Sarabeth Jaffe of Edmonds is riding high with her 2.5-year-old business HelloPrenup.
Recently featured in Forbes magazine’s “30 Seattle innovators under 30” list of innovative young entrepreneurs, Jaffe is filling the previously unmet need of couples contemplating marriage with a fast, easy, affordable alternative to the traditional prenuptial agreement process.
“The idea came to me when I became engaged,” she explained. “It was the middle of the pandemic, my fiancé and I had been together since our college days, I’d just quit my old job and I wanted to start a new company – so the time was ripe.
“As we moved ahead with our marriage plans, we started thinking about a prenup – should we get one, do we need one, what does it entail – but going the traditional route of working with an attorney can be long and stressful, not to mention expensive.
“That’s where the idea of an online prenup app came from,” she continued. “I’m a software engineer with the skills to design and do it, but I needed someone with appropriate legal expertise.”
That’s when she found family law attorney Julia Rodgers, who specializes in helping couples navigate the legal twists and turns of love and get peace of mind with a set of solid prenuptial protections.
“I found Julia and just cold-contacted her,” she explained. “I came at it from the tech perspective, and Julia from the legal perspective. With Julia based in Boston and me here in the northwest, we met regularly over Zoom to discuss how we’d put our skills together and set this in motion.”
It didn’t take long, and in March 2021 HelloPrenup was born. The online application allows couples to enter personal, financial, and other information and answer a series of questions.
It then generates documents for a legal prenuptial agreement custom-tailored to their needs. And it’s affordable — $599 compared to more than $5,000 going the traditional route.
“We think of it as the TurboTax of prenup agreements,” she laughed.
As a bootstrap firm without huge financial backing, the partners knew they were going to need additional capital. While Rodgers invested some of her personal funds to get the operation off the ground, they decided in April 2021 to apply to “Shark Tank” where they hoped to pitch their ideas to the sharks and come out with $150,000 in venture capital.
“We were literally building the product when we applied to ‘Shark Tank,’ ” Jaffe recalled.
“It was pretty crazy. They have a rigorous 3-month audition process which included me and Julia recording multiple rounds of our pitch and providing these to the show’s producers. Making these was tough, but it really forced us to think about and articulate our business, tighten up our messaging, and hone it into something that would jump off the screen.”
The producers liked what they saw, and in June 2021 they flew the partners to Los Angeles to work with the sharks and record their episode. It aired in October 2021.
Their initial presentation was energetic, lively and provocative, and concluded with their offer of a 10 percent share of the company for a $150,000 investment.
After some pointed Q-and-A the first sharks declined, but guest shark Nirav Tiola (co-founder of “Next Door”) saw the potential.
After a quick round of offers and counteroffers right on stage, Tiola joined with fellow shark Kevin O’Leary (who had earlier declined), to offer $150,000 and a combined 30 percent share.
The episode ended with the two sharks tossing bridal bouquets to Jaffe and Rodgers, who left the soundstage with big smiles and enthusiastic applause. Watch the full episode on You Tube here.
“Our business really took off after ‘Shark Tank,’ ” Jaffe said. “Within a year of launch, we made $1 million in revenue and are on track this year to triple it.
“We now operate in 30 states including Washington, and have attracted additional investment from others including Brian Liu, founder of LegalZoom. We’ve expanded from being strictly self-serve to adding on-call attorneys for clients who want more.
“We now have 8-10 employees located in Massachusetts, California, London, Columbia and of course, Edmonds, all working remotely. HelloPrenup is the premier online platform for affordable, fast, and comprehensive prenuptial agreements. Our goal is to empower couples through financial transparency and financial planning.”
Jaffe did not grow up in Edmonds — she hails from Maryland and graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York with a degree in software engineering.
While in college she met her future husband, Daniel Lachance. After graduation the couple moved to Seattle where Jaffe took a job at Microsoft and Lachance attended graduate school at the UW in biotechnology.
They moved from Seattle to Edmonds in 2021 in search of quieter surroundings, a sense of community, and a peaceful place for their noise-sensitive rescue dog “Maple.”
They fell in love with the community, and a year ago purchased a home in the Lake Ballinger neighborhood, where they can often be seen standup paddleboarding on the lake.
“We are so in love with Edmonds,” she says. “The water, the lifestyle, the restaurants and parks, the trails, access to nature, the sense of community and small-town feel. It’s home for sure.”
— By Larry Vogel
“We are so in love with Edmonds,” she says. “The water, the lifestyle, the restaurants and parks, the trails, access to nature, the sense of community and small-town feel. It’s home for sure.”
Is this the same area of the city that is so underserved. The same area that needs huge investment from the city? The quote and the rhetoric from the mayor and city don’t seem to jive. I think we are being bamboozled by our own leaders.
Welcome to Edmonds and congratulations on your success.
You should get a hobby…this is a female-founded company with a great mission – and they are seeing a TON of success. Don’t make this post political..man. Get a life.
Here, here. I totally agree with Bart. Get a life.
Welcome to the neighborhood! Congratulations on your success.
As for Hello Prenup, I like the sign at my car repair shop:
Quality
Service
Price
Pick two.
You get what you pay for.
Ralph, great point. When I saw this I thought, “if one is looking for a pre-nup on the cheap, does one really need a pre-nup at all?” My next thought was, “what do family law attorneys think about this approach to pre-nups?” My final thought is that someone suspecting they have Cancer and, maybe needing a doctor specialist, probably shouldn’t go to a Chiropractor instead to save a little money.
Thanks Larry for this fun story! Congratulations on the business launch and success, Sarabeth. And I am glad you and Daniel found Edmonds.
You can expand this business to end-of-life documents and elder attorneys!
I have nothing against the business, the people who started it, or the people who use it. I just agree with Mr. Sanders that law related things like pre-nups can be tricky and you better know what you are getting and why you are getting it before you go with any sort of cheap route. From a legal standpoint, marriages are, in fact, forming a legal partnership. All legal partnerships are the most likely form of human interactions to fail and require legal intervention; so things you do in relation to planning them and executing them should not be taken lightly. Buyer beware, in other words.
I love all the arm chair quarterbacks who know nothing about law. I actually am a lawyer who had a high net worth client use this service. All I can say is that it’s outstanding and is far better than going to a family attorney. I’m a corporate attorney and the reason why this is superior is that they see thousands of prenups from around the country with different jurisdictions/case law. The family law attorney we initially hired was 15k and was clueless on dealing with the complex details of my client. The other reason this works is that it is dual participation. This means that you and your spouse discuss the financials so that it never becomes adversarial. It’s the most fair legal product that I’ve seen in 30 years of practicing law.
John, so based on ONLY one case you observed of your rich client using this service proves that this service is absolutely the right way to go for anyone and everyone thinking they need a pre-nup? It’s comments like yours that encourage “arm chair quarterbacks” like me to keep on keeping on. Your evidence is purely anecdotal whether you are a big time corporate lawyer or just any other man on the street. Now if you could honestly say something like, ” I’ve had twenty rich clients who have used this service with not one complaint you might be worth listening to on the subject. Short of something like that I’d say folks should take your advice with a grain or two of salt; just like they should consider mine and others commenting here to be a bit of “arm chair quarterbacking,” as you put it.