(Fortune) - Over the past few years, Libby Leffler noticed a handful of trends. Women were outpacing men in earning college degrees; single women owned more homes than single men did; and women were poised to benefit from the upcoming $80 trillion Great Wealth Transfer.
Taken together, those trends boiled down to a realization: women—including young women—had assets to protect. Leffler—who was Sheryl Sandberg’s first chief of staff at Facebook, where she worked from 2008 to 2015—decided to launch a startup that would make it easier for women to decide their financial future when they get married.
Her company is called First, and right now it allows couples in California to complete prenuptial agreements online. The prenup is becoming less stigmatized—and more common outside the ultra-wealthy demographic that has always relied on them. Leffler sees prenups becoming part of an “essential personal stack,” as routine as getting a mammogram or a joint Costco membership.
The company raised $4 million in a seed round, Fortune is the first to report. The round was led by Expa and Springbank, with participation from Sarah Kunst’s Cleo Capital and Karman Ventures. Kunst, who says she used the platform herself after it went live over the summer, says she invested because the startup fit her thesis of backing “complicated consumer investments—things that are expensive, unfun, and awkward to deal with.” “Everyone has a prenup,” Kunst adds. “Either you write it or the government does.”
Leffler says millennials and Gen Zers are more open to prenups because they “know how painful divorce is.” Forty-seven percent of millennials who are engaged or have been married said they got a prenup, according to a 2023 Harris poll. “If you have parents that have been divorced, you increasingly look to a prenup as basic hygiene,” she says. They see prenups as relevant no matter the size of their assets—or even as a tool to prevent a partner from becoming responsible for taking on the other’s student loan debt. “They’re really about more than money,” Leffler says. “They’re about things that you care about—your baseball card collection, your video game console. It could be about your grandma’s jewelry. It could be about your dog.” Leffler herself got a prenup before she got married in 2016.
First is part of a new generation of startups tackling the changing relationship expectations of millennial and Gen Z couples. Plenty, for example, is building a new app for couples combining finances. And First is far from the only platform to to bring legal proceedings online. Leffler argues her startup stands out because its agreements are not “plug and play,” but are custom and designed for enforceability; the platform connects couples with attorneys. A couple’s first prenup via the platform costs $2,650, with additional charges for add-ons.
Leffler chose the name “First” because a prenup is likely the first legal agreement many couples enter together. She sees potential for the platform to expand first into other states and then into other categories—online divorce is a growing business, too—but won’t say which ones yet.
By Emma Hinchliffe and Nina Ajemian
October 24, 2024
