Aging In The Right Place – An Interview With Upsidehom Founder And CEO Jake Rothstein

The written interview was edited for length and clarity.

Jake, tell us about upside home

Upsidehom is the first and only fully managed living option for older adults, what makes us really unique is that we utilize existing infrastructure, we take apartments in professionally managed and amenity rich apartment communities, and we add a layer of services, all accessed through a single point of contact that makes life for older adults, really simplified and really, easy.  What we’re aiming to do is to duplicate the experience that a person might get in a senior living community or a facility type of environment, but doing it in a deconstructed way almost like senior living in disguise.

What made you start Upsidehom? 

It came out of a personal, family need. My grandfather had passed away and my grandmother found herself all alone. But in otherwise perfect health, she was 87. And still, you know, had a very good social life, but she had this big house that she no longer really needed and couldn’t afford to maintain.

And she needed help with the small things, things like driving at night and grocery shopping and rides to a doctor every once in a while. So we sold her house and got her an apartment in the neighborhood that she knew and loved. And I helped out when my other family members couldn’t and I was sort what we call our home managers.

Now I was her first home manager, and so what we said was, my grandmother can’t be alone. There must be a lot of older adults that are otherwise healthy and cognitively able, don’t want to be alone and need a more affordable option but also need engagement and need social activities and events and what we call experiences to really live rich lives, and live longer and happier lives at this stage. 

So how does it actually work? Can you walk me through the whole process from someone emailing you saying that they’re interested all the way through to them moving in and starting to get services?

We partner with big property management organizations and we reserve apartments in these communities and we make them really older adult friendly. So a person might come to us, they come to our website and they say, okay, we really love your community in Fort Lauderdale or in Boca or in Miami. So we give them a tour of the model unit, currently we’re working with 15 or 20 communities in the South Florida area, but we’re expanding really quickly.

We’ll be in Northern Florida by the end of the quarter, and then expand beyond that. Once they take a tour of the community, they see that it’s intergenerational because we’re utilizing existing infrastructure, right? So these are apartment communities that you or I could live in.

They express interest and they typically put a reservation deposit so that we can hold a unit for them. And then typically seven days after they request to reserve a unit, we can get them moved in and it’s really that simple, it’s completely designed to be turnkey. So they walk into the apartment and there’s common area furniture in the unit already.

It’s tastefully done. We have a professional interior designer on staff to help us with that. It’s also ready to go with cable and internet and with housekeeping every two weeks. All of the difficult things that it takes to set up an apartment, we do that for you.

So you really it’s move in ready, just bring your bedroom furniture  for a personalized approach and you’re ready to go. You have a dedicated home manager, a single point of contact to access anything that you might need, whether it’s a concert that we’ll let you know about, if you tell us what kind of music you like or if it’s pre-prepared meals delivered twice weekly or even a companion. We work with a company called Papa that delivers companionship and assistance through college students, trained and vetted college students.

You mentioned that you were planning on expanding to other States besides Florida. Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

We’re in the early stages of planning that expansion. We’re looking at Orlando, Jacksonville, Tampa in Northern Florida for right now. Beyond that, we’re also looking at Atlanta and the suburban areas around Atlanta, as well as Raleigh in North Carolina.

Those are on the immediate roadmap. Beyond that, we’re going to work our way up the East coast of the United States, and then start moving West to markets like Phoenix and Austin. And you know, the, the reality is, that what we’re seeing is that there’s a market for this really in every town, not just in the United States, but around the world in markets like Japan and in Australia, the demographics are really similar to what they are in the US and so we don’t want to just be a regionalized or a national player, but we really want to be a global player and a leader in this new space.

Who can apply to move into one of your apartments?

Anyone can apply to move into our apartments, but because we target specifically older adults and their adult children that might need to keep an extra set of eyeballs on their parents or on their loved ones, we really attract the 55 plus community, but it really ranges across the spectrum in terms of both age and ability, but also financial spectrum. So because of the flexibility inherent to our model, we can really support someone that’s looking to pay $1,500 a month all the way up to 5,000 plus dollars a month.

We have units that are in varying degrees of luxury and varying locations. You can get a unit that’s really close to the ocean, for a little bit more or a unit that’s a little bit more inland that’s a lot more affordable. In addition to that, we’re looking at a pretty wide variety of age ranges.

And as we know everyone ages differently, you can have a 55 year old, that’s a type two diabetic that has mobility issues, and then you can have an 80 year old that runs marathons still. And so what we say is, you know, Whether you’re living alone in one of our fully managed units or in one of our shared units, which we call the social option.

Really your age can be anywhere from 55 all the way to 90 or a hundred. I mean, there is a really wide variety of people that we can target. And you know, because of our service infrastructure and our ability to deliver individualized services to our residents, we can really provide a customized experience programming, cater essentially to both a 62 year old active, still working resident and also an 87 year old, like my grandmother who just needs help with groceries and rides at night. 

Can you tell us a little bit about that shared model, who would apply to that sort of apartment?

We went to market with this idea that there were a lot of people that were really lonely. And one of the things we said was, well, how can we really tackle this loneliness epidemic that sort of everyone’s talking about now and do it in a really complete way, because loneliness affects all of these different things in terms of health.

Increased loneliness means you’re going to be entering an emergency room more often, and that you’re going to be less healthy and you potentially could live less long if you’re lonely. So we said, this is a health problem, and how can we tackle it as a social determinant of health, with loneliness being one of those social determinants of health?

So we initially went to market primarily with the shared model. And we said we’ll build in companionship. You’ll either bring your friends and we can get you a two or three bedroom unit, almost like a golden girls style approach.

