product & strategy
Wellahead
EMPLOYER
Stackpoint Ventures
YEAR
2022-2023
BRIEF
Identify, validate, and spin out a proptech startup that helps older Americans afford to age in place. Leverage Stackpoint Ventures' unique network in the fintech and real estate spaces to build a strong moat.
Read more at wellahead.co.
UNDERSTAND
To understand the problem, we set up 12 qualitative interviews with older Americans-- and, where relevant, their adult children-- who were deciding whether to move to assisted living.
We also spoke with local experts to understand the costs and options that an average American may not know exist.
Our learnings became decision trees, journey maps, and personas. Key insights included:
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Most older adults prefer to age in place, but adequate in-home care is too expensive (often up to $5K/mo more than they can afford). Finding the right care option and financing the care option are highly intertwined.
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Older adults are often the decision-makers, but their adult children are the ones doing research on options, usually after a major medical event like a life-threatening fall.
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There is no trusted, easy-to-understand single source of information. Due to horror stories of HELOCs and the chaos surrounding a major medical event, distrust of complicated financial tools is at a high.
GENERATE & EXPLORE
Based on these insights, we ideated and iterated business concepts with other innovative organizations like agetech VC (PrimeTime Ventures) and 2Life Communities.
Working in 2 week sprints, I prototyped and tested various offerings in "aging in place"-as-a-service and consultation packages.
EVALUATE
Each iteration is evaluated on desirability, feasibility, and business viability.
To iterate on the experience, we offered free consultations to older adults in return for feedback.
Key learnings:
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Huge value in having a trusted source to tell them what the best option is.
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Two calls (intake + recommendations overview) is too chaotic to schedule, when they're dealing with unpredictable doctor visits. Need to move to text and email touchpoints instead (no separate app).
SPIN OUT & IMPLEMENT
With a promising concept in hand, we brought on Jason van den Brand as founder/ CEO. As the Stackpoint lead and founder's right-hand man, I helped him hire and onboard his core team (lead generation, customer experience, growth marketing, and financial partnerships).
I built out our internal operations and helped scale it from an internal studio project to an independent business, with first customer experience tech stack, internal project management, KPIs and process playbooks, and reflect our Values & Mission throughout our strategy and design.
I also worked with our designer and engineer to scope and implement an MVP recommendation engine.
IMPACT
The customer experience team has tripled in size and is using the same infrastructure I put in place.
The team is currently raising a seed round with some of the top proptech VCs in the country, and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Motherly, Bankrate, and more.
But my favorite reference for impact is this quote from a feedback session with our first client (on right).
"Wellahead made my situation feel less dire. They’re the whole package: they showed me options I didn’t know I had, answered all my financial questions, and genuinely felt like a friend.”
- Norio K.
