Bridging Beyond

Carlos Ponce (00:10):

Good morning everyone. Welcome to another episode of Tech Leaders Unplugged. And today we are getting unplugged again. Now this time is Paige Wilson. She's the CEO and co-founder at Neighbor Force, and she's going to be telling us, telling us all about her company, and of course, joined today by my fellow teammate and co-host , Wade Erickson, Wade… Paige,

Paige Wilson (00:38):

Great to be here.

Carlos Ponce (00:40):

Absolutely. We look forward to the conversation, Paige. And well, for the first, first things first, Paige, so let's start with you. Please tell us a little bit about you. Tell us about, you know, your background, you know, your, a little bit of the, your journey building the company. Sure. Anything you want to say about yourself, please go ahead. Sure.

Paige Wilson (00:59):

In some ways, I'm an accidental entrepreneur. I say <laugh> because I spent most of my career in finance roles, in large public companies. Ultimately, I was a CFO and treasurer of a public company. Ended up on this journey because of a personal experience I went through with my aging mother. Happy to kind of give you what happened, but one thing led to another, and here I am founding a tech company.

Carlos Ponce (01:25):

Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing you’re a little bit of a story there behind with us. So tell us about neighbor Forests. What is it about what, what, what was then, how a moment in which you said, Hmm, we should, this makes sense? Yeah. We're building it.

Paige Wilson (01:44):

Sure. as I mentioned, you know, personal experience about 15 years ago, my mom, who was not that old broke her hip and all of a sudden she couldn't drive for a period of time and she started needing a little bit of extra help with things. I was the alpha daughter, lived five minutes from her, and wanted to be there to help her all the time. But I had a demanding career. I was raising a teenage daughter, and so I couldn't always do it for her. It was little things, you know, maybe it was helping her set up the bridge table, maybe it was getting her to the beauty parlor or the one that got me, dang, it was called all out hours of the day to help her reprogram that remote, right? <Laugh> technology. And so I started, you know, she didn't want to be a burden to me.

Paige Wilson (02:29):

She knew I was busy and I started looking for backup for a resource that could help me help her, only to find there was really nothing. There's this giant void as you're aging. Either you're fully independent and you can do everything for yourself, or maybe you rely on your family or your friends or your neighbors for a helping hand. Then there's this void and then there's home care, and that's aides and nurses that are helping bathe you and feed you and toileting and all of those things. Lots of options if you need them. She didn't need that yet. She literally just needed those little things that I talked about. And so we got through it. It was really hard, but after she died she eventually needed home care and healthcare and hospice, but there was this several-year period where it was mostly on me.

Paige Wilson (03:17):

But I actually moved cities after she passed away. It took so much out of me and saw my friends going through it and started doing a little bit of research about this whole aging space. And we can talk about that separately. It's huge, right? All these baby boomers aging and two things really led me to the solution. I wasn't really looking for it necessarily, but I had moved to a new city and wanted to get involved in the community. So I tried to sign up for Meals on Wheels. I like old people, it's a very low commitment. And they said, great, would you like to commit to every Wednesday or every Friday? And I couldn't commit to the same day. I traveled all the time, and that was disappointing. And right after that, I was talking to my friend back in my hometown who used to be a lawyer, and she told me she was driving for Uber.

Paige Wilson (04:03):

And I was very confused because I didn't think she was doing it for the money. And what she told me was that she had left her career when her boys were teenagers to finish raising them. But now they'd both gone off to college and she had no purpose. She didn't want to go back to her career, but she woke up every morning and she was used to caring for people and helping people. But she had no one to help. And so she said, you know, I could get a part-time job, but it's really not that flexible. I still have to adhere to a schedule. What I love about Uber is if I've got an afternoon, two or two a week, I can just go out and connect and talk to people. And that was the light bulb. I thought, you know what? If we can build a technology that would connect people like her and me to families and seniors who just need a little bit of help here and there, you know, we could bridge that gap. So that's what Neighbor Force is doing.

Carlos Ponce (04:54):

Great. Thank you so much, Paige. So this is great. So, it's all about promoting an engaged, productive, connected living, right?

Paige Wilson (05:05):

Absolutely.

