The numbers of our boomer lives.  So you launch your market messages with an assertion about the addressable market for a product. So one of the timeworn ways used is to start with a concept.  For example, they are going to turn 65 and are retiring -- or perhaps they are unretiring and starting businesses -- at a rate that is big, really, really, big.  So let's consider the following oddity. In 2010, boomers were going to turn 65 at the rate of 10,000 per day for the next 18 years. Then in 2014, you perhaps noticed a different phrase about boomers, including this one from AARP: They are going to turn 65 at the rate of 8,000 per day for the next 18 years. This caused me to wonder, what happened to 2000 of them?  Could they have died?  Left the country?  How many people there are in a certain age range making up an addressable market -- that should be fact, right?  Sort of.  I turned to Brent Green, an advisor to boomer marketers.

What's new with startups in the boomer-senior market segments? We often note that the boomers have all the money. Yet they are not always the recipients of thoughtful product design or effective marketing strategy. But consider the media interest in the boomer-beyond topic, especially in the health-related segments -- where there's news, there's innovation. And where there's innovation, let's reflect on the Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit in Santa Clara, a business plan competition and series of events organized by Mary Furlong and delivered at Santa Clara University. The tone of the event was energetic and entrepreneurs were eager to discuss their offerings and insights. Here are just a few of the companies that were present:

Don’t quit your day job just yet – do the homework first.  Starting a new company in the boomer/senior, mHealth/Digital Health tech space? I hear fairly regularly from those who have this intent.  Maybe they have a prototype they have created. When I don’t hear first, sometimes I catch who they are through the modern-day miracle of Google Alerts. So maybe we chat, maybe I take a look at a website, learn how they are going about getting their funding, and I ask if they know about products that may be similar to what they are doing.  Or have they browsed online catalogs, or spoken to non-profits (if that is one of the target audiences).  Have they studied market sizings and surveys from Nielsen to Pew to the exuberant Semico Research? And so on.  So here’s an updated set of advice for the pre-early stage: