Why we built Literal.
We spent years watching families and their advisors hunt for the same missing document. Eventually we stopped waiting for someone else to fix it.
Why we built Literal.
We spent years watching families and their advisors hunt for the same missing document. Eventually we stopped waiting for someone else to fix it.
Why we built Literal.
We spent years watching families and their advisors hunt for the same missing document. Eventually we stopped waiting for someone else to fix it.
How this started.
I spent years inside a wealth advisory firm, and a few times a year the same thing happened. A family needed one document. The deed, the trust, the policy someone signed in 2009. What should have taken a minute took two weeks: phone calls, inbox archaeology, a request to a custodian that had been acquired twice since, and finally a drawer in somebody's hallway. These were organized people paying professionals to keep them organized.
None of it actually lives with you. Your bank holds a piece, a dozen portals hold the rest, and whatever's left sits in a cloud drive that reads every file you hand it. Advisors get the mirror image of the same problem: they end up holding client documents they never wanted custody of, in systems nobody fully trusts, and they still can't find the one that's needed. Somewhere along the way, owning your paperwork turned into asking other people for copies of it.
So we built the thing we couldn't find. One place for everything that matters, sealed on your device before it reaches us, opened only by the people you name and only for as long as you say. We can't read a single file in it. Neither can anyone who comes to us asking for one.
Most products like this get built by half the right team. Security people ship vaults that are impossible to break into and impossible to use. Finance people ship workflows that match how the work really happens and leak at every seam. My half is the finance side and the advisor's desk. Ethan's is security engineering, and he's the reason the guarantees in here are real. The arguments between us are the useful kind: he tells me when a convenience would cost you the guarantee, and I tell him when a guarantee would cost you a product a real person can use.
You own it. Everyone else asks.
How this started.
I spent years inside a wealth advisory firm, and a few times a year the same thing happened. A family needed one document. The deed, the trust, the policy someone signed in 2009. What should have taken a minute took two weeks: phone calls, inbox archaeology, a request to a custodian that had been acquired twice since, and finally a drawer in somebody's hallway. These were organized people paying professionals to keep them organized.
None of it actually lives with you. Your bank holds a piece, a dozen portals hold the rest, and whatever's left sits in a cloud drive that reads every file you hand it. Advisors get the mirror image of the same problem: they end up holding client documents they never wanted custody of, in systems nobody fully trusts, and they still can't find the one that's needed. Somewhere along the way, owning your paperwork turned into asking other people for copies of it.
So we built the thing we couldn't find. One place for everything that matters, sealed on your device before it reaches us, opened only by the people you name and only for as long as you say. We can't read a single file in it. Neither can anyone who comes to us asking for one.
Most products like this get built by half the right team. Security people ship vaults that are impossible to break into and impossible to use. Finance people ship workflows that match how the work really happens and leak at every seam. My half is the finance side and the advisor's desk. Ethan's is security engineering, and he's the reason the guarantees in here are real. The arguments between us are the useful kind: he tells me when a convenience would cost you the guarantee, and I tell him when a guarantee would cost you a product a real person can use.
You own it. Everyone else asks.
How this started.
I spent years inside a wealth advisory firm, and a few times a year the same thing happened. A family needed one document. The deed, the trust, the policy someone signed in 2009. What should have taken a minute took two weeks: phone calls, inbox archaeology, a request to a custodian that had been acquired twice since, and finally a drawer in somebody's hallway. These were organized people paying professionals to keep them organized.
None of it actually lives with you. Your bank holds a piece, a dozen portals hold the rest, and whatever's left sits in a cloud drive that reads every file you hand it. Advisors get the mirror image of the same problem: they end up holding client documents they never wanted custody of, in systems nobody fully trusts, and they still can't find the one that's needed. Somewhere along the way, owning your paperwork turned into asking other people for copies of it.
So we built the thing we couldn't find. One place for everything that matters, sealed on your device before it reaches us, opened only by the people you name and only for as long as you say. We can't read a single file in it. Neither can anyone who comes to us asking for one.
Most products like this get built by half the right team. Security people ship vaults that are impossible to break into and impossible to use. Finance people ship workflows that match how the work really happens and leak at every seam. My half is the finance side and the advisor's desk. Ethan's is security engineering, and he's the reason the guarantees in here are real. The arguments between us are the useful kind: he tells me when a convenience would cost you the guarantee, and I tell him when a guarantee would cost you a product a real person can use.
You own it. Everyone else asks.
Three things we won't compromise.
Every product decision gets tested against these. When a feature fights a principle, the feature loses.
Trust the math.
Your files are sealed before they reach us, so the promise isn't ours to break.
Aligned by design.
Nothing we sell depends on seeing your data. There's no incentive to drift.
Made to outlast.
Encryption built for computers that don't exist yet. Handoff for the day you're not there.
Three things we won't compromise.
Every product decision gets tested against these. When a feature fights a principle, the feature loses.
Trust the math.
Your files are sealed before they reach us, so the promise isn't ours to break.
Aligned by design.
Nothing we sell depends on seeing your data. There's no incentive to drift.
Made to outlast.
Post-quantum encryption for when quantum machines arrive.
Three things we won't compromise.
Every product decision gets tested against these. When a feature fights a principle, the feature loses.
Trust the math.
Your files are sealed before they reach us, so the promise isn't ours to break.
Aligned by design.
Nothing we sell depends on seeing your data. There's no incentive to drift.
Made to outlast.
Post-quantum encryption, so it holds even when quantum machines arrive.
Our Team.
Our Team.
Take control of everything that's yours.
Start with the documents you'd hate to lose. Sealed in minutes, findable forever.
Take control of everything that's yours.
Start with the documents you'd hate to lose. Sealed in minutes, findable forever.
Take control of everything that's yours.
Start with the documents you'd hate to lose. Sealed in minutes, findable forever.