Carlos Ponce (05:08):

Let me ask you something <inaudible> the today's topic. I'm curious to ask you, well, first of all, we're talking, we're going to be talking about community-powered tech in a post, right? Yeah. So what I'm curious to ask you is, you're, you are obviously a mission-driven company, but you're also mentioning a tech component in there. Yes. Well, tell us a little bit about where the connection is being made and why you felt this was relevant for today's day and age.

Paige Wilson (05:37):

Yeah. that's a great question. Well, you know, when I had kind of this light bulb moment of this is the answer, we can connect people in the community to seniors, the idea was almost like Uber, where you don't have to commit to a contract or any number. Because People just need, hey, I need somebody to get my mom to the dentist at the last minute. Or, you know, my dad's been lonely since my mom died, come over and have dinner. So, the only way that that would work with all these tiny transactions and these people that are not making large commitments, really on either side, the client side or the neighbor who are our helpers it's only going to work through technology and it's only going to work at scale because of all these small transactions. We were going to need to build the technology to be able to grow it, to cover that upfront cost, right?

Paige Wilson (06:26):

And so that's what we're doing now. Yes, we are connecting people for tasks, but the reality is, and this really COVID-19 shone the light on it, people are craving connection. The surgeon general just came out with a statement about this recently, but loneliness is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. That's how bad it is for your health. And older folks, obviously their world gets smaller and they're lonely, but what's beautiful about our platform is the neighbors. These people who are stepping in for an hour or two, are primarily empty nesters and retirees. They're lonely too, <laugh>, they get a lot out of the connection. So it's very symbiotic.

Wade Erickson (07:09):

Great, great. So I have a question about, you know, we talked a bit about how the idea formed through your personal experiences, which is a lot of entrepreneurs stumble upon their ideas. Yep. And, and you, you, you came from a non-technology background, marketing and, and finance and those things. Tell me about your journey in building this, knowing that there was going to have to be sure a tool and a technology in there and you know, some of them, because obviously the seniors' community did not grow up with technology. So yeah. Given that it's a very unknown population as it relates to technology in every individual, you have some people who are avid texters and use cell phones all the time, smartphones, and you have others who sure don't like technology. So tell me a little bit about that CX journey and how you built your early platforms.

Paige Wilson (08:00):

Yeah, that's a couple of things there. You know, in the very beginning, as you mentioned, I am a non-technical founder, getting more technical by the day, but I knew that we needed technology to make this work. But I also knew I was bootstrapping the company before I went out and spent a lot of money, which I didn't have <laugh> on developers, Let's test it with an MVP. And so I used Airtable, I guess you called it, low code, no, no-code, you know, open source software with a bunch of plugins and built this little M V p. That was enough to test whether clients would buy into this idea that you're not picking a one-on-one caregiver. This is much like Uber and neighbors can offer these variable schedules and can we match them to technology? And the answer is absolutely clients bought it immediately.

Paige Wilson (08:49):

We're solving a problem that no one else is solving, right? It is a big white space and neighbors were using the tech to get connected to these seniors. So we operated for about 15 months on this M V P, which was great. One didn't cost a lot of money. Two, it validated enough for us to go out and start raising capital. We raised the first round of capital to start building our real enterprise solution. And by the time we were ready to do that, we were well-informed on what to build. We had tested enough to learn what's important on the client side, and what's important on the neighbor side. And one of the things that we learned is that the clients need this so much. It doesn't need to have a lot of features. It doesn't need a lot of bells and whistles. It just needs to be very simple on the client side, on the neighbor side, really that's where we built more of the bells and whistles in the UX/UI and the beginning.

Paige Wilson (09:47):

Because as long as we can continue to attract and retain these amazing neighbors, they are intrinsically motivated. These are not your hourly workers, then it works. So we spent way more time on the tech, on the neighbor side initially than on the client side. When I worked with this first round of developers, it was kind of funny. I am a baby boomer, the very tail end. But as we were building out the tech for the clients, I kept saying, got to make the font larger. Got to make the font larger. You know, we couldn't afford a high-end UX person, but they kept thinking I was crazy. Clients love it because it is very simple. Even on mobile, you can read it. You don't have to make your screen giant, you know? And so it works. Now not all of our 80, our average clients, 83, are not using tech.

