tech-enabled home care

Voice First -- The year began and ended with speaking.  And shouting. Strolling is not the right word, but as we approached the Las Vegas Convention Center last January, Google Assistant was on giant billboards all around – with competing and nearby giant Amazon Alexa signs.  We are attending again this year – and I cannot imagine what is left to say, so to speak. But I am sure the blaring will begin at the door. Here are the most read blog posts from 2019.  Happy New Year – and onward to 2020, the publication of the now-completed Voice, Health and Wellbeing 2020 report on Friday, January 3, and so many more (and counted) CES steps -- more wearables, virtual experiences, smart and not-so-smart speakers. See you there!

You see it in the media and hear about it with investors.  Digital Health is in its bubble of $8.1 billion in 2018,  which amounted to 8.6 % of VC investments, despite limited exit strategies – but investors love it.    Startups focused on the aging/technology space, however, receive only 0.7% of venture capital investment, including the big money ($115 million to date) that has gone to just one company.  (And that company is quietly pivoting to become a home care consolidator/platform company).  Meanwhile, over at the $30 billion (2018) home care market, a worsening shortage of workers in the midst of demand growth, is creating a recruiting near-panic among agencies, senior living firms and families, and produced.

Where the baby (or elderly family member) may be.  The WSJ investigation of Care.com has only added a level of urgency about the risky business of finding and placing caregivers in homes. Consider the Care.com CEO’s egregious assertion that "Care.com is a marketplace platform, like Indeed or LinkedIn."  Really, finding someone to watch your baby or your aging father is analogous to finding a worker to fill a job opening in your IT department or seeking a manager to fill out your org chart? And having nasty problems with convicted criminals taking on caregiving roles, with deaths occurring in multiple states, but never aggregated into a nationwide picture of a horror show, until research into incidents was done by a Stanford MBA student? Read that link, please.