If you don’t have friends, or if you’re in a location where your friends don’t live, we’ll pair you with someone that’s compatible with you, not based on age, but based on a certain set of compatibility metrics. We use third-party algorithms and internal algorithms to match people. But then of course, there’s a human element to making sure people are compatible. So now with COVID, we’re doing zoom meetings for that. But once, once people start getting vaccinated in big numbers here, we’ll start doing those in-person meetings again. 

Shared isn’t for everybody, but for a lot of people, it’s a more affordable option, obviously because you’re splitting the cost of rent in a unit. But, the reason we started offering individual units was because people were coming to us and  said, we really want a fully turnkey approach, we want to live like we’re living in a senior living community, but we don’t want to live in a senior living community. So we said, okay, we can offer individual units as well, with all the benefits that you get from a services and experiences standpoint in our social, shared option, you’d also get in the individual option for a little bit higher cost. 

So what’s the higher demand for you right now? The shared units or the individual units? 

Surprising to us was that, they’re both in about equal demand. We’re getting about 50/50 people coming to us, wanting shared and people coming to us, wanting individual units.

A lot of times, what we’re seeing is the demand for shared is coming from the adult children. We had a case the other day we did a tour with a person that lives in Vermont. She’s 48. Her mother is 76. The mother lives in Florida. The daughter lives in Vermont, but she doesn’t have anyone else down here in Florida to keep an eye after her mom, so she is really interested in a shared unit so that you can have an extra set of eyeballs, and that her mom isn’t lonely and all alone down here. So it’s been really interesting to understand all of the different use cases that would apply and be really beneficial for, you know, for people in this type of situation.

We had another really interesting one the other day with an adult daughter. She’s 57 and she lives with her 86 year old mother, she works full time. When she leaves the house every day, her mother’s alone all day while she’s at work. And she really wants her mom to be more engaged and active in the community because she’s still physically and cognitively totally able, but she needs a little extra help.

Maybe she doesn’t want to cook every night. And so we can help her with pre-prepared meals, or maybe she doesn’t want to go grocery shopping three times a week so we can help her with grocery delivery. So it’s those little things, those supportive things. 

So senior living is taking care of people that really need care and help with bathing and toileting and things like that. We’re doing everything just shy of that. So for the 80 to 90% of people that say they want to age in place, but it isn’t really a practical thing for people to age in place we’re really targeting and catering to that, to that audience and saying, listen, when you say you want to age in place, what you really may be saying is that you want to age in the community that you love near the doctors that you go to, near the deli that you like to go to, near your grandchildren, but not necessarily in the 1920s colonial house that you raised your kids in with a narrow staircase and the leaky roof. So this idea of aging in proximity versus aging in place or aging in the right place versus aging in place, that’s what we’re really catering towards.

From your current residents, what drew them into coming to live in Upsidehom? Was it the intergenerational housing model or was it that it was fully serviced and they never have to go to the grocery store again, if they don’t want to?

I think it’s not just the one one thing that drives people to us, I think primarily it’s this flexibility. This idea that everyone ages differently and you might need different services at different stages of your aging journey. So today you might drive, but tomorrow you might need a ride somewhere and today you might cook, but tomorrow you might need a pre-prepared meal delivery.

So the people that are really planning for their future are the ones that are finding this incredibly interesting. Not just that, we’re looking at people that are really looking to prolong their financial wellbeing, so maybe they can afford a 4000 or $5,000 a month apartment, but they’re living longer. They feel good still. They want to live a long, healthy life. And they want to do it in a community of like-minded people. So we’re creating that community of like-minded people for them so that they can go in and engage in activities and experiences in the community with those like-minded people.

So it’s people that want the flexibility, it’s people that want that sense of community, that sense of purpose which we’re finding is incredibly important at this stage of life. You know, once you’ve retired and you’re not waking up to go to work every day, it’s really important that you find something that gives you purpose.

And so we are really striving to provide an environment where people can find that sense of purpose and wake up every day with something to do that’s meaningful. 

So what is your vision for Upsidehom? Where do you see the company 5 to 10 years from now? 

We want to be the leading brand, almost like a lifestyle brand, in this new category of senior living. We don’t even really like to call it senior living because it really is totally different.  What Airbnb did to the hotel industry upside home is doing to the senior living industry. 

We want to be this front door to this aging in place or aging in the right place, for the 80 to 90% of people that tell us they want a stay where they’re at, and I think we’ll get there and we want to do it on a global scale. We really want to impact a huge amount of people, and we believe we can. 

That is a wonderful vision. Is there anything else you would like to add?

I think that, because of the demographic shift, 11,000 people a day in the United States turn 65 and there are similar percentages in a lot of other countries, people should start thinking about what their future looks like and their adult children should start thinking what their parents’ future looks like.

But the interesting and cool thing about being in this industry. Is that it affects everybody. So what we feel on our team is that we’re building this for ourselves because in 60 years from now, we’re going to want to live in an environment like this. So it really resonates well. When we are talking to families and talking to older adults themselves, and really when we’re talking to anyone, there’s always someone that can relate, somehow draw a reference to their own grandparents or to their own loved one and that’s really powerful, and it’s an exciting thing to get up every morning and work on a problem that’s so big that we feel is so solvable. Like we can solve these problems.

And it’s not just going to be Upsidehom that solves these problems. It’s going to be a joint effort of leaders from across the world that come together to solve all these problems, because they’re big. There’s no question about that. I think that we all need to work really, really closely hand in hand to make sure that we’re solving these problems for this generation and future generations.

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Jake, for being here today! 

It’s great to be here.