Nick Kelly

Leading Eulogize's product and partnerships since 2022, Nick has found the work equal parts purpose and fulfillment, all of it in service of one goal: making Eulogize the easiest possible way to create a personalized funeral tribute. He loves that the role keeps him close to the people he's building for, from finding a family the right song for a video to setting up custom templates for a new funeral home partner, because it tells him exactly what would make Eulogize better. On a team this small he's had a hand in nearly every part of it, from new features to designing several of the themes himself.

Supporting people through terrible loss every day hasn't made him a grief counselor, but it has given him a hard-earned sense of where a tool can genuinely help and where it should get out of the way in such a delicate moment. His understanding doesn't come from personal grief. It comes from the gratitude, and the sheer relief, of the families Eulogize has helped. At one of the first funeral conventions he attended, Nick heard a phrase that stuck, "your everyday is their worst day ever," and he's carried it into every decision at Eulogize since.

That thinking shows up most in Eulogize's AI eulogy and obituary writer, a project he led, built for people who can't find the words on the hardest day of their lives. Getting it right meant going further into the language of loss than almost any product he'd worked on: what comfort actually sounds like, how tone shifts from one faith to the next, and where AI genuinely helps versus where it should quietly step back. It also meant holding a line the whole industry feels, staying true to how each family says goodbye without ever becoming so generic it means nothing to anyone.

That work hasn't gone unnoticed in the profession. American Funeral Director profiled him as "the face of digital tribute creation," and he sat down with Ryan Thogmartin for an interview on Connecting Directors. He's a familiar face on the convention floor too, at the NFDA, CANA, and ICCFA expos where the industry gathers, learning what funeral homes and families actually need.

Nick didn't come to funerals in a straight line. Before Eulogize he'd led teams across industries as far apart as music festivals and Web3, always chasing the same thing: the small, human details that turn something generic into something that means the world to one person. Funerals turned out to be the deepest version of that he'd found. He came in, by his own admission, knowing little about the profession, and came away seeing funeral directors as "last responders," a genuine community service he recognizes from his own years volunteering as a surf lifesaver and with the Rural Fire Service.

He divides his time between Sydney and the United States, with family scattered from Chicago to Manly, and takes any excuse to visit either end. When he's not working, he's usually traveling, chasing a good bottle of wine, or getting a round of golf in when his back agrees to it.