Paige Wilson (10:37):

You know, I read how older people, 75% of them are using technology. I don't think that's true, to be honest. You know, maybe they're using their flip phone or their, you know, jitterbug. But a lot of times it's the adult kids. However, we have taken clients to the Apple store to get their laptops all hooked up. We've got a 104-year-old old in one of our markets who books her visits online. Mm-Hmm. She streams Sunday school online. So, she's very tech-savvy. So you know, it's a broad gamut. And on our neighbor's side, because the average age is 55, we do have neighbors in their seventies. And so we still need to make sure it's very simple, the tech on that side. And not to poke fun at men, but I'll tell you though, women are way better at the tech than the men. And my theory is that all these moms were trying to keep up with their teenagers. So they had to learn how to use their smartphones, where some of the men are a little bit slower adopters.

Wade Erickson (11:32):

Great, great, great. So tell me a little bit about the development process. You said you had your M V P that you built, and then told me a little bit about the early technology. Because if you don't have a lot of funding, you have to find ways to build tech that can scale, the service was getting popular. And then tell me a little bit about the matchmaking process. I mean, you said both sides are lonely, so maybe there isn't a whole lot of it's not like a dating service that has to have sophistication for swiping and all that. But tell me a little bit about it, have you looked at any of that kind of stuff and maybe it might not make a big impact in yours, but is it something that you guys are looking at?

Paige Wilson (12:14):

Yeah, so in the early days, you know, when I first got some funding to go out and start building the real product I worked with a local firm that heavily relied on offshore developers. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, but they could bridge that for me because being non-technical, I really couldn't manage that process. And they were such a believer in what we're doing. They actually took part in the payment in a convertible note. So they had equity mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. We've since bought that out. But you know, so that process worked very well for them and it was very economical for us. And we're still using that platform that we built almost four years ago. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. Now we've had to shore up lots and we've got technical debt of course. But the foundation of what we built really was strong.

Paige Wilson (13:04):

We're moving toward not so many monoliths. So we've got an API for the neighbor app and we have an API for the backend, which I'll come back to the scheduler. And then also on the client side. And then another one for the neighbor application process, which is all automated. But in terms of the scheduler, that really is the meat and potatoes. So we've got these huge databases of seniors, their family members who are account managers, neighbors, et cetera. But the scheduling algorithm, while it is very sophisticated, we have tried to keep it as simple as possible from the client neighbor side. So all of our neighbors are generalists and this increases the likelihood of matching. So we don't tag neighbors. Well, I'm good at cooking. I can drive, I can knit any of those things, but it works, right?

Paige Wilson (13:55):

So on the client side, when they book a visit, which takes about 30 seconds, you know, they're really saying, I want help at home or around town. When the scheduling algorithm does the matching, and it's typically four days out, we did a lot of testing to see how far in advance gives the client comfort that they'll have a neighbor and how far in advance their neighbors are willing to commit their schedule. Because, you know, these are busy people. They might not want to commit a week and a half from now. They might decide they're going to go visit their grandkids or something. So four days. And once it starts down the waterfall, it's looking at a number of things. Neighbors have preferences they can set how one of them is a big one in a mile radius, they're 10 99, so how far are they willing to drive for this visit?

Paige Wilson (14:40):

Because they don't get paid to get there and back. And then, you know, do they, are they allergic to cats? We have to ask clients if they have cats because the cat lady is a real thing, <laugh>. So we don't match those. But it goes through the scheduling algorithm, and if it's a recurring visit, it's going to match it with a neighbor who has a recurring schedule, which increases the likelihood. You've got the same person. Clients can favorite neighbors, and if the neighbor favorite is available, they're going to get matched. The scheduling algorithm favors neighbors who've been there the most. So, it's going to look at all these different attributes but still make it fairly simple. We're starting to add some AI to make it even smarter. Well, this client usually does this. Let's ping that neighbor etcetera.

Wade Erickson (15:25):

And you talked a little bit about the tech mobile. Is there a web component as well now? Is it web, or mobile, mixed? Yeah.

