From Shark Tank to Raising 20+ Million | The Story Of Eterneva

Manav: After losing her dear friend and mentor, she struggled to find a truly meaningful way to keep her memory alive. Then, in a seemingly random conversation with a diamond scientist, she had what she calls a "soul-speaking" moment — the realization that loss could be transformed into something beautiful and enduring. That moment led to the creation of her company, Eterneva. Her groundbreaking approach has touched millions of lives and attracted investment from Mark Cuban on Shark Tank. But beyond the funding and the headlines, what's truly remarkable is how she's built a process that helps people grieve better, bringing comfort, meaning, and celebration to the end-of-life space. Today we have a founder who's revolutionizing how we honor and remember our loved ones by turning their remains into diamonds. Please join me in welcoming Adelle Archer to the show.

I saw you've been working on this idea for eight years, and I have to say, congratulations — a lot of entrepreneurs just dream of a business lasting that long, and it's rare, because people either sell their business, or something happens, or they jump from idea to idea. What made this one stick?

Adelle: I'm really, really grateful I found something where — we talk about founder-market fit, the business you're supposed to build based on who you are and how you're wired — and I think we really found that. It's a space that's incredibly energizing to want to go reinvent, the end-of-life space, because there's still so much left to do. It's a blue ocean, and I think families deserve great experiences, beautiful, celebratory options — and honestly, we're just getting started. We're category-creating, which is a different go-to-market motion than most companies tapping into existing demand. Category creation takes time, but it's really where you see genuine reinvention of an industry, because of the work companies put into it.

Manav: I want to put you a bit on the spot and get a hot take from you on the disruption happening in the natural diamond industry — the somewhat obvious trend of lab-grown diamonds going more mainstream, not just because they're cheaper but also more ethically sourced. What's your take on where that's headed?

Adelle: We don't really view ourselves as a diamond company — we're very much an end-of-life company, and our customers are grievers, not people diamond-shopping. But our supply chain obviously has crossover with that industry, so we do watch the space. I think it's having a real reckoning — there was so much concentration of power in the natural diamond industry for so long, and it's been genuinely cool to watch new entrants come in and elevate the whole experience: better quality, better sustainability, better transparency, and better pricing too. I think that trend just continues, more of a diversification of power in that space.

What's really different about us, though, is that our process is very bespoke — we grow one diamond at a time, from a personal carbon source of someone you truly loved, at our facility in Texas or our facility in Germany. For our families, the question is: what's a really beautiful and meaningful way to honor my person? Do I want to pay thousands of dollars for a casket that goes into the ground and that I see exactly once? Or do I want something special, bespoke, and participatory like this? We've invested a lot in having supply chains close to home, places people can actually visit and see firsthand. There's a lot more consideration built into our supply chain than you'd see in mass diamond production.

Manav: I grew up in India, and after death we usually cremate — we burn the bodies. What are the statistics on cremation versus burial in the US?

Adelle: It's honestly wild. In 1980, the US was at about 10% cremation. Today we're at roughly 60%, and we're pacing toward 80% by 2040.

Manav: 80% cremation.

Adelle: Yep. It's a massive macro trend, and I think it reflects how differently consumers are approaching end of life now. People are less interested in doing what tradition always prescribed — they want something that feels personal and specific, suited to their dad or their mom, not just "this is what we've always done." A lot of the time people choose cremation because they want to divide ashes among family members — someone might spread some, someone might turn some into a diamond or a tree — it gives more optionality, and lets you keep your loved one with you. People are also so much more mobile today, moving cross-country, and they don't want to leave mom behind. Being able to keep her with you wherever you go is genuinely powerful.

Manav: I was reading that you take customers through an eight-month journey. Do you actually give them video updates along the way — what does that journey look like?

Adelle: Let me back up a bit on how we even got there. When Garrett, my co-founder, and I first looked into this, we actually thought we'd start a regular lab-grown diamond company. But on a personal note, around that time I had a dear friend and business mentor, who I mentioned earlier, get sick and pass away. I was standing exactly in the shoes of our customer today, thinking, how do we honor her, how do we do something special?

