One of the hallmarks of the new online economy is disruption. Disruption refers to identifying an industry and poking and prodding it until you find a way to fundamentally transform the way business is conducted. And it appears no industry is safe from this paradigm shift. That includes the end-of-life industry as well.

In a recent story by Annie Pilon in Small Business Trends, a new entrepreneur found a way to bring the right amount of attention to his startup venture, Willing, an online platform for creating a customized Last Will & Testament. Eliam Medina found a unique way to make his application to the esteemed Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, stand out among the other 5,000 companies that also applied during the most recent application round. Sticking to the end-of-life planning nature of his own company, Medina sent personalized cremation urns to each of the Y Combinator partners with their names inscribed on them.

Speaking with Business Insider, Medina explained his clever rationale for the brilliant stunt. “It doesn’t take a genius to see that YC receives over 5,000 applications and only has 14 partners,” he said.

Because of Medina’s unconventional gift (which aligned perfectly with his startup’s offering) he received funding from Y Combinator and we will likely hear about Willing in the not too distant future. And that brings us to another point: preplanning end-of-life arrangements is becoming the norm for more and more people. It just makes sense

If you haven’t yet considered your end-of-life plan, or if you are ready to begin preplanning your own cremation, use the form on this page or call Smart Cremation today and speak with one of our Smart Family Arrangers about how it is you want to be remembered when the time comes.