How Killswitch Addresses the Emotional Challenge of Getting Users to Confront Mortality

I was setting up my own estate planning and realized the digital side was a complete mess. My wife wouldn't know how to access my crypto, my password manager, or half my accounts if something happened to me tomorrow. Lawyers can handle the legal documents, but they can't help with seed phrases and server credentials. I started looking for a solution, something encrypted where I controlled the keys, with automatic delivery to my family if I stopped checking in. Couldn't find anything that wasn't either sketchy, abandoned, or required trusting some company with my unencrypted data. The few options that existed looked like side projects that could disappear any day. I also run a few online businesses, and the thought of my wife trying to figure out hosting credentials, domain registrars, and client contacts while grieving was brutal. So I decided to build exactly what I needed. If I had this problem, other people definitely did too.

Worked, Short-form video content and blog posts explaining specific use cases, "what happens to your crypto when you die" and "what happens to your passwords when you die" type stuff. People don't search for "deadman switch," but they do search for the problem they're experiencing. I've been writing long-form blog posts targeting those exact searches and creating 90-second videos walking through real scenarios. Meeting people where they're already anxious about something, then showing them there's a simple solution. The crypto inheritance angle has been especially effective because that community already understands that no one can recover your keys for you. Flopped, Product Hunt launch. Got around 40 upvotes, almost zero conversions. I think the problem is that people browse Product Hunt for fun, to discover cool new tools. They're not in the headspace to think about death and estate planning. Wrong audience, wrong mindset entirely. Lesson learned, go where people are already thinking about the problem.

Honestly, most feedback has been about wanting features I haven't built yet— a dedicated mobile app, more file organization options, shared switches for couples who want to manage things together. The zero-knowledge encryption architecture limits some things by design. I can't reset anyone's password because I literally don't have access to their encryption keys. That occasionally frustrates people who are used to clicking "forgot password" and getting back in. I handled the lockout concern by adding a self-recovery feature. You can set up a deadman switch to yourself with your own recovery codes— set it to trigger a few days before your other switches. If you lose access, you get your own codes back first, recover your account, and check in before anything goes to your beneficiaries. It solves the problem without compromising the zero-knowledge model. I wrote a whole blog post explaining it because it's a clever workaround that most users wouldn't think of on their own.

Everyone assumes the competition is other deadman switch apps or digital estate planning tools. It's not. The real competition is procrastination and denial. People know they should plan for this stuff. They know their spouse can't access their accounts. They know their crypto could be lost forever. But it's uncomfortable to think about, so they keep putting it off. The product challenge isn't building better software, it's getting someone to confront their own mortality for 15 minutes. That's the actual hard part. Most people won't do it until something scary happens, a health scare, a friend dying unexpectedly, reading about someone's family losing access to millions in Bitcoin. My marketing has to find people in that window where they're motivated enough to actually act. The software itself is the easy part. Convincing someone to sit down and think "what happens when I die" is the real barrier. Most competitors focus on features. I focus on getting people to care in the first place.

Expanding content marketing with daily short-form videos targeting specific use cases - crypto inheritance, solo founders worried about business continuity, preppers thinking about contingency planning. Building out the affiliate program with influencers in those niches, especially prepper podcasts and crypto YouTubers. On the product side, adding features users have requested, better file organization and tagging, shared switches for couples, and eventually a mobile app. Also exploring a co-founder search for someone with B2C SaaS sales experience to help scale the go-to-market side.

30 paying customers at $99/year, doubled user count since launching in January 2026.

I've been building with Elixir and Phoenix for years. I run the largest Elixir-only YouTube channel and the most popular Elixir podcast, so I knew the tech stack cold before writing a single line of code. I also run a technical recruiting service specifically for Elixir developers, which taught me a lot about B2B sales cycles and client relationships. On the side, I built and still run a smaller SaaS called ReviewPro for Amazon influencers. So the technical side and the "running a product business" side weren't new to me. No background in estate planning or security products specifically, though, I just needed this tool for myself and figured if I had the problem, plenty of other people did too.

Spent way too long in beta trying to make everything perfect before launching publicly. I had maybe 15 beta testers, but only 3 or 4 were actually using it regularly. I kept tweaking things based on hypothetical concerns instead of real usage data. Should have launched publicly after 60 days, not 6 months. The feedback from paying customers is completely different from beta testers - people who pay actually use the product seriously and tell you exactly what's broken or missing. Beta testers are polite and don't want to hurt your feelings. Perfectionism is just procrastination in disguise. I knew that intellectually but still fell into the trap. Now I ship faster and iterate based on what real customers actually need.