DGLegacy, the company that designed the digital estate planning and succession app, spoke today at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 Startup Battlefield and detailed how to ensure your loved ones inherit your assets.
Founded by husband-and-wife duo Anna Mineva and Peter Minev, DGLegacy allows users to proactively inform beneficiaries about their assets and provide passwords and other information for beneficiaries to claim them. You can confirm that you are doing so. The idea behind this app is to minimize the chance of assets going unclaimed.
Unlike traditional asset protection tools such as trusts and wills that can become outdated quickly after creation, DGLegacy allows you to maintain a continuously updated catalog of assets that your beneficiaries can access at any time. You will be able to do it.
DGLegacy allows you to catalog your assets and upload related files to each asset. You can then invite your beneficiaries and trustees to make sure they know about the designated assets.
This app features multi-layer encryption to ensure all your information is stored securely.
“The most important thing about DGLegacy is that it not only allows you to catalog your digital assets very securely and easily, but it also has a unique protocol for detecting fatal events,” Peter told TechCrunch. Ta. “Digital inheritance is triggered only if a fatal event is detected.”
DGLegacy detects fatal events through several different means. When you connect the app to your social network, it monitors your public posts to make sure you're alive. If you give your app access to biometric logins, DGLegacy will monitor your logins. If the app detects a pause in both of these, DGLegacy will send you an email to check in. If the company still does not contact you, they will call you.
Once a catastrophic event has been confirmed, DGLegacy supports beneficiaries in the process of identifying, locating and claiming assets.
Anna and Peter believe their app can help ordinary people protect their assets and ensure that their loved ones have access to them after they pass away.
“Let's be honest, most wealthy people have private bankers,” Peter says. “Our solutions are for the middle class, for ordinary people, and even for people in conflict areas. We were very surprised when the Ukraine war started and we received so many signatures from Ukraine. We also receive a significant number of applications from Gaza.”
Ana came up with the idea for DGLegacy 15 years ago before the startup was officially founded in January 2021.
Image credit: DGLegacy
She recalls being nervous every time she traveled with Peter, worrying about what would happen to her children if something terrible happened during the trip.
“I invited my mother-in-law to show me all the files and folders in the house and said, 'If something were to happen to us, you wouldn't have the money to take care of the children. Please know that we have this and that, so if something were to happen to us, you would have a quality of life for your children. I have the money to continue,” Anna told TechCrunch. “This was the beginning of the idea for DGLegacy.”
While doing this, she remembers thinking that there must be a better way. While the wealthy have contingency plans in place to protect their assets, Anna believed there was a solution for middle-class families, too.
Anna and Peter did some research and discovered that there are tens of billions of dollars in unclaimed cash and benefits in the US alone in the form of abandoned bank accounts, stock holdings, unclaimed life insurance policies, etc. I discovered that.
They also heard personal stories from people around them who needed solutions like DGLegacy. For example, they knew someone whose partner had passed away in Dubai, but there was no transparency at all about that partner's assets and bank accounts.
Image credit: DGLegacy
Back in 2017, Peter pitched the idea for Anna to a friend he met at a TechCrunch event in Berlin. Peter told a friend who worked at Facebook about Anna's idea and asked if he had heard of anyone in Silicon Valley working on something to solve this problem. Peter and Anna decide it's time to make Anna's idea a reality after a friend says he's looking for a solution himself but doesn't know anyone working on one.
DGLegacy operates on a freemium model. Free users can protect up to three assets and assign one beneficiary per asset, while Gold users get unlimited assets and beneficiaries for $6.99 per month or a one-time fee of $199 can. For those who need additional protection, DGLegacy offers a Platinum plan for $8.99 per month or a one-time fee that includes asset cyber breach monitoring, the ability to manage assets with family members, dedicated beneficiary support, and more. Available for $299.
The company has raised its own funds so far and plans to raise its first VC round late this year or early next year.
DGLegacy is available for iOS and Android.