Tulip's Tom Harries: "Ashes to airmail"

The Times Tech Podcast

Will Morley

Business, Unknown, Technology

4.9 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2019

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Tom Harries, founder of Tulip, to talk about disrupting the cremation industry (0:30), starting with an obituary app (2:20), selling it and selling Tulip (3:45), what’s wrong with funerals (6:00), the fragmented death market (9:00), sending ashes through the post (11:45), cremating 10,000 people in two years (14:00), scaling from 5 to 95 people (17:40), hiring a professional chief executive then quickly selling (21:00), losing control of his baby (25:00), spreading the word online (28:30), the lows of starting a business (30:50), making mistakes (32:30), being a non-technical founder (34:20), why bring in a CEO went wrong (35:50), and raising $10 million (41:00).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Yeah, so if you pick up the mic and then we can do this rock and roll.
0:14.3	Ready.
0:15.3	So thank you for being here.
0:18.2	Thank you for having me.
0:19.1	Well, let's talk about death.
0:21.3	Sure.
0:22.2	Yo.
0:24.1	Technology.
0:25.9	What is it all about?
0:33.0	Hello and welcome to Danny in the Valley.
0:34.6	Merry Christmas.
0:35.7	Almost.
0:42.1	This week, as promised, we have got two shows for you to help see you through these wintry weeks ahead. And first up on this episode, we have Tom Harries, who is an
0:47.5	Englishman in San Francisco that I came across about, gosh, about a year ago. When he told me what he
0:53.5	was doing, I was totally intrigued,
0:56.3	but he was also very busy. I finally nabbed him to sit down and talk about what he is up to in the
1:02.8	wild world of cremations. Yes, Harries has set up an app-based cremation service called Tulip.
1:12.2	And I'll just say that after you listen to this, you'll have a whole bunch of little
1:16.2	factoids about the death industry.
1:18.6	Obviously, always good dinner conversation.
1:21.0	And if you have had the misfortune of having had to deal with this industry firsthand,
1:27.1	I imagine a lot of what he is saying will resonate.
	...

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