Ever­tree: A subject close to our hearts – and one of regu­la­ri­ties #DHDL

The Düssel­dorf siblings Helena and Andreas attracted sympathy right from the start: the authentic and very personal pitch, which broached the issue of the death of the father as the origin of the wish to give death and fune­rals something less final, ensured a sympa­thetic silence. The idea of the two: a special urn in which tree seeds are added to the ashes of the dece­ased, so that a tree can grow from it after the burial.

All inves­tors agreed that they found the idea very beau­tiful. Carsten Masch­meyer reads the descrip­tion on the packa­ging, finds the text „touching“ and realises that there is a lot of heart in it. Later he will add „one of the most touching pitches I have ever seen here in the cave“. But he will also drop out because he sees himself as a venture capi­ta­list and, as such, does not want to invest in „such a lovely inno­va­tion“ and make money from it.
And of course, with such a topic, foun­ders can get a lot of praise, but ulti­ma­tely no invest­ment, because it doesn’t feel right for every investor to do busi­ness with it.

But the rest of the lion’s field is feeling its way more and more into the subject, asking the usual ques­tions about selling price, manu­fac­tu­ring costs and sales revenue. The rela­tively low price of the urn of 114 € under­lines the since­rity of the foun­ders, even if the margin is still alright overall. Espe­cially when it comes to pricing, such topics require a great deal of tact: if you set the price too low, the busi­ness will not pay off; if you set it too high and exploit the emotio­na­lity of the topic to the fullest, you risk lasting damage to your repu­ta­tion in such a sensi­tive market.

But after the foun­ders have been able to belie­vably demons­trate the basic demand and the busi­ness model, a topic domi­nates the talks that is often treated some­what step­mo­therly by foun­ders: Regu­la­tions and offi­cial rules.
Although there are many frame­work models for analy­sing the busi­ness envi­ron­ment, these are far less popular with start-​ups than with larger compa­nies. The reason for this is diffi­cult to grasp, but a valid theory is, for example, that start-​ups operate under condi­tions of extreme uncer­tainty anyway. So as soon as it has been clari­fied whether the project is basi­cally legally feasible, that is already enough for many. Later changes seem diffi­cult to grasp anyway. Others, on the other hand, are already buil­ding on upco­ming changes that can give them the big push, which is also highly risky, but can be very rewar­ding.

And in the case of Ever­tree, it is also a bit like that: In most cases, such burial by urn is permitted for animals, but diffi­cult for humans and only possible in a few places in Germany with special permis­sion. Other coun­tries, however, are already further ahead here, so the foun­ders hope that more will soon be possible in Germany, too.

However, the two Düssel­dor­fers, who are still buil­ding up the urn start-​up on a part-​time basis, are extre­mely well informed and can provide many details on regu­la­tions and deve­lo­p­ments in this field. They believe in the upco­ming changes and want to be ready for them, but until then they want to distri­bute in the animal sector and abroad.

A perfectly valid stra­tegy for a start-​up. Because in this case, the market for animal burials is certainly not small, and it takes time anyway to build up B2B sales for animal crema­toria and similar multi­pliers, as the foun­ders are plan­ning. They are already members of the corre­spon­ding asso­cia­tion. Dagmar Wöhrl finally drops out but promises to contact the animal crema­toria she knows.

After ever­yone else has left, the foun­ders count on Nils Glagau. And indeed, he shares the diffe­rent view of death, talks about a forest ceme­tery burial and cele­bra­tions on ceme­te­ries in Mexico. Here, the foun­ders and the investor are fully on the same wavelength, and indeed the lion then makes the offer, beco­ming the third co-​owner of the company for 75,000 €.

An invest­ment that will hope­fully help to stimu­late discus­sion, bring about a change of thin­king in the autho­ri­ties and thus at some point make it possible for many more people or their rela­tives to have the burial they since­rely desire.

Photo (above): TVNOW / Bernd-​Michael Maurer