- An entrepreneur who now has just weeks to live set up a charity called Elizabeth’s Smile last year.
- Nick Hungerford founded the charity to help children who lose a parent to a terminal illness.
- The British entrepreneur sold his investment startup, Nutmeg, to JPMorgan in 2021 for $700 million.
An entrepreneur who has terminal cancer and just weeks left to live has set up a charity to support children who lose a parent to a terminal illness.
Nick Hungerford founded Elizabeth’s Smile last year and named it after his young daughter.
The British man co-founded Nutmeg, which was sold to JPMorgan for $700 million in 2021.
He told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” that it’d been a “great privilege” to “feel the love” of his family and friends despite facing death.
“So many people don’t get to plan for death. It’s a sudden thing for their families. It’s a shock and I’ve been able to really make the most of so much great time with people I love,” Hungerford said.
He came up with the charity idea in January 2022 after being told there were no resources to help grieving children who lose a parent.
“I said ‘I’m not going to accept this,'” Hungerford told The Telegraph. “My daughter is not going to be condemned to a lifetime of grief, worry or disadvantage because of my illness.”
He said he’s more worried about leaving his wife and two-and-a-half year old daughter behind than dying himself.
“To think that my illness could cause her grief, trauma and bereavement for a lifetime was just unacceptable,” he told the BBC.
“I don’t want to compare it to business problems, but it was like seeing a huge gap in the market that was way more than anything monetarily. This child needs this help.”
He said he was “in shock” when he found out he had bone cancer in early 2020. Since then, he’s prepared for his passing by using an AI website to film himself answering questions that Elizabeth can watch when she’s older and written her letters too, per The Telegraph.
“I think my legacy will be about creation and helping solve problems for people who need it the most,” he said at London Tech Week panel in June.
Hungerford co-founded investment management company Nutmeg in 2011, where he served as CEO until 2016, according to his LinkedIn profile. He set it up because he wanted to help people invest when other firms told them they were not rich enough, he said.
“I just don’t believe that, I think everyone deserves a chance to save for a good life and have a good pension,” he told the audience.
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