StartingLine HQ is built by Tony Bartenope, a U.S. Air Force veteran who served 24 years before retiring. The tools here all come from the same place: real problems my own family ran into, and the wish that something had existed to make them easier.
The first one started with a loss. In 2025, my wife's mother passed away and my wife was named executor. We assumed it would be manageable. It wasn't. We were handed a will, a barely-started binder, and the job of reconstructing an entire life from locked accounts, unknown passwords, properties, bills that still needed paying, equipment that had to be returned, and a dog that needed a home. We tracked all of it in a spreadsheet because nothing better existed. That spreadsheet became EstatePal.
EstatePal is the tool we wished we'd had, in two directions. For the person settling an estate, it's a place to organize everything an executor actually has to chase down. For the rest of us, it's a way to get our own affairs in order now, so the people we leave behind aren't starting from a shoebox of mysteries. My wife and I use it for our own estate. As a retired servicemember, I can record the military details she'd otherwise have to dig for, all in one place she can reach. It is an organizational tool, not a legal document, and we're careful never to pretend otherwise.
DivvyDup came from a different place, but the same instinct. My dad has managed our family's money in a single green ledger book for more than 60 years. A page for every bill, money set aside a little at a time, so nothing ever caught us short. He taught me and my two younger brothers to keep it the same way. DivvyDup is that book reimagined: the same idea of giving every dollar a place, modernized, but built to keep the feel of the old ledger. We even added a guide named Floyd to talk you through it and keep it from feeling like a chore. It's for families, for kids and young adults learning to manage what they earn, and honestly for anyone who's ever watched a paycheck vanish before the bills were paid.
ScriptToggle started the same way, with my wife and me losing track of what we were paying for. Streaming services, Costco, AAA, a car wash, a stack of new AI tools, subscriptions we'd forgotten we even had. At the same time, we were always trying to keep up with what shows we were watching, what was on hiatus, when a season was coming back, and whether a service was even worth keeping if nothing we watched was on it. ScriptToggle pulls both of those together: see what you're paying for, track the shows you actually watch, and decide what's worth keeping. Like the rest of the suite, it's an organizational tool. It shows you what you have and when, but you cancel what you don't want yourself.
That's the thread through everything at StartingLine HQ: practical tools for the financial and life admin that families actually face, built by someone who needed them first. Real problem, honest tool, no overpromising.
Why "StartingLine"
The name comes from a Pink Floyd song that has stuck with me for years, about how easily time slips away while we wait for the right moment to begin. I take the hopeful read on it. We don't get just one starting line. Miss one and there is always another, ready when we are. That is the idea behind everything I build here: pick a moment, draw the line, and start.
We're not lawyers or financial advisors, and we don't claim to be. What we offer is organization, clarity, and tools shaped by lived experience. When something here touches money or the law, we say plainly where the tool ends and where a professional should begin.