I was actually told about this idea — Eterneva isn't the first company to turn ashes into diamonds, that existed long before us. I'd say we're very much the company that built the market for it, though. The scientist told me, "Yeah, you can do this," and I loved the idea, said I'm going to do it, and started the process. What turned me off was how transactional everyone in that space was — nobody asked who I was doing this for, nobody asked about our relationship. And critically, I kept thinking: how do I even know her ashes are actually going into the diamond? How do you prove that, that it's not just a regular diamond at the end? Nobody would show me where their labs were, nobody would show their process — it was a total black box. That's what made me think, I want to do this, but I don't feel like I can find a company right now that I'd trust wholeheartedly with my person. That's what inspired Eterneva — from day one, it was all about transparency. We want you to know exactly what's happening, exactly where things stand at every step.

It actually started just as an exercise in transparency. As we took families through the process, every time we sent an update, they were crying, emailing it to friends and family, posting it on social media. We realized we could add even more value — why not make these updates storytelling-driven and participatory? We learn a huge amount about the loved one along the way. For example, when we first reveal the carbon — you send us ashes, we run a purification process, and on camera we say, "This is your dad's carbon, are you ready?" and walk them through it, speaking with them over video if they want to join. We have our facility in Texas that people can tour — we've even let families be part of starting their loved one's diamond machine.

We want them involved, because we've realized that what really helps someone through grief is having something positive to look forward to that unfolds over time — grief definitely isn't done in a handful of months. Getting to talk about your loved one a lot, having something positive ahead of you — it becomes this steady drumbeat that helps people process and integrate. By the time they get the diamond home, they've imbued it with so much meaning that they come out the other side in a different place emotionally. That's really what we're trying to accomplish — it's not about a diamond product. If we just mailed you ashes back as a diamond with no process, there'd be no emotional value built. So that whole experience is integral — when you talk to our customers, they say things like, "This changed my relationship with grief." And I think that only grows as Gen Z and millennials become more and more conscious consumers.

Manav: That's incredible. As a customer, the missing ingredient elsewhere was empathy — I could see it in your videos. I even saw a box with a screen in it explaining the process, that was incredible. Do you still do that?

Adelle: Totally, yes — that's for our direct-to-consumer families. After they've talked to someone on our team, they get a welcome kit, and when they open it for the first time, they're blown away, because they get a personalized video message from the exact person they spoke with — "Hey, this is Shelly, I'm so excited to do this for your mom." They're like, "What? This is crazy."

Manav: I think you're totally right about that — and what's been really cool to watch is how big you've become across social media. I think you're approaching almost half a billion views across your content.

Adelle: Thank you, yeah.

Manav: I want to know some secrets — how did you crack going viral, especially on TikTok? I saw the numbers, they're really good.

Adelle: [laughs] Thank you. We had an influencer last month whose unboxing video, opening her welcome kit, hit around 20 million views. It was insane.

Manav: I saw the one with the woman showing off her pony —

Adelle: Yes! Anna.

Manav: — that was incredible, I was like, "wait, she's showing her pony?"

Adelle: Totally.

Manav: And then I dug a bit more and found out 40% of your revenue actually comes from pets.

Adelle: Yes, exactly.

Manav: But let's not change the subject — what's the actual formula for going viral on social media?

Adelle: It's not really a formula, it's more about what people genuinely relate to. It was funny when we first started — everybody told us, "You can't build a brand in death care, it's way too touchy a topic, you can't market directly to people, you'll need to go straight through funeral homes and get white-labeled." And we thought, that completely misses the point — it makes the whole thing transactional again. We decided, if we do storytelling the right way, people are going to resonate with it. And sure enough, I think what we do really well is short-form video storytelling. We're sitting on this incredible wealth of stories, because anyone becoming a diamond isn't just an average person or pet — they're badass, they're awesome, and there are so many great stories to tell about how they earned their diamond. Then watching someone open the box for the first time and see their loved one's diamond — there are tears, but they're happy tears, it's genuinely feel-good content.

We just got really good at storytelling and showcasing it authentically. And exactly to your point, Gen Z and millennials have such a different mindset around end of life — older generations still struggle to talk about it or even think about it, but that's not true of younger generations.

Manav: They'll just make a video about it.

Adelle: Exactly, they're like, "oh my gosh, this is amazing." What we see all the time is a Gen Z kid who saw us on TikTok bringing it up at the dinner table — "Mom, what are we doing with dad's ashes, why are they still in the closet, let's do this." They're actually teaching an older generation to be more open about this natural part of life.

