Daniel Shaw is the co-founder and CEO of Autumn, a New York-based end-of-life marketplace built to help bereaved families navigate the legal, financial, emotional and logistical mess that follows a death. A medical school dropout turned 15-year creative technologist (Director of Digital Accounts at Wieden+Kennedy), Shaw lost a string of close family members over a decade and was appalled by how disorganized and unhelpful the deathcare industry was. So he aggregated more than 500,000 local providers, wrote free guides, and set out to let people manage death the same way they manage life - under the banner 'We make loss more livable.'
Meadow Memorials is a modern, technology-driven funeral and cremation company - a 'contemporary funeral home without the home.' Founded in 2024 by Stripe alum Sam Gerstenzang and AARP innovation leader Emma Gilsanz, Meadow lets families arrange direct cremations, memorials and celebrations of life by phone or online, partnering with local venues instead of running costly storefronts. With transparent, flat pricing (a typical funeral around $1,300 versus a U.S. median over $6,000), it has become the largest independent funeral home in California and raised a $9M Series A in March 2026.