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Kamal Patel had spent years building ELLKAY, a one-of-a-kind healthcare technology business, and was ready to take some time to focus on his personal life. He decided it was time to revise his estate plan. Again. “I was on my seventh iteration,” he says. “I hired the best legal counsel in New York, and I thought, let me refresh my memory on everything before I see them.”

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As Mr. Patel re-read books on estate planning, he began searching for an app, something “where I could create a list of my assets and play around with stuff,” he says. “I couldn’t find anything.”

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What he did find was startling: 67% of Americans have no estate plan at all. “Sixty-seven percent of the population does not have any kind of will when they die,” Mr. Patel says, still incredulous.

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The deeper he looked, the clearer the reason became. For most Americans, estate planning felt like a luxury they simply couldn’t afford. “There is no way,” Mr. Patel says, “that a person making an average salary in the U.S. could afford what I was paying lawyers.”

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That’s when the idea clicked. There was real demand for affordable estate planning. “That’s how it all started in my mind,” he says. “People making $40,000 a year—they still need a plan for when they’re gone.”

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“There are all of these finance companies, like Charles Schwab and MetLife,” Mr. Patel explains. “They’ll do an estate plan for you, but what they really want is to manage your money and charge a 1% fee. That’s fine. But they’re targeting wealthy people. Nobody was doing anything for the receptionist, because the receptionist doesn’t have a lot of money.”

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So much for retirement. Tenacious by nature, Mr. Patel began thinking obsessively about how to build an affordable estate planning app. “I felt like there was an opportunity to do something good for the world,” he says, “and at the same time, solve a big problem.”

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To make it all happen, he knew he’d need the right team. “My strength is really bringing together the right people and keeping them excited,” he says. His first call was to Shreya Patel (no relation), whom he had worked with earlier in his career at ELLKAY.

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Ms. Patel was immediately intrigued. A mother of two young children, she and her husband had been thinking about their own legacy and what would happen to their kids if tragedy struck. “It was like a black hole in my mind,” she says. “The process felt time consuming and hard to do.” Ms. Patel says she had a basic Will but hadn’t gotten around to creating a full estate plan. She felt like she needed to educate herself more about Trusts and legacy planning before she could even begin.

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Ms. Patel decided to talk to friends and family about the process, and as she did she realized she wasn’t alone. “Everyone I knew wanted to get it done, but never got around to doing it.” she says. “And nobody had any idea what estate planning really meant,” she says. “They just had a vague idea that it was meant for families with wealth or properties.”

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“I’m the kind of person who builds things that are hard to imagine but can make a real difference in people’s lives,” Ms. Patel says. “I’m also a mom, and with young children, I’m always thinking about their protection. That’s what made me excited to build FeedingBird. The opportunity to give people easy access to do the right thing for those they care about. That ethos is what drives everything we do at FeedingBird.”

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After serious consideration, Ms. Patel decided she couldn’t say no. They began building a team and named the app FeedingBird, which was a reference to an adult bird caring for its young.

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Feedingbird set several founding goals. The app needed to be modestly priced and accessible to everyone, which meant translating dense, often boring legal language into something anyone with a high school education could understand. “Can we make it interesting enough,” Mr. Patel wondered, “that using words and images, we can educate people through simplicity?”

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Mr. Patel also wanted to build a feature that would allow users to leave personal messages for loved ones to receive after they were gone. This unique feature would help the app stand out.

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“When people want to do something for their family, they get afraid,” Ms. Patel says. “They wonder, ‘Am I doing the right thing?’” That fear can be paralyzing. But at heart, she believes, people simply want to do something meaningful for their loved ones.

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“If you think about the moments you remember most in your life,” she says, “they’re the ones where you had fun, or where you did something for your kids. Something you were proud of.” She pauses. “We want people to feel proud of doing this, because they’re doing it for their families, their loved ones or anything they wish to protect.”

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In the end, Mr. Patel didn’t just revise his own estate plan, he decided to reimagine what estate planning could look like for millions of people. Talk about creating a legacy.