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Product cover image for Cadence: Scaling a Compassionate Care Business Model in Canada

Cadence: Scaling a Compassionate Care Business Model in Canada

Angela Duta, Kanwal Bokhari, Simon Parker

Product #:W49094
Supplier:Ivey/Haskayne
Discipline:Entrepreneurship, General Management
Setting:Canada, 2024
Details:Case (PDF) • 11 pages • 2026-05-21

Subjects:

Leadership and managing peopleEntrepreneurshipManagement

Industries:

Business services sector

Geography:

CanadaNorth America
Your Price:$10.54

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Rachel Drew was the founder and CEO of Cadence, a technology startup that aimed to transform the chaos of estate administration into a grief-informed, compassionate process. Cadence had grown from Drew’s personal experience managing her mother’s estate. She had faced an overwhelming administrative burden and identified how a fragmented, non-user-friendly system for estate settlement forced grieving family members into essentially taking on a “part-time job” as executor. After years of research and validating the concept, Cadence was launched in 2020, but despite strong partnerships with funeral homes and a compelling value proposition, market adoption for the platform remained slow. With a pivotal investor meeting coming up in March 2024, Drew had to determine how to evolve Cadence’s business model to scale sustainably while staying true to its mission of providing compassionate support during vulnerable moments.

Learning Objectives

This case can be used in undergraduate and graduate-level courses focusing on entrepreneurship and general management. This case is particularly valuable for teaching business model innovation, pricing strategy in emotionally charged contexts, business-to-business partnership dynamics, and integrating mission-driven values with sustainable business management.

After working through this case and assignment questions, students will be able to do the following:
  • Analyze the unique characteristics of grief-driven markets and evaluate how emotional context influences purchasing behaviour and business model design.
  • Assess competitive positioning within the given ecosystem and identify strategic partnership opportunities that create mutual value.
  • Synthesize operational considerations to design business strategies appropriate for empathetic services in distressed purchase contexts.
  • Analyze and compare alternative business models using multiple criteria including scalability and customer acquisition costs that balance financial sustainability with ethical considerations in serving grief-stricken customers.
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Case Study: Cadence: Scaling a Compassionate Care Business Model in Canada (English version) | Ivey Publishing