Editor’s Note: This story is the second in a series of three stories that explain a new startup in Iowa. To read part one on Claimable, click here.
In 2022, Paul H. Richardson Jr. decided in 2022 to take a road trip. A big one. He bought an RV, packed up his dogs, left his then-home in Long Beach, Calif., and just drove.
A lot of thoughts happen on a road trip, and Richardson began to think about his late maternal grandparents. His grandpa Don Campbell, who was born out of wedlock, worked in sales and then owned a home improvement business. His grandma Terri Campbell married young and raised six kids in eight years; her favorite hobby was shopping.
And he realized he was grieving.
He kept driving and he came to Iowa. He decided to go to Jesup, where his grandmother is from, and Independence, where his grandfather grew up.
And he kept thinking.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about my grandparents’ end of life, their experience after they died and then even the stages before they died — getting them into nursing care, memory care, they had a reverse mortgage on their home, so we had to clear [it out] in order to get them into a nursing facility to get those dollars released, to be able to pay for that, for Medicare, we had to get them out of their home.
“I just started reflecting on all the experiences and linking it back to my experience in health care and I was like ‘Gosh, what technology exists in this space?’”
That was the aha moment that ultimately led him to launch Tumbleweed, an end-of-life planning company that offers a curated journey to honor and memorialize a lost loved one.
Richardson, CEO of Tumbleweed, resides in Urbandale and has more than two decades of experience in the health and technology industries. He co-founded the company with two others: chief product officer Colleen Kinsey, whose past experience includes project management and supports Tumbleweed in a consulting capacity, and chief operating officer Keisha Chandler, who has served as an operations leader and contributes on a part-time basis.
The company, which incorporated in August 2023, has reached several milestones and recognitions so far.
In June 2023, the idea for Tumbleweed won Techstars Startup Weekend in Iowa City, which is the event where he met Kinsey and he participated in the Global Insurance Accelerator in 2024.
This summer, Tumbleweed was among those recognized at a Technology Association of Iowa Catalysts Live event, which focused on telling stories of innovation for all Iowans.
At the Catalysts Live event in Des Moines, he laid out the problem he was seeking to solve with Tumbleweed.
It’s estimated today that 1 in 5 adults are caring for an aging person and by 2040, it’s going to be 1 in 3, Richardson said, citing data from AARP. There are an estimated 330,000 family caregivers in Iowa, he said.
“So all of these things are requiring us to support people longer and in different ways and so that is the big problem,” Richardson said.
In addition to supporting caregivers, Tumbleweed works for someone who is aging themselves, Richardson said, helping them navigate the stages of aging and dying.
The platform asks the user questions like, “Do you have a will, power of attorney, trust or advanced health care directive? Do you have insurance policies? Where’s your life insurance policy? Have you prepaid for a funeral, which is actually an insurance policy,” Richardson said.
It gets all those elements organized, and additionally, it asks for the user’s wishes, such as do they want a celebration of life? What music do they want played? Who do they want to be invited?
“I’ve heard people share these stories, but no one ever writes it down,” he said.
“Then when something happens, it’s like ‘Oh my gosh what was it they wanted?’” he said. “And you’re trying to scrape your mind because you’re dealing with death and grief. … So we’ve created the place to start to capture that, and then we have a huge support library with articles, templates, blogs on navigating this whole process.”
Tumbleweed partners with insurance companies and the insurance companies are paying to offer the solution for their policy holders, he said.
“Our solution gives them a tool to go with the life insurance policies where they can start getting organized,” he said. “They can actually start to upload items into the platform. They can utilize our agents and AI to start to navigate through difficult conversations with their parent and agent.”
“So it improves the engagement. It also mitigates some of the loss in policy-holding jumping,” he said.
For example, when a death occurs, the biggest frustration with beneficiaries in receiving benefits is it takes too long to get them, he said.
“A lot of that is because the carriers don’t know how to get in contact with all the beneficiaries,” he said. “So now we’ve created a place where, over time, we can have that data and then share it back and allow them to actually get in contact with the people sooner and get money distributed more rapidly.”
Tumbleweed’s biggest client is Des Moines-based insurance company Wellabe, Richardson said.
About two years ago, Susan Kelly, director of member transformation at Wellabe, served as Richardson’s mentor through the Global Insurance Accelerator program.
“Paul was talking to me about what Tumbleweed does,” Kelly said. “I was like, ‘Well, there is a ton of alignment with what you’re building and the products that we have on our shelves and the markets we serve.’ So to me, it felt like a no-brainer.”
Kelly said the company recently launched Tumbleweed as part of a program it offers called Wellabe Rewards, which is offered for free to customers that have been with the company for a set amount of time.
Recently, Richardson hosted a webinar for Wellabe customers to talk about will and estate planning and end-of-life planning.
Kelly said that “end-of-life planning and understanding wills and trusts was one of the key things that came up over and over again.”
“They don’t understand how to leave their loved ones without the burden of ‘What happens after I pass away?’ So it was one of the main reasons we knew we had to have a solution like Paul’s on our platform,” she said.
Richardson said 90% of Tumbleweed’s revenue comes from its partnership with Wellabe and in 2024, the company achieved $70,000 in revenue. The other 10% comes from direct-to-consumer revenue, meaning people who found Tumbleweed through word-of-mouth, perhaps at a pitch event or elsewhere, he said.
Funders include angel investors and friends and family, the Global Insurance Accelerator, Nmotion powered by Gener8tor, Husker Venture Fund, Evolution Ventures, MinervaFund. Tumbleweed has also received loans from the Iowa Economic Development Authority’s Proof of Commercial Relevance and Demonstration funds, Richardson said.
People often ask what stage the company is at and Richardson characterized it as a post-beta product, meaning it is a “fully developed product that’s in market and now we’re adding features as our customers are helping us redefine our product roadmap.”
There is one full-time employee – Richardson – which is augmented by interns and a few contractors.
Short term, Richardson wants to close two more partnerships with insurance companies that will allow the company to grow its revenue.
Long term, “I would like to get to a place where our users are logging in at least once a week.
Because as people are aging, their needs change and evolve.”
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