Paige Wilson (15:33):

So the neighbors are all on an app. It's built on React native. So you know, both iOS and Android. And then on the client side, currently it's a web app. They can use it on mobile, but it's not a pure client app. We're in the process of building out the client app side. Again, simplicity is what we were going for in the beginning. And in the beginning, I would say like most businesses, we had only early adopters. Now because we've grown so much, we have all kinds of clients. While they're still very happy, we know that some features that we see would add value to them, and as we get them onto an app, that will make it much simpler. For instance, in-app messaging between a neighbor and a client. We don't want the neighbor using their personal cell phone to say, Hey, I'm out here in front of the doctor's office waiting for you. They can do that in-app. We send post-visit notes to clients and families. So when the visit's over, the neighbor will type out something and say, Hey, had a great time with your mom today. Here's a picture of her new hairdo right now that goes through email because the clients aren't on an app. Once they're on an app. All of that goes through an app.

Wade Erickson (16:42):

Are you finding that smartphone penetration into your market on the client side? Yes. Is it a challenge, is the penetration getting to the point? Because obviously the baby, what, we're kind of in the middle of the baby boomer move. Yes. Because I was on the tail…

Paige Wilson (17:00):

It's getting better every day. And so, you know, in…

Wade Erickson (17:04):

My age group, you know, we're more familiar with that.

Paige Wilson (17:07):

Yeah, yeah. There is, you know, a lot of that older age group, it's not that they can't learn it, they just don't want to. Yeah. So, they're never going to learn it, you know, they're done. My mother would've been in that camp, by the way. She didn't want to us the washing machine with more than one button, you know, on. But as I said, you know, we have a lot that have adopted it, but already 80% of the people who initiate the accounts and are booking visits are adult kids. And they are tech-savvy. Right. So they are using the technology. Now. We do have a customer service. We've built our own contact center mostly for those seniors which is great. And, you know, that's never going to go away entirely. We, we will continue to push more and more through technology, but, they're lonely. So sometimes they just want to talk <laugh>.

Wade Erickson (17:54):

And do you see that some of that four-day gap will be as people get old you know, more and more used to the Ubers and the Grubhubs and the stuff that is almost real time immediate? Yeah. Do you see that? Or, or is it largely that they're scheduling for appointments, like doctor's appointments that are Well <crosstalk>,

Paige Wilson (18:14):

It's about, currently, it's about I would say about 60% of people are booking four days out. Okay. The other 40% are booking anywhere from three to the same day. And the number of same-day requests is escalating. We don't charge a rush fee. They're handled differently as opposed to the scheduling algorithm booking the neighbor. What we've decided is, you know, if a visit request comes in today at 11:00 AM for a four o'clock visit, even though the neighbor's availability showed they were available, they've probably figured out something different to do with their day. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So all of those last-minute ones are handled differently through a push notification that goes to every neighbor and they can accept or decline it. And our fulfillment rates like 98% across all of our markets. So no matter how far in advance that you request it, you're pretty sure of getting a neighbor.

Wade Erickson (19:07):

Yeah. So then that way people basically just like Uber, they say, I'm in the pool, I'll take a, take a known short notice deal. Yeah, that's great. Exactly. That way it really, even on the neighbor side, helps with the people that do want to have a little more planning around this versus people say, hey, I got the day open, maybe I'll jump in. Sure.

Paige Wilson (19:27):

Oops. Yeah. We have a mixture of ones who like the planning and some who are just opportunistic. Some neighbors don't put in any availability. They just wait and see what comes up.

Wade Erickson (19:36):

Got it. That sounds great. Okay. and so you, you said also that the, the children are the caregivers that, and that kind of came from some of your experience that you're really providing some support to the, the children. A hundred

Paige Wilson (19:51):

Percent

Wade Erickson (19:52):

That is definitely a lot of them, you know, even if they're 30 minutes away, that can be quite a bit of the day to do these short turnarounds. What would you say is that population that's really helping the parent versus the senior doing it on their own?

Paige Wilson (20:08):

Yeah. It, it's hard to say. Like I said, about 80% of the people who initially ate the accounts or the adult kids, and you can't pick up the newspaper about, without reading about how caregiving is crushing, you know middle-aged folks, many of them are sandwiched still with kids in school. Now they've got aging parents mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, there's no break or they finally raise their kids now they got to help with their parents. So it is a big part of our overall value prop is for that family caregiver. And I don't think I mentioned our average client uses us about four hours a week. Some use us more infrequently, some use us every day, maybe for an hour. But what we're doing is not only giving the senior autonomy to not have to ask for help from their family or friends, we're absolutely taking a load off of the family.

