Founder Jermaine Ee shares how HeirLight guides families through wills, directives, and next-step legal support.
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Show Notes:
On Mission Matters, Adam Torres interviews Jermaine Ee, Founder of HeirLight, about turning a family conversation into a platform that helps users inventory assets, create wills and health directives, and connect with attorneys when needed—bringing accessible, multilingual estate planning to more families.
About HeirLight
HeirLight is a new kind of estate planning app, designed to help people create a Will without the stress or legal jargon. Their product uses AI to guide users through the process in a way that feels natural, clear, and even meaningful. HeirLight is building for a generation that knows planning matters, but keeps putting it off.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest of the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on BR Guest to apply. All right, so that I have Jermaine e on the line and he is founder of HeirLight.
Jermaine, welcome to the show. Thank you Adam. before we start, actually, I wanted to give you some shout out that, you know, we’ve met eight years ago and you were already interviewing people for your show. So I would just want to, you know, give you your flowers and say congratulations for being so consistent all these years.
Oh, man, I appreciate that. And yeah, I, I was like, I, know this guy, Jermaine, come on. I remember things. I don’t know if that’s a gift or a curse. I, I enjoy remembering you. I don’t enjoy remembering everybody I’ve met Jermaine. No.
Well, let’s get it to content today. So first thing, first, I see the title here, founder and HeirLight. So maybe just start off with a little bit about the company. Yeah, so HeirLight actually came out of a conversation with my mom. Her and I were having lunch at our favorite Thai spot out in Pasadena, and I just asked her, you know, Hey, have you thought about retiring?
And after a few rounds of prying, I realized that what? That she had this underlying fear, the fear about run, running out of money before dying. And I think that’s what’s holding her back. And so I just asked her again, like, Hey, with that fear, do you know what you have today? And she said, yeah. I know what’s in my savings, but there’s not like a list somewhere.
Mm. And so it hit me that, even if she knew, even she, if she had enough, she wouldn’t really have known. And so I set out to build this app as an inventory tracker for all of her assets and her people in her life. And to bucket list that she has because I wanted to help her see that at some point she can probably just relax a little bit and spend some of her savings on her dreams.
And that app just evolved into a will maker. Because I realized if I had all this info, I can help you make a will and you know, by extension, a healthcare directive for power of attorney and beyond. And that’s how HeirLight was born. Mm. And how did you know, or at what point did you know that this would be, and I like to ask entrepreneurs, is when it starts at like, kinda like maybe a small idea or.
Thing, and then it grows and then you’re like, wait a minute, I’m really solving something here. When did you know that this was gonna be something that you’d spend, you know, significant time and effort on? Like what was it in the beginning right off the bat, or did it take a little while? Was it like, like when did you know?
Yeah, so I’ve actually, I’ve been a founder four times before this, and so, you know, the last four times I was, to be honest, chasing money. I was thinking I wanna be the cover of TechCrunch and say how much money I’ve raised and things like that. Mm-hmm. And, and the last two years I was just searching for something a little bit more meaningful.
I wanted to build something, not take investor money and just. Do it because I care. And this conversation with my mom just came about and I thought, what better thing to do than to build an app for all the people like me? All the people who were never thought how to wow. Create a will and how to protect what you’ve earned.
And, and so that, that’s where it hit me, where like, you know, if I had to work on this for a very long time, that would be okay. Hmm And where are you at with the product now today? Let’s go into maybe a kind of present day. Like where, where’s the product stand today? Yeah, so we started really putting this thing together in July and.
Unfortunately, my mom passed away in August. Mm-hmm. August 23, so like exactly two-ish months ago. And so I launched this app on her birthday last Saturday to California and iOS. And so now it’s out there. It’s out there in the world and we’re building it out for the rest of the states for all the other devices.
And we also wanna make sure that we deliver on our promise. There’s a lot of things we cannot do as an app, like we can make a will for someone, but there’s a lot of people out there that requires attorney support and you know, really more expert hands-on help that. I don’t feel confident doing it through an app.
And so we’re building out a network that if I have all your information, I can pair you up with an attorney that fits exactly what you need, hopefully at the price point that you need. And so we’re building out these tools. So that’s where we’re at with the product right now. Wow. Sorry to hear about your mom.
I mean, that’s just especially it’s, it’s interesting from the standpoint of how sometimes these, setbacks and these things that happen to us, they kind of give different clarity on things we’re working on. When my mom passed, and for my long-term listeners, they know this. But when my mom passed last year tornado, craziest thing ever.