Manav: That's so interesting — there's that saying, "the things you own end up owning you," but in this case that's not really true, because how many things do we own today that you could ask someone to tell a story about? "Tell me a story about my iPhone that was made in China" — there's no story there.

Adelle: Exactly, we're missing more and more of that. It's not about the dollar value, it's the sentimental value. That actually ties really well into an idea from a wonderful grief therapist, David Kessler — he developed the five stages of grief, which everyone knows. He later lost his own son, went through it acutely himself, and realized there's actually an optional sixth stage available to all of us after the first five: making meaning in the wake of loss. That's really what we've come to understand through our own process — being able to give people guided, personalized experiences around their diamond. We'll talk with them about what color would remind them of their person. "My dad had these piercing blue eyes" — "sounds like a blue diamond." "My grandma was the yellow rose of Texas" — "let's do yellow."

We have jewelry designers on staff who, as they learn more about the loved one's story, will say, "your mom loved the ocean, why don't we incorporate a wave here," or "she had this radiant personality, let's put in some rays of sunlight." One of my favorites — a girl whose dad always watched Star Trek with her, so they made a platinum replica of the communicator badge from the show, with her dad's diamond set into it, as a necklace. There's such a story attached to each piece, because it does become an heirloom — they'll pass it down to their kids and be able to tell that story.

Manav: During the LA wildfires, you could really tell what people truly cared about — their house is burning down, and they're going for the photos, the pendants, the things that stand out.

Adelle: Totally.

Manav: Quick question about the eight-month process — why does it take so long?

Adelle: We handle every stage individually per family — we're not batch-producing diamonds. We grow your loved one's singular diamond in our diamond machine on its own, inspect it individually. It's really about the bespoke nature of ensuring 100% chain of custody, working on one person at a time — you don't want an environment where a bunch of diamonds get mixed up. There are a lot of stages: ashes to carbon, carbon refinement, diamond growth to a rough diamond — we hand-cut all our diamonds — then coloration if you want color, grading and certification, authenticating that it's both a real diamond and made from that specific personal carbon source, and finally jewelry design if you want something custom. It's a full end-to-end process, quite different from mass-producing diamonds and selling them at market value.

Manav: I want to ask about Shark Tank — the lead-up and the kind of exposure people get, since people watching might be thinking about going on the show one day, and I want them to know what to expect afterward.

Adelle: It's interesting, I'd actually calibrate my answer based on what your business model is. It was hugely, hugely positive for us, but we're also a pretty unique, memorable product — people go "oh my god, that's the company that was on Shark Tank." Still, to this day, I'll look at our Google reviews and see things like someone saying they were watching Shark Tank with their significant other, had a conversation about it at the time, and then later, when someone passed, they said, "I know what to do now, because we watched that episode." I've seen that over and over, and it's genuinely powerful.

We actually did some customer research recently — surveyed customers over the last three years — and about 15% originally heard about us through Shark Tank. That's amazing. I think because we're so word-of-mouth driven, we get that outsized effect, whereas a CPG product might not generate quite the same "I need to bring this up at dinner tonight" reaction.

Manav: For context, the episode aired six years ago.

Adelle: Yeah, 2019.

Manav: That's a long time.

Adelle: It really is. It genuinely blows my mind how impactful that's continued to be for us. But I'd say, with any deal like that, look closely at the deal economics too, make sure you're not giving away a third of your company — yes, you'll get exposure, but be mindful of the equity you give up.

Manav: One more thing for people watching — I just finished the Tony Robbins audiobook, Unleash the Power Within.

Adelle: I love him.

Manav: I was telling everyone to listen to it. And then two days ago I went on your Instagram, and the first video I saw was Tony Robbins following you guys, calling you out. How did that happen?

Adelle: We've actually become good friends with Tony. I've done a lot of his events, I'm a big Tony fan personally. His team discovered us through a testimonial video we did at his Business Mastery event. They flew out and did a whole documentary-style piece on Eterneva — that was earlier last year, and we got pulled into one of his biggest free events, around 100,000 people tuned in, and he closed the entire event with an Eterneva story. He was crying, we were crying, it was this five-minute moment. He actually reached out afterward and said he had a family he wanted to gift diamonds to — a wife who'd lost her husband, they'd been working on business projects together. He gifted them $50,000 worth of diamonds, which says so much about his character — he's done a huge amount of donation work, feeding families every year, it's incredible. They're actively a customer now, going through the process firsthand.

