Kei Yasui

Who are you?

I’m Kei Yasui. I run engineering at Vanilla. I’ve been with the company since the beginning, before the company started actually.

What do you do at Vanilla?

I lead engineering here at Vanilla. On the engineering team, we’re actually building the products that simplify estate planning. We work with the product team and the designers to build the tools that make Vanilla work. That could be interactive or dynamic diagrams and interactive dynamic visualizations of the estate.

“On the engineering team, we’re actually building the products that simplify estate planning.”

The company is young enough to the point where we’re not locked into legacy software or anything. That means the engineers here have a lot of ownership and say as to what the code looks like and how features are built. So I would say that our tech stack is very modern and cutting-edge. We always try to stay on top of the new technologies that are out there.

The work is really interesting because whenever someone has a certain expertise, we have a lot of autonomy to take advantage of that, and you’ll see impact immediately because we’re such a small team. One of the things that makes Vanilla so interesting is the lack of bureaucracy. Everyone on the team has the ability to make real, meaningful contributions to the product.

What is your daily life like at Vanilla?

My day-to-day involves planning meetings, actual coding, security audits, and interfacing with vendors. We have stand-up meetings in the morning, and then, usually, the afternoon is blocked off to do actual coding work.

“I’m talking to pretty much everybody, every department, every day, which is cool.”

As the head of engineering, I’m also leading the team, hosting one-on-ones, and hiring new people as we grow. Since Vanilla is such a small company, I feel like I’m talking to pretty much everybody, every department, every day, which is cool. Each person knows the big picture of what’s going on.

The company culture is interesting. I think it’s through the fact that we’ve hired through personal networks, so we’ve got a bunch of people from unique and different backgrounds that have come to form the core team. It’s not a super-traditional startup. There are a lot of weirdos here.

“At Vanilla, we are using technology to bring an old-school process into modern times.”

The goal is that anybody can understand the health of their estate as opposed to having to go to a lawyer to ask any questions. Through design, you can take these supposedly complex concepts and documents and simplify them with visualization. Instead of using language to describe an estate, we’re displaying estates visually using actual graphics. Those are much easier to see, much easier to comprehend than reading a document that is inaccessible to anyone but lawyers.

How did you end up in estate planning?

I hadn’t had aspirations to work in estate planning software, but I found, as I dove into it, it’s actually incredibly interesting and complex. It’s an industry and a world that traditionally has not used tech, has not been designed at all, so there are so many interesting ways to apply technology to solve problems.

I met Sam Trapkin over 10 years ago because we played guitar in bands that played together. We re-met in LA after I moved here, and we just got to talking. He was running a design studio and I was an engineer freelancing, and we decided to work on some projects together. That turned into building some prototype-style stuff for Steve Lockshin, the founder.

“Through the power of Steve [Lockshin, Vanilla founder] and his influence and openness, he convinced us to work for him, and that company became Vanilla.”

So when Steve really liked the prototype, he was like, “let’s turn this into a company.” We all really enjoyed the process of working together, and he’s such a charismatic, trustworthy leader. Through the power of Steve and his influence and openness, he convinced us to work for him, and that company became Vanilla.

How do you see estate planning impacting people’s lives?

I think if you have a family and you have money, assets, and sentimental belongings you want to pass down, estate planning is a reassurance that when you’re gone, your loved ones will be taken care of. If we can make that easier and give people peace of mind, that’s what we’re trying to do.

What do you see in the future of estate planning?

“I see a lot of room for crypto technologies to work and be built into estate planning.”

I see crypto playing a huge role in the future of estate planning. Whether that’s family office DAOs, crypto identity asset ownership, or a new use for NFTs, I see a lot of room for crypto technologies to work and be built into estate planning. People’s estates and assets are more and more digital, so I see the technologies we use to manage those estates moving in that direction, too.