And it gave me a, just a whole nother understanding of like the level of importance of what, I do. I, you know, at first, you know, it is, it’s part of, it’s money media, you know, it’s what I do in terms of like just, you know, work it’s business. Right. But then after she passed, like I look back and I’m like, man, you know, one of the things that I.
Value most. Now Jermaine, it’s kind of crazy to me, but you know, I brought it on the show three times and I have those recordings so I can still hear her voice. I can still, feel her spirit and feel like her work. And so it’s interesting. I was talking to a buddy of mine the other day and I’m like, man, it’s like.
I would’ve never had that, like complexity or that bit of understanding of just life, you know, as a man growing through life and, you know, life changes and losing people, which we all will as we, as we, if we’re blessed to get older. Right. And so now I can’t even imagine like what, like HeirLight has taken on for you, right?
It was originally a conversation with your mom and now you’re gonna go on to help, you know, thousands if not tens of thousands of people with this, I think it’s, it’s something special, you know? Yeah, hopefully millions of people, because the truth is there’s a lot of communities that don’t get this kind of help.
You know, there’s very few, there’s very little resources for folks who don’t speak English as the first language at home. There’s a lot of, you know, people who have. It’s a taboo topic in some cultures. And so navigating that through a conversation with a very intelligent AI helps bridge the conversation, I think, for a lot of people.
But to touch on just the, the idea of clarity, you know, mm-hmm. Two weeks before she had passed because of my work with this app, with her, I realized that she always wanted to go to where the sound of music was filmed in Salzburg, in Austria. And so right before. She was admitted to hospital two weeks before that we were actually in Salzburg and I recorded the whole thing and, she was, at some point I had a clip of her that say, I’m living in my dream.
Whoa. And so for me, this app took on a whole new meaning that, you know, I would like to help more people find this clarity with the people that they love. Because when I first started. Honestly, it was like a fun AI project. What can I do with AI? Because it understands all the languages that my mom wants to speak to it.
Instead of just her talking to an attorney in English, she can talk to my app in Mandarin, and so, mm-hmm. the ultimate goal here is clarity. Mm-hmm. Making a will is just the beginning. Eventually, I wanna inspire people to get healthy, both physically and mentally, and to mm-hmm. Plan their bucket list to be conscious about.
How they spend time with your loved ones and documenting all these things because mm-hmm. Even through my six, seven months process of building HeirLight, it has impacted me in a way that, I will hold dear for the rest of my life. And so I think that is the goal. That is the, the. The mission that I’m on.
Mm-hmm. I hope I can bring this to millions of people. Oh man. That’s exciting. And yeah, I didn’t even think about the language capability. Of course, it’s gonna reach millions of people, especially when you’re talking about different languages than otherwise. Like that’s, that’s awesome. That’s exciting.
Yeah, I see it. Yeah, I see it. I see it, I see it. And in terms of I’m curious in like the what are the plans I know you’re still in the building and you just unveiled it, but like how, how do you plan? Of course, coming on shows like mine and otherwise, but like, talk, talk to me a little bit about the rollout and like plans and like just next steps.
Like what’s the vision for the, for let’s say 2026? what’s next on the docket? So we have a really big challenge in terms of there’s 50 states in the US and all 50 states have slightly different requirements. And so we’re gonna roll it out state by state to make sure that we cover the probate code properly and that we have Oh, that attorneys, I’m gonna interview every attorney that comes on our platform.
I wanna make sure it’s a human touch. So I wanna make sure the onboarding from my users to the lawyer is great. And so trust is the only thing that I have, and I’m gonna slowly roll this out and I’m in a good position because I didn’t raise any money, so I don’t have this pressure of growth. In fact, I’ve turned down money because I just didn’t want to have to look at my KPI every month and say, Hey, how many users have I grown?
And what is the churn? I don’t want to play that game. Mm-hmm. At this point for this app. And so, yeah, my goal is to go on the more high information places, so like, podcast is a great place to be. Mm-hmm. I believe this app requires a lot of education. So we’ll take our time, you know, we’ll, we’ll start rolling it out.
And of course, if, something went viral and we figured out a really good cap to LTV ratio, a very, really reliable revenue, I’m always happy to raise growth capital and, and get on that. It’s red mail, so to speak. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But yeah, I’m, I’m perfectly happy running it, just as a business myself. And I’m in a really good spot right now.
So, you know, I have two engineers. I have two designers, so things are going well. A team of five we’re chopping along. Oh, that’s great to hear. And so right now you’re in California. This is the first state, I, I think I caught that at the beginning, right?
obviously a lot of people that listen to this, so I guess I’ll take this from, two, the same question, but from two angles. Maybe let’s start with kind of like the B2B angle, if you will lawyers that are, you know, maybe listening to this and otherwise you mentioned you’re gonna be interviewing individuals to be part of the platform.
Like, like what does that look like? What does that process look like? Let’s start there. Yeah. So we’ve gone back and forth about this and in fact, I’ve talked to about. Exactly 18 lawyers as of this morning. Mm-hmm. About this and you know, the role of lawyers. Typically when they look at a client from what I’ve realized now is that they assess the risk.
How detailed is the estate plan has to be, and we as an app look at it from a completely different angle. We’re like, how quickly can we get you to commit to this process and finish the will before you get tired and bored? Drop out. So with this in mind in terms of how I’m looking at lawyers, you know, in the beginning I was thinking, oh, it would be great to have a partnership and affiliate, but I realized there’s some ethical concerns there where, you know, I didn’t want this to be a pay to play and my ultimate trust, my guarantee, my promise.
It’s with the people who use HeirLight. And so the first step that I’m gonna build out is actually going to be a free referral. Essentially, when a user comes into me, comes into HeirLight, we’ll explain to them what is a will, what is a health directive, what is, power attorney and everything like that.
and we set up triggers that tells us in the app. If we need to recommend a trust to this person, if they have a blended family, for example, if they had prior lawsuits, you know, or if they have a complex child guardianship, you know, multiple step childrens and things like that. Mm-hmm. We wanna make sure we flag those things so that we can tell the app to suggest and educate what is the trust.
Now the truth is like a lot of people can really use the trust, but it comes down to also the price point. Because a lot of people are priced out of working with an attorney and I don’t want to, I’m trying to find a solution for it. And so there are a lot of resources out there to act, actually make a will or a trust for free.
What we offer mm-hmm. Is a higher level of certainty is that when you come in. You trust airHeirLights with the way we’ve built the app to teach you, to explain things to you and to explain best practices to you. Now we’re just like every other tool out there. We’re a software, we’re not giving legal advice.
There’s no client attorney relationship formed here. Mm-hmm. So we do our best in making sure that our users. When they tell us what they want, we send them to the right place or help them fill out a will or a health directive in the best possible way that shows them that reflects their wishes. And so we cannot aim, we aim to be complete and comprehensive, but we know that, you know, there’s some things that a human attorney will do better.
Yeah, that’s wonderful. and maybe you have this already in mind, maybe not, I know you got a whole lot of of real estate to cover in just California itself. You can spend a lot of time here. But what are the next states or if, if you’re heading to a next state, what would it be? So we look at the demographic breakdown and the obvious states will be Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois.
Mm-hmm. I think that covers like 30% of the us. Mm-hmm. Of course, there’s complexity in states too. You know, for example, in Texas there’s some advertising of legal services that we cannot do, and so if I start talking about it on a podcast without. A Texas bar, you know, there’s restrictions like that, so, sure.
Good thing is, you know, I’ve, got a lot of friends who are giving me a lot of advices before I have to start paying those hourly rates, so That’s awesome. Of course. So we’re, yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re taking one side at a time in, in regards to rolling out, but yeah, of course the, the biggest states, we’re gonna try to hit those first.
That’s awesome. Well, Jermaine, this has been really great having you on the show today and learning more about obviously your background and to reconnect with you. And again, so, so sorry to hear about your mom and I I understand. And you’re part of that club now. I am too. And many of the listeners are as well.
Not that we want to be, but you know, that that’s where we’re at. But getting back to HeirLight, if people want to follow up, they wanna learn more, they wanna download it, they want to, you know, do a demo or anything else like that, how do they do that? So as of today, we’re only on iPhone iOS, but in a few weeks we’ll be out on Android as well.
If you’d like to learn more about HeirLight, please visit us at HeirLight H-E-I-R-L-I-G-H t.com. Fantastic. And for everybody listening, just so you know um, we’ll definitely put some links in the show notes so you can just head right on over. Check out HeirLight.com. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show each and every day, or bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully. Inspiration to help you along the way, your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Jermaine, man, so good to reconnect. Appreciate you coming on. Thank you, Adam.