Something I'm really excited about — we're actually announcing this week, and it ties back to what you mentioned earlier about the LA wildfires — we're co-launching a campaign with Tony to support families who lost their homes in LA, because we can actually make diamonds from the wood of a home. Families in Los Angeles can nominate other families to potentially have a diamond made, we'll select three, and he's going to present it to them at the next Unleash the Power Within event in March. I'm really excited about that. So much of our heart as a company is philanthropy — how do we bring some brightness, some meaning, some hope into someone's darkest hour. There's such alignment between us and Tony on that front.

Manav: What's the next vision for Eterneva — how are you going to scale this?

Adelle: I think one of the most powerful lessons a founder learns as they grow is focus. It's cool that our company could theoretically be a lot of different things, but complexity is the enemy of greatness — that's something we've been really intentional about this past year, realizing that if we just focus on driving adoption of the Eterneva memorial diamond experience, we literally only need to serve about 0.7% of families to reach $100 million in topline revenue. As you go to market through the funeral home channel especially, it's a very predictable, scalable channel — I look forward to funeral homes offering more celebratory, personalized options, because a lot of families walk into a funeral home and feel like they're not seeing what they actually want for their loved one there. That's where we can drive a lot of value, being widely distributed across funeral homes in the US, really building toward enterprise scale.

After that, there's the option of launching other product lines through those same distribution channels — and there's a huge international opportunity too, which is exciting. I think over the next couple of years you'll see us expand from there. But I really believe the power is in not doing it too soon — focus, show real excellence and execution in one channel, before you try to balloon too quickly.

Manav: I want to ask about the funeral industry, because it's such a black box to me — if something happened, God forbid, I wouldn't even know who to call or where to go. It's such a necessary industry when it happens. How does that work, especially for younger audiences, and how does your partnership with funeral homes work?

Adelle: I completely agree with you. My encouragement to anyone listening: first, do a basic audit with your family. Take me, for example — if one of my parents passed away tomorrow, I'd have no idea where their accounts are, their logins, who to contact to turn off recurring bill pay, my dad's oil and gas investment in Alaska, how I'd even get in touch with the right people to manage that. That's a whole track of work you don't want to be caught off guard by — it can get very painful, messy, and laborious versus if you just sat down for a weekend and inventoried everything together.

Step two: know your ecosystem. There are some wonderful funeral homes out there — I've been genuinely blown away getting into this industry, most funeral directors are lovely, service-oriented people who really care and want to give back. But at the same time, this is an industry where trust is the currency, so you want to make sure you're only ever working with high-integrity companies. Do the research ahead of time in your local area — know what funeral homes exist, read the reviews in advance — because when you're actually in grief, there's something called "grief brain," this incredible brain fog where you're barely processing what's going on. You don't want to be reading a stack of reviews and figuring all that out in that moment. Better to have it coordinated beforehand.

And then, talk to your loved one. It breaks my heart how many people I talk to who say, "I really want to do this for my dad, but we never talked about it, and I feel conflicted — would he have liked it or not? He always joked about being put in a box in a ditch somewhere." A lot of people, especially men, can be flippant about it and think it's funny, without realizing the anxiety that creates later for the family member left guessing. That's actually what was so cool about Shark Tank — it organically sparked that conversation for a lot of people, and they'd end up saying, "I want to do this, my mom blessed it, she loved the idea, I feel good moving forward with it." I really wish more people would just have that conversation — and remember, the person left behind is a stakeholder too. It's not only about what you want, it's about what they need in order to grieve you when you're gone.

Manav: You make it all sound so easy — you're incredible.

Adelle: Thanks.

Manav: One last question about fundraising — I read your last round was oversubscribed, and you've raised money not just from great investors but from former founders of great companies. Can you share some tips on fundraising outside of Shark Tank? I get that you've built an incredible business, but you've clearly also done something right in communicating it.

