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:
Online -- the bad, the worse, and the ugly. We want 100% of older adults to have access to the Internet. It's a big place with lots of useful information, educational materials, loaded with discounts, pictures of family members from far away, and on and on. But who keeps up with recent, uh, upgrades? Please, to those of you helping folks with these tools, training and caution is required:
Everyone wants to see more innovation in health care delivery. Not to miss the remote healthcare visitation party -- a relatively recent employee benefit -- Verizon just announced its new Virtual Visits platform, expanding medical access for patients who may wait " an average of 27 days for to schedule an appointment." That’s a 2010 statistic, in case you were wondering. By 2013 the average wait time was more like 18 days. But perhaps the wait time is beside the point – what if you don’t live or happen to be near a doctor? Would you use a remote visitation service? If you’re elderly, do you NEED a remote visitation service? Yes, perhaps. For some – it can enable access to a doctor’s advice without the hassle of traveling to the office. But does it matter if the oldest adults would not benefit - what if only 34% of those aged 75-79 and 20% of the 80+ seniors have access to broadband? No remote visitation for them.
The report, to be issued Wednesday by the Senate Special Committee on Aging, says the agency has closed more than two dozen field offices in the last year.
There is a survey echo in here. Rant on. In listening to a presentation yesterday, I was struck by the similarity of the content between what older adults want from technology (now), what an older version of responders told the Linkage Technology Survey of 2011, versus Healthy@Home 2008 versus...pick a survey, any survey. Older adults aged 60 and beyond, including the 75+ age range that previous posts have designated as the Real Senior, want to stay in their own home. Okay. They are interested in some technologies that would be enablers. Okay. They perceive those technologies that they do not yet have as possibly too costly. Developers are concerned about building technology into new homes for fear of it becoming obsolete. In conclusion, older adults appear to be unaware of the technologies that could be enablers for remaining longer in their homes -- and they will not remodel specifically to get them.
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:
