. The gifts project. There was you. You started to empathize. There's a Matan bar, he started Milio. There's Eras Dyckman who is the head of engineering at lemonade. There's Johan, who's your co-founder. All of you read the gifts project. Did I miss anyone?

Ron Gura  

There's many more good people there. We were very lucky. And of course, Maya,

Michael Eisenberg 

Maya. It's a little bit like the PayPal mafia.

Ron Gura 

We got Donnie Freedland who started walnut. We were just very lucky. And Steve Meltzer will start at a low heart rate. We had a very smart

Michael Eisenberg 

It's like paper. I'm just paying attention to that now.

Ron Gura 

Definitely not as big as the PayPal Mafia, right, which states the boulevard mafia

Michael Eisenberg 

Boulevard, but it was like 25-30 million people. And you were like the first startup to move on into Tel Aviv onto Rothschild Boulevard, which is now famous, but you were literally the first startup to move. What happened?

Ron Gura 

Three of us at the time, I think face.com and saludo. We're not sure but it didn't show up my partner and a few weeks or months before us you're hiding on the Boulevard we didn't make a big deal out of it. It was just a cheap, affordable place to get a nice, sometimes vibrant office at the time.

Michael Eisenberg 

But whatever had all these people go on to do such amazing things. What happened at the gifts project? i can't take any credit for it. Was it the eBay training afterwards and PayPal and see to see pay? Maybe

Ron Gura 

was it the kind of heavy enterprise culture that we had at eBay that pushed everyone back to startups? Or maybe we just, you know, got lucky and hired, you know, smart, smarter people than us very early and I think no, not I think we can both agree. Teaming up with Madonna and arias on on your very first startup is, you know, that's that's like, like, I

Michael Eisenberg 

i grew up in Haifa. Yeah, it was just amazing. The amount of entrepreneurs that come out of Haifa is amazing. Everyone thinks Tel Aviv but it's actually a lot of Haifa, people have come south to Tel Aviv, especially

Ron Gura 

we fall if you look at

Michael Eisenberg 

Shai Winegar, lemonade,

Ron Gura 

and Matan. And any toes and zippers, zippers, we got a bunch of errors. I'm sure there are others, myself and many other of your founders here. Daniel, of course, is another

Michael Eisenberg 

one. Yeah. So quick, rapid fire questions. And then I'm going to make a loop back to a topic. So number one, what makes you human, what makes you vulnerable? My kids. That's fair. So in 100 years, they're going to write the biography of Ron Gura. What will the title be?

Ron Gura 

The X project. Explain, as you might recall, from the official documents, even here at empathy, it's called the empathy project. Right? We had this project, right? Who knows what's coming next, okay. For profit or nonprofit, I think if it's gonna be a book, it needs to be cheesy. And if it's gonna be cheesy, it's gonna have an X product title.

Michael Eisenberg 

It's funny, I would have titled your book empathy. But what do I know?

Ron Gura 

Too many we overused it for today, it's overused. Okay,

Michael Eisenberg 

I want to circle back to close this out to AI. And I want to play the world forward, you know, five or 10 years? And ask you? Where do you think human empathy goes in an era of AI?

Ron Gura 

If I get to wear my naive pink rose glasses here, as a, as a, as founders, we get to where it is all the time, I would say it's gonna be great. Tell me more, I would say, a lot of the mundane work, a lot of the financials, a lot of the calculations, and a lot of the research will be done for us. And more of our kids will become artists, and caregivers, and have compassionate conversations with their friends and loved ones, paint and write songs.

Michael Eisenberg 

There's an embedded assumption in there that harder work or grinding work or mundane work makes people less empathetic? Are you certain that's true?

Ron Gura 

I think how that work and Grinder work is correlated with more. With less face time with people. Of course, there are a few professions like psychologists that could be very hard at work and in front of people all day, but I think 90% of the job families, if they work really hard, means they see they spend less time with fellow humans. And when you spend less time with fellow humans, you miss a lot of the original AI, which is hengist, gestures, and blinking and, you know, face movements. And when you lose sight of that, it's harder to understand what Michael is feeling right now when he's, you know, mouth is doing this, and he's no nose is doing that. And once we're back, conversing with one another, spending time in the physical space right next to each other, I think we're going to be more compassionate, and we're going to be more able or capable of understanding the other person's needs.

Michael Eisenberg 

I once thought with this will finish that when they started talking about like embedded computing that continue to be embedded around you can kind of get away from like looking at this thing. And so you could pick your head up and see actually, you know, the eyes of other human beings, and that would also be a step forward. And this is just some sort of interim phase in which we've gotten distracted from our humanity. Ron, thank you for joining. I appreciate your doing this. So thanks for having me, human with me. You can find empathy on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And you can follow Ron, Ron Gura, that's spelled R-O-N-G-U-R-A both on LinkedIn and Twitter. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please rate us five stars on Spotify and Apple podcasts. And don't forget to subscribe and tell all your friends to subscribe Brian, thanks for joining. Thanks, Michael.

Ron Gura 

Speak soon. 

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