More and more couples — millennials, in particular — are embracing prenuptial agreements. Julia Rodgers, CEO, and Sarabeth Jaffe, CTO, set out to simplify the traditionally complex and costly process with their startup, HelloPrenup. The platform offers custom prenups at a fraction of the cost of a traditional lawyer.
The idea for HelloPrenup was born from the founders’ individual experiences. Julia, a Boston family law attorney, recognized the need for a way to automate the prenup process. On the other side of the country in Seattle, Sarabeth was preparing for her own nuptials and found it difficult to navigate the legal process and realized that many other couples faced similar challenges. Leveraging her background as a software developer, Sarabeth teamed up with Julia to build a platform that would make prenups more accessible.
"I started to research things like, how do you even get married? How do you get a prenup?" Jaffe said. Before long she saw a need: There had to be a way to get prenups done without lots of lawyer visits and fees ranging upwards of $5,000.
What started as an internet search ended up as HelloPrenup, a platform for creating prenups more easily and affordably. The platform took off, and the founding duo soon found themselves pitching the business on ABC's hit TV show Shark Tank. The secret powering their marital tech platform? Bubble's no-code web app builder.
From side hustle to startup partner
Sarabeth had been working as a software developer in the Seattle area when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. She found herself searching for inspiration in a new day-to-day future that looked to be mostly remote. The idea for delivering individualized prenups at a fraction of what lawyers charge sparked that inspiration, so she got to work.
Sarabeth imagined the prenup business could be her side hustle, and sought out a development platform that could do a lot of the heavy lifting for her. Bubble fit the bill, and the software side of things progressed quickly. Just as quickly, however, Sarabeth realized there were critical legal elements of the business that lay outside her wheelhouse.
Then she met Julia Rodgers, a divorce attorney from Boston who had started HelloPrenup two years prior. Julia had already done much of the legal heavy lifting the company needed, but her tech was in need of a serious upgrade.
"I found her website, but I couldn't sign up because it was under maintenance," Sarabeth said. Julia had used a series of overseas developers to build a site that represented a good start, but wasn't really ready for prime time. As Sarabeth set out to shore it up, she saw two options. She could reverse engineer Julia's site to figure out how things were currently working. Or, she could just start over from scratch. "I'm the kind of engineer that would rather just know exactly how every single thing works," Sarabeth said. Happily, starting from scratch isn’t so daunting when you’re building with Bubble.
The power of Bubble meets the flexibility of custom code
Even though she had a background in software engineering using a variety of programming languages, Sarabeth decided to use Bubble to build the new and improved HelloPrenup. "I wanted something that, as a single software engineer working on the project, I would be able to handle," she said. Bubble’s drag-and-drop environment, with support for responsive design, dynamic content, and integrated version control let Sarabeth quickly build big portions of the site without having to write code. This freed up more bandwidth for developing the parts of HelloPrenup that had to be custom coded.
Sarabeth also appreciated that Bubble came with security infrastructure in place, especially given the sensitive nature of the data HelloPrenup would be handling. "With a platform where you're asking people to divulge financial information, security was really important to me," she said. The platform recently passed 3rd party security testing with flying colors, and Julia cites 99.9% platform uptime on Bubble hosting.
Prenups carry different legal requirements in each US state, which means varying language in each contract according to where it's being executed. Sarabeth built a custom API to process the data, easily integrating it with HelloPrenup's front-end and database, which were built in Bubble. This combo gave Sarabeth the best of both the coding and noncoding worlds, and fueled Bubble’s expansion from 14 to 32 states over an 18-month period.
Facing the sharks on national TV
Sarabeth built the Bubble-based HelloPrenup in just three months. She said the process would have taken significantly longer if she had coded everything from scratch. HelloPrenup's new platform officially launched in mid June of 2021, and drove revenue in its first month, an impressive feat for any new business.
Soon after launch, HelloPrenup featured on ABC's hit TV show, Shark Tank. There, the women struck a partnership deal with sharks Kevin O'Leary and Nirav Tolia to scale the company. Not only had Sarabeth and Julia built the new HelloPrenup incredibly quickly, but the Bubble-powered app helped secure funding to fuel even more growth.
"With a platform where you're asking people to divulge financial information, security was really important to me."
Taking the stress — and cost — out of prenuptial agreements helps scores of young couples relax and enjoy their wedding days. HelloPrenup customers have created over 5,000 prenups since the June 2021 relaunch, and the company’s new Prenup Attorney Network will connect customers to family law attorneys when it launches in March 2023. With Bubble powering their platform, Julia and Sarabeth are focused on delivering an easy and comprehensive prenup experience to more and more happy new couples.
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