AgeTech

Innovation featured in Louisville, Kentucky.  Louisville, known for the Kentucky Derby and Bourbon, has also emerged as one of the aging care headquarter cities in the US, with some of largest providers of aging care services -- like Kindred, Signature, Atria, as well as Humana and Delta Dental, among others.  This is the third year of the Louisville Innovation Summit – which provides a platform for the sponsoring organizations as well as a forum for startups and an innovation competition.  Announced by the city's mayor Greg Fischer at the event, Louisville was just named as an Age Friendly Communities by one of the event's sponsors, AARP, using the framework that originated by the World Health Organization  Among those exhibiting were Pharmerica, GrandCare, and LifeBio. The event also included some of the very (very) newest. All information is from the companies' or Summit website):

Do VCs matter in the older adult space? According to a Stanford Business School analysis, in today's economy VCs have become a 'dominant force' in the financing of innovative companies. This began, they note, with "a regulatory change in 1979 that permitted pension funds to invest in VC funds."  Okay, but do VCs really matter? Now switch coasts and perspectives, note how a Harvard Business School report picked through six myths about VCs, pretty much debunking the rhetoric in the Stanford report. Most VC funds, especially larger ones, do not outperform the market. "VC financing is the exception, not the norm, for startups" and given the rise of crowd funding and a broad range of angel investors, "VCs will continue to play a significant, but most likely smaller, role in channeling capital to disruptive start-ups." The question to ponder:  which category of investor, and specifically which investor groups, are interested in the older boomer and senior markets?