Adelle: A hundred percent — building your network matters, but being strategic about it matters more. Early on, I really made an effort to know the founder community here in Austin, and a lot of the time it was one founder introducing me to another, picking their brain on something, getting their thoughts, before eventually saying, "by the way, we're raising a round, would you be interested?" I think one thing we did well early on was getting a lot of founders onto the cap table during our angel rounds, because by the time you get to your seed or Series A, they have incredible networks and real credibility. If Andy Dunn from Bonobos makes an introduction, people listen — "oh, Andy likes this founder, cool."

Manav: Or Kendra Scott.

Adelle: Or Kendra Scott, exactly. Another insight — honestly, never do cold outreach. With all due respect to associates at investment firms, I really try to get as far up the food chain as possible, get a credible investor or credible founder to make the intro, because frankly, we're a company that's nobody's obvious thesis — we're always going to be an out-of-thesis bet for most funds. So I need to get all the way up to the person who actually has the authority to make the call, hearing the pitch firsthand, thinking, "wow, this is more than I expected, I actually see the vision here" — and then they can rally internal alignment to get you a bigger check.

Manav: That's great advice, I think I'm going to follow that.

Adelle: You should.

Manav: Heck yeah. I want to shift outside the company, into your personal life — what have you been obsessed with lately? We touched a bit on health earlier, and you mentioned Casey Means and I went down that rabbit hole, listened to her episode with Logan, and the audiobook. What have you been curious about outside of work, what have you been observing in your own life?

Adelle: It's funny, I honestly feel like a total novice in this area — I don't fully know what I'm doing. I think we're in a moment where there's been so much concentration of information, and I'd count myself among younger people who are pretty skeptical of traditional media and how information has historically been shared. After I listened to that podcast about microplastics, I was struck by how fast cancer rates are climbing, and how much microplastics might be part of that issue, and how little mainstream attention it's getting — though there's this cool groundswell of people talking about it now, mostly in the podcast ecosystem, and it's made me genuinely curious.

A big catalyst for this, actually — speaking of people who watch Shark Tank — I had a bit of a wake-up call about two weeks ago. A friend from high school reached out to tell me someone we went to high school with is in hospice, expected to pass soon — he's 33. My husband used to play basketball with him in high school. He'd been watching our Shark Tank episodes and told his wife about us, so we're actually going to be honoring him. But I kept thinking, how does a 33-year-old get stage-four bile duct cancer? And I'm hearing stories like that more and more, and it makes me feel protective of my husband, my little brother, myself. I don't want that for my family, so what do I actually need to know, what do I need to think about?

I have a wonderful forum, a group of other entrepreneurs I meet with monthly, we've been together seven years, and a lot of them are doing full-body health scans, things like Prenuvo, and I'm thinking, okay, I need to get on this train too, what am I doing. But I do think there's a real need and opportunity to democratize that information and simplify it, for people who aren't already deep into the wellness world — even something as basic as understanding the difference between organic and non-organic products, and how those toxins build up in your endocrine system over time. One of the biggest things that struck me was how many chemicals banned in the European Union are still allowed in the US.

Manav: Totally — even just eliminating those from your diet, your cleaning products, your household products can make a real difference.

Adelle: Exactly, and I think that's part of a bigger shift we're seeing away from traditional media, from TV, toward TikTok, Twitter, podcasting.

Manav: Totally — and that's part of why these conversations feel different now. It's less obvious when there's an agenda, and I think especially once you've been a founder who's done the TV and PR circuit, you realize how much of that is actually engineered.

The name of the podcast is Emerging Founders, and one of the biggest challenges I've seen people face is finding a co-founder — and finding the right one, with a dynamic where you genuinely complement each other. How did you find your co-founder, and what made you realize, "okay, we work well together"?

Adelle: Gosh — Garrett and I were kind of lucky, we met in tech, we'd both worked at the same B2B tech company before starting Eterneva. I think we just noticed each other — like, "you're different, you've got this hustle," pouring into these companies as if they were our own, while everyone else was clocking in nine-to-five. We ended up living together for a year, incubating a bunch of ideas together, so there was very much a natural fit.