Paige Wilson (20:57):

Mm-Hmm. And interestingly, a ARP put out a study that said four hours of outside help can really relieve caregiver burnout. And caregiver burnout leads to all kinds of health problems. And so it's kind of ironic that we're offering or helping about four hours a week. And that taking that off of the family allows in many ways it's keeping women in the workforce. because again, you read about this, 60% of women who quit their jobs over caregiving are leaving because of childcare, but the other 40% are leaving because of their parents. Typically, those are women who are most senior in your, career. So there's a big cost to them and to the company if they have to exit the workforce to help their mom. But if four to eight hours a week or something takes enough load off of them, then that makes a big difference.

Carlos Ponce (21:49):

I have Paige, I have a question for you. I can, I can see that your neighbor force is, has a presence in many states, right? You have Georgia, you have Maryland, Texas, you, you know, you're all over the place, right? So, but in terms of the roadmap for the future, how, do you envision the growth to look like in terms of geography? For example, are you, look, do you envision the possibility of growing beyond the US or, if that's the case, what sort of challenges or hurdles do you think you might experience that might need, some additional attention? Sure. Could

Paige Wilson (22:27):

Be, could be, you know, the first I think I mentioned, we raised a series a venture round last year. And so right now we're really taking that to continue to build out the tech in our go-to market. Kind of that rinse-and-repeat playbook for opening new markets. And refining that we'll go raise another round of capital next year, probably in the summer. And with that, we want to be poised to expand nationally quickly because it's needed everywhere. And we get people all over the place asking for it. And interestingly, you know, if we market, let's say in Atlanta, an adult kid might see the ad and say, oh my gosh, when are you going to be in St. Louis? Right? Because we don't know where their parents live. So it makes it more difficult. So the first step is to a national expansion, but this is an international problem, this aging issue.

Paige Wilson (23:12):

And it's, there's certain countries where it's worse than others. What we'll have to look at is culture, because different cultures treat their elderly differently, you know, in the US right? Right. I think we have all these wonderful adult kids who want to take care of their parents, but they're very busy and it's just a different view than some of the countries mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that we're aware of. But at some point, I don't even think it matters because there're going to be so many older people and literally just not enough family members to take care of them. So we're kind of repurposing people in the community to step in and be the son or daughter that's not available or doesn't live near there. And, you know, we say all the time, which is I guess kind of the title we're harnessing like in this world where technology in so many ways is driving people apart and allowing them mm-hmm. To not have to connect. And my daughter's one of them on social media, right? She just lives vicariously. But we're using technology to actually bring people together, you know, creating this human connection that is so important.

Carlos Ponce (24:15):

Absolutely. Thank you so much Paige. And unfortunately, we're coming up on time, so we need to wrap up, Wade. Is there anything in particular that you would like to ask Paige before we go? Before we <crosstalk>?

Wade Erickson (24:26):

No, I just wanted to thank you for the service. You know, I just went through this. Unfortunately, my parents passed away in COVID-19, but I was living this you know, being the closest son but still six hours away. Yeah. And you know, we moved my sister in and she sold her place. It was, it's just a lot of work. It's

Paige Wilson (24:45):

To

Wade Erickson (24:45):

Be in this phase and just wanted to say, that I appreciate you for putting the service together. Because I would've definitely used it <laugh> and you know, count on their church communities and stuff to step in. And now to be able to decouple some of that through what you're doing. I just appreciate you putting this together.

Paige Wilson (25:03):

Sure. Well, thank you

Carlos Ponce (25:06):

<Laugh>. Thank you, Wade. And thank you, Paige. One more thing before we go is well it's not really an announcement, it's just an invitation. We're still assembling the roster of great guests for next week. So keep an eye on tech leaders unplug.com/upcoming. So take a look at that probably by the end of the day or early tomorrow. And you're going to be you're going to be able to get a glimpse of who's going to be joining us next week, right here on Tech Leaders Unplugged. Remember tech leaders unplug.com/upcoming. That being said, again, thank you Paige, and thank you Wade for having been with us on the show. And I'll, we'll see you next time right here on Tech Leaders Unplug. Okay, thank you.

Paige Wilson (25:50):

Thank you. See

Carlos Ponce (25:51):

You. Bye-Bye.