Building Products and Services for Seniors

I’d like to thank my friends Ben Crane (through some of the research he’s done) and Will Robbins (through his work at Umbrella) for inspiring me to explore the senior care space — a segment of the market that venture and technology investors are only beginning to actively pursue.

Peering Inside Retirement Communities

From what I’ve seen, a lot of tech money has flocked to models focused on in-home senior care and management. As an example, Honor just picked up $50M. Software and various tools empower people to continue living in their home. Yet, according to IBISWorld, Retirement Communities in the United States comprised a $66B (massive!) industry in 2017. Profit margins were slimmer at 7.5%, and wages constituted 37.2% of revenues so there’s lots of room for efficiencies.

There are a few opportunities here. Moving into an assisted living facility or continuing care practice can be incredibly expensive. Seniors often sell their homes to do so. If you’re someone thinking about working within the existing ecosystem, there are creative ways to think about unlocking cash to pay for the services of a facility. Access to forms of finance should be cheaper and easier. More on this later in the piece. If you’re thinking about full-stack, envision what a software-driven retirement community operator would look like in terms of building a community and securitizing assets. I’m sure people have floated around the idea of Common or WeLive for the elderly.

Retirement communities still often hire bloated staffs to manage administration and operations when forms of Medicare coding can be automated and better vendors can be routed to facilities through software channels (think Managed by Q!).

The D2C Effect

I’ve previously written about D2C healthcare (along with Teddy Citrin and Adam Besvinick), but also think that big product verticals and brands can be built specifically for seniors.

Items sold specifically to seniors include diapers and other health + wellness products, along with in-home medical equipment such as wheelchairs and catheters. The Glossier analogy is particularly pertinent because they’ve built up their brand and marketing channels outside of the increasingly expensive Facebook and Instagram avenues through experiences and systemized word-of-mouth. When building one of these D2C brands targeting seniors, it’s important to be creative about utilizing traditional “offline” channels in a scalable manner rather than Internet ads, which might be unlikely to reach the target demographic.

Rethinking Financial Products for Savings and Retirement

I’m also interested in companies that help the elderly navigate the structure of their financial world in retirement. People’s cash starts to get tied up in assets like homes over savings accounts. Complex benefit plans from pensions funds and Medicare begin to show up at the doorstep.

There are a few startups already at work here. Renew (founded by an ex-Oscar co-founder) is building a virtual benefits platform for retirees, starting with a content engine + Medicare marketplace. Irene (disclaimer: Irene is a Notation portfolio company) buys homes from seniors in order for them to have money in the bank to keep living their life without the hindrance of expenses like mortgages or property taxes.

It’ll be exciting to see how other companies can reconfigure and reorganize financial and benefits data to improve the lives of seniors.

If any of these areas excited you or you're working on a solution in one in of these spaces, feel free to get in touch with me at aashaysanghvi[at]gmail.com.