That said, I'd say that's just the beginning. I think co-founder relationships put more stress on a relationship than marriage, in some ways — you're in this constant state of needing to keep this "baby" alive, so much pressure and intensity, and it really stress-tests the relationship. My biggest piece of advice, beyond finding a good co-founder, is doing the work on the relationship itself first — realizing that so few of us grew up with good emotional intelligence tools, learning how to have hard conversations, how to voice when something isn't working or rubbed you the wrong way, having a real method for coming together, sharing that feedback, saying "here's my request of you" or "here's your request of me," and building the trust to communicate well and work as a team. That's learned experience — you're going to get it wrong before you get it right. But I'd say, sooner rather than later, do the personal development work, and go in aware there's probably a lot you'll need to develop to work really effectively together.

Manav: I have a business partner, and she and I get along so well, because a lot of people give excuses or ask permission for things, but we just work, and we tell each other things directly. It's great because we get so much more done in a short amount of time.

Adelle: Totally.

Manav: On the other hand, I've had co-founders where I'm thinking, we're not going anywhere, I'm the only one actually working on this.

Adelle: We actually use a behavioral assessment as part of our hiring process, called Culture Index — I love, love, love this tool. If I look at all the investments we've made as a company, this has probably been our highest-ROI one. It shows how someone is innately wired. For founders, for example, there's a kind of visionary archetype you want to see them fall into — high drive, self-motivated, resilient, able to juggle a lot of things at once. You can literally test for that directly.

I honestly wish I'd known about it earlier, because you can ask, is this person going to be complementary to me? If we're supposed to be truly equal, 50/50 co-founders, and I'm wired very entrepreneurial and enterprise-minded, while this person wants certainty, prefers a slower, methodical pace, and works best in a team environment, I'm going to end up dragging them along as a co-founder — they might actually be better positioned as your first employee, with a generous equity stake, rather than a 50/50 partner. So I think early on, it's worth watching how the puzzle pieces actually fit together before seriously giving away half your company — someone can always earn their way into a co-founder role over time if you had the original idea; you can promote them into it, but let them earn that path too.

Manav: I'm really excited to see Eterneva go global — I can see this working really well in China, people there are crazy about jewelry, big spenders.

Adelle: Totally.

Manav: Because that's really the luxury market you're going after.

Adelle: No, absolutely. There's incredible opportunity in Japan, Taiwan, India too — cremation rates are close to 100% in a lot of those countries. So yeah, I get excited about that. They're also huge markets, so it's really about sequencing — we already have some international investors telling us, "let us know when you're ready, we're ready to go."

Manav: Even fully capturing the US market alone would be enormous.

Adelle: Huge. Like you said, 0.7% gets us to $100 million in revenue, and that's just from US passings — that's not even counting the roughly 200 million urns currently sitting in family homes today, all of which is addressable.

Manav: Incredible. What's the book you've given most as a gift, and why? And what are one to three books that have really changed your thinking or influenced your life?

Adelle: I give Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach a lot — it was really transformative for me in my twenties, I'd say it's especially good for anyone struggling with anxiety or perfectionism, just a powerful book. I'd also say Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss —

Manav: Chris Voss, yep, a hundred percent.

Adelle: — that influenced me a lot. And Daring Greatly by Brené Brown.

Manav: What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months?

Adelle: My Duolingo subscription. I love languages, reconnecting with that — it's my morning ritual now, fifteen minutes on Duo, I genuinely love it.

Manav: How has an apparent failure set you up for later success — something that felt like a failure in the moment but that, looking back, you're glad happened?

Adelle: Oh man, I feel like we've had so many, though a lot were more like obstacles than outright failures. There have been moments building Eterneva where I thought, I can't go any further, I want to give up — whether it was barely pulling a round together, or a moment early on when our entire supply chain disappeared and we thought, holy cow, where are we even going to grow our diamonds now? And every time, we've found a way through. What's powerful about that is you're effectively building an evidence locker of what you're capable of. When you stay focused on the vision, and accept there's no way out but through, you can stack up all that evidence — "okay, here's another obstacle, and look how many times I've already pulled through one of these" — and it lets you keep going.

Manav: What's one of the best or most worthwhile investments you've ever made — money, time, energy, personal development, anything?

Adelle: Hands down, I'd probably tie it to Tony Robbins.

Manav: Yeah, dude, seriously — Date with Destiny, that's my favorite.

Adelle: It's actually why I'm with my husband today. I had a pretty powerful experience during one of the days there, this moment of, "alright, burn the boats, I'm in, fully committed." I'm so grateful for that. But honestly, the money you spend on yourself, on your own development, always comes back a hundredfold.