Josef and Valtteri founded Solace in 2025 after seeing, both personally and professionally, how overwhelming the journey from end-of-life planning to loss support can be — and how poorly existing systems help people when they need it most.

Valtteri, a medical doctor turned into entrepreneur, had seen how grief and bureaucracy collide: people are emotionally shattered yet forced to navigate fragmented institutions, paperwork, and digital silos. Josef, formerly VP of Engineering at Mindler (a Swedish mental health scale-up), had spent years building secure, digital health platforms and knew technology could remove friction instead of adding to it.

Their curiosity about the end-of-life space began years earlier while working together at Mindler, surrounded by mental-health experts and deeply human stories. Through both personal experiences and professional exposure, they kept seeing the same pattern: loss is universal, but support is fragmented. The spark came — as many good ideas do — during one of their long after-work runs, when they asked: