About Y.O.D.O.
For every silence that matters.
People rarely fall all at once. They drift. A reply gets shorter, a call gets postponed, a routine quietly thins out. The signal is almost always silence, and our world is built for noise, so quiet slips past us. Y.O.D.O. makes noticing structural, for the people you want to keep an eye on, and for the people who would want to keep an eye on you.
Then there is the silence that comes after someone is gone. We plan carefully for wills, property and accounts, and leave the human words to chance. The note that would have meant everything is too often never written, or never found. Y.O.D.O. holds the words people most want to leave behind, and releases them only to the people they chose, only when the time comes.
What Guides Us
Mission, Vision and Principles
Mission
To make sure no one goes unnoticed, and that the words that matter reach the people they were meant for.
Vision
A world where caring for one another is a quiet habit rather than a desperate reaction, and where the most personal things we want to say outlive us as easily as our property does.
Principles
Five principles govern every decision, in this order. When they conflict, the earlier one wins.
- 1.
Care for the Account Holder First
Every default, every email, every line of microcopy is read by someone who may be alone, ill, bereaved, or simply tired. Make it kind.
- 2.
Restraint Is a Feature
We do less than competitors on purpose. A bounded service is a trustworthy service.
- 3.
Agency Is Sacred
The Account Holder sets the cadence, the order, the people, the words. We provide structure, never instructions.
- 4.
Quiet by Design
No tracking, no monitoring, no surveillance, no chatter. The service should be almost invisible until it is needed.
- 5.
Honesty Over Polish
If we do not yet do something, we say so. If something carries risk, we describe it plainly.
The Founders
In their own words.
Why Y.O.D.O. exists, from the two people building it.
Y.O.D.O. stands for "You Only Die Once." It's a memento mori turned forward, a reminder to seize the day and prepare for ourselves and the people we love. The platform exists for the quiet acts in between: noticing the people we love before life gets in the way, and leaving them the words we most want them to keep.
Founder and CEO
From Thea.
The name sounds heavy until you sit with it. You Only Die Once. My reading is the opposite. Because we only live this once, and we never know which day will ask the most of us, we get to choose to live on purpose, and to look out for the people we love while we still can. That belief is the whole reason Y.O.D.O. exists.
Y.O.D.O. is built for life. For the ordinary weeks when someone you love goes a little quieter than usual, and you want a calm, structured way to notice, without hovering, without panic. For the seasons when life is loud and you would still like the comfort of knowing that, if you ever went quiet, the right people would gently be prompted to check in. It is care, made simple, with peace of mind built in.
This year I am racing the Weymouth Ironman 70.3 to put that idea into the world. Every training swim, ride and run is my way of creating awareness around living fully, noticing the people around us when they go silent, and giving families a simple, structured way to find peace of mind, long before anything is wrong.
Y.O.D.O. also holds the words we most want the people we love to keep. A voice note, a video, a letter, a file, in whatever form feels most like you. Not as a goodbye, but as a quiet way of saying I am here, I am thinking of you, I have always been thinking of you.
In an age where so much is automated, there is something irreplaceable about a message that is truly yours, in your voice, in your words, meant for the people you chose and no one else. That is what Y.O.D.O. holds, and that is what I am training, building, and showing up for.
Check in. Live on.
Thea Kouraki, founder and CEO, Y.O.D.O. Ltd. Southampton, United Kingdom.
Co-founder and CTO
From Giedrius.
When Thea pitched me Y.O.D.O. in February 2025, looking for someone to turn the idea into a real product, my first reaction was caution. It is the kind of subject most people would rather walk past, and I wanted to understand who this was really for, and why it had to be built now.
What changed my mind was Thea herself. Her care for the people we would be building it for, and her unshakeable belief that this had to exist, were unmistakable in the way she talked about it. That kind of conviction is rare, and you do not want to build without it.
I joined her, and we have been building it together ever since, with the same standards I would want for the people in my own life.
Giedrius Rimkus, co-founder and CTO, Y.O.D.O. Ltd. Vilnius, Lithuania.