From 2gether to Solo – How to Pivot Your Agetech Startup During a Global Pandemic
When 2gether was founded, it was all about connecting people through music, and creating meaningful moments for older adults and their loved ones. Fast forward to March of 2020 – a global pandemic sends the world into turmoil and in-person interactions are reduced to the bare minimum. The company had to pivot – and so, Solo was born.
I sat down to speak with Roy Tal, the CEO and founder of Solo, an Israeli agetech startup that managed to not only pivot during covid-19, but also to conquer both the Japanese and North American markets.
You can watch/ listen to the podcast, or scroll down to read a transcript of our conversation, edited for clarity and brevity.
Welcome Roy! Tell us a little bit about Solo.
I’m lucky enough to be the CEO of Solo, which is a video based app for older adults.
That helps analyze human emotions and improve emotional wellbeing. So we actually help communities, home care agencies understand how their members or residents are actually feeling and also to improve their wellbeing in a general way.
How do you do it?
We use face recognition.
So all of us know face recognition by using our Android or iPhone to unlock it. So actually what we are doing is using the built-in camera of your device. So there’s no need for any specific or special hardware, just the built in camera to actually capture every micro expression that happened in over 40 muscles in your face.
And we actually translate this into seven main emotions and something in a scientific way called the facial action coding system. Something that every demographic, every place in the world where you go, you’ve been as a tourist. You understand when people are smiling, they are really projecting happiness and something very positive.
So we scan this in 20 seconds, do an emotional checkup, and then we can actually recommend for that specific individual, the feel good videos that will make him or her feel better and improve their wellbeing. Last but not least, we monitor what happened in the session. So we actually can tell what happened to your emotional wellbeing, while you watch those feel good videos that we recommended for you.
And we have the ability to create an emotional wellbeing dashboard for communities so they can actually see happiness, calmness, sadness, stress levels. anger levels, and much, much more for them to help to take care of our loved ones.
That is amazing. Which markets is Solo currently available in?
I’m an Israeli, so we started in Israel as a beta site or a very important POC for us. Now, Solo is available both in North America and in Japan.
That sounds like a handful for a small startup from Israel. How are you handling all of this?
So we have almost 11 people in our team that are working on this. We have people from machine learning and artificial intelligence and customer success, and many other amazing people that want to dedicate their lives to improve older adults’ wellbeing. When we started and chose those first two markets, we thought they were going to be very, very different.
Maybe they have different pain points, maybe different challenges, but you will be surprised that a lot is very, very similar. A lot of the pain points are similar from the Japanese market and the US market. And for us, it’s really an amazing experiment because we can see the different reactions to our technology.
The Japanese population is more acquainted with robots. So we have Solo as a global companion in the app, they love it. The US, north America, they feel kind of strange interacting with the robot. So there were a lot of different things that we experienced with the different populations and we hoped we could manage it, and up until now, we’re doing it quite successfully in over 50 communities, in both markets.
Impressive! Can you take us through your thought process? Because usually Israeli entrepreneurs go after the American market and they don’t look at other markets for several years. Until they feel like they have achieved product market fit there. What made you go after both markets simultaneously?
Other from Japan having great sushi and great food, which is a big enough reason to choose the Japanese market, I actually was a part of the delegation by the Israeli export Institute to Japan. I said, okay, let’s do one business trip to check how the Japanese people react to our product.
And I met about 120 different companies over the course of five days. And the feedback was really amazing. So I said, okay, let’s start the process. And everybody that knows the Japanese market knows that it’s a very slow market. When you start, you need to be very, very patient about it. That was almost two and a half years ago.
So I started going to Japan, started doing POCs with one community, maybe one hospital, and had them experiment with it. And two years later, we have a local Japan country manager that works in our company, Shigeya-Sun. He’s a local Tokyo resident that is actually doing amazing work, bringing the value of Solo to Japan.
And it’s quite amazing. My team is in Israel, North America and Japan, and to develop something here in Israel that actually attracts, engages and affects the lives of people in Japan, is quite an emotional experience.
What was your experience, as an Israeli, as a foreign entrepreneur going into the Japanese market? What were some of the things that caught you by surprise for better or worse?
I needed to learn a lot about the Japanese culture and it’s very important for the Japanese as business people that you respect their culture. So ever since my first business trip, I have had a Japanese business card. I had a Japanese presentation ready. And I also had the app working in Japanese. It was already localized on my initial trip to Japan.
I needed to learn many things, like how to give a business card, how to speak, where to sit. A lot of things that I really adore about Japanese business culture and Japanese culture in general. And I think that the way the Japanese are doing business is completely different from how we do it in Israel and also North America.
But in terms of the older population, they really see the importance in older adults. They really admire them. They want to take care of them more, and they have a huge problem with lack of caregivers, which allows technologies like us in terms of remote monitoring and improving of care.
It really allows us the ability to come to Japan, to offer our technology and to really engage with the population, the local population.
That sounds incredibly interesting, and also incredibly complex for you as a CEO to manage both cultures and also to manage basically, two tracks of the same product. How does that work?
I think the most tricky thing is the time zone difference because Japan is a totally different time zone than the US so most of my days start at 4:00 AM with the Japanese doing meetings and end at 2:00 AM doing meetings with North America.
But other than that, I take an approach of doing A/B testing. So sometimes when something is not working with the North American market, something is working with the Japanese market. So there’s a balance that we created in our company.
To have the A/B experiment be very successful. And a lot of the time maybe it’s going to be surprising. A lot of the time the features that we develop because the Japanese population requires or needs them, are actually a good fit for the North America market. And it goes both ways. So it’s a very, very large, very, very emotional A/B testing for us that helps us, keeps us agile and keeps us really with the feedback of the customer.
Speaking of being agile, you had to pivot your product because of the COVID-19 pandemic. How did that go?
I don’t remember the exact phrase, but I heard once that if more is changing in the world than is changing in your company, that maybe you’re doing something wrong. And I think COVID it really emphasized this, for a lot of startups, a lot of companies that changed the course of their action.
And we did the same, before COVID we had a product called 2gether. That was really designed for physical visits, volunteer visits, family members coming to visit. A lot of physical visits and a lot of hugs. And of course, COVID changed a lot of this. And so we did a very strong pivot from 2gether to Solo.
And when I first introduced this pivot to the Japanese, it took them several hours to get it, and they said to me this repeatedly: you were together, now you’re solo. What does this mean? Why did you change it? They were very surprised because words mean a lot in Japanese culture.
But for us it really was to survive, to create something new. We had a choice whether to terminate 2gether as a company, or to reinvent ourselves, and I’m very, very happy we did that because we got better technology. The face recognition was created only with Solo, we were only doing music videos before COVID now we’re an audio video combination.
So the pivot really saved us and turned