This husband-and-wife founding team wants you to talk about death.

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Tech Topics In This Article: Atlanta startups, DeathTech

This husband-and-wife entrepreneurial team wants you to talk about death.

Tripp Tillery and Jessica Tillery, two Atlanta-based startup founders, are the founding team behind Deadbook, a digital estate planning platform that wants to streamline how people plan their last wishes.

The concept for Deadbook came out of the couple's personal experience navigating the back-end administrative requirements that came after the death of Tripp's mother. While her passing was sudden and unexpected, she had organized all of the important details that Tripp would need into one place…which she called her personal deadbook.

“[The book] had everything that I was going to need to administer her estate,” he told Hypepotamus. “That process is difficult enough as it is when you have all the information you need.”

The Tillerys started having conversations and realized that while most people eventually have to organize a loved one’s last wishes, most people are not left with such an organized blueprint.

“One night we were sitting at our kitchen island, we had the deadbook open, and Jessica just looked at me and said this could really help a lot of people,” Tripp added.

Inside The Deadbook

The company, which took its name from Tripp’s mother’s own deadbook, initially launched as a physical product brand with a book that could be filled out by those organizing their affairs. But they kept getting one big resounding piece of feedback: People wanted a digital deadbook.

The digital platform is divided into five sections: Final wishes around funeral arrangements, accounts and passwords, items to bequeath, who to contact, and legal documents.

The platform can be seen as a place where loved ones can answer all the important questions after someone passes, including: Who gets grandma’s jewelry? Or where did grandpa keep all his financial records?

“Users are allowed to add two viewers to the platform,” Jessica added. “The primary viewer has access to everything except the accounts…which will unlock only after they are able to provide proof that you've passed away. The secondary viewer only has access to the final wishes and the contact book so that they can be a helping hand to the executor.”

Currently, users can sign up to create their own Deadbook for a one-time fee of $50.99, which provides twelve-months edit access.

Getting people to talk about estate planning and death preparations is central to the startup’s brand. That includes curating a unique voice on TikTok and Instagram, where the team shares content that looks to destigmatize talking about death.

Get To Know The Team

Tripp, who serves as Deadbook’s founder and CEO, built the first part of his career in the corporate world with names like thyssenkrupp and DS Smith. Jessica, co-founder and CMO, built her career in the PR (public relations) world, working with both Fortune 500s and early-stage startups.

The two officially started working on Deadbook in spring 2023.

By nature of the sensitive data held on the platform, Tripp said cybersecurity has been a central focus for the company since the beginning, from using multiple hashing methods to two-way authentication.

They also recruited a CTO with a heavy cybersecurity background to ensure “our tools are as secure as they need to be, and will grow and evolve as security needs grow and evolve into the future.”

“The whole point of this tool is to provide peace of mind, both for the user and for their families, and we don't want security to be a block for that,” Tripp added.

Bootstrapped to date, Deadbook is looking to open a pre-seed round in the near future.

The Deadbook team started off 2025 strong at CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, joining a group of Atlanta-based AgeTech startups showcasing their platforms at one of the top technology conferences in the country.

Through the conference, and the social media content the team created while in Vegas, Jessica said the team “got in front of a lot of different angel investors and VCs." The showcase ultimately connected the team to more B2B people to help with an expansion of Deadbook's services.

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Photos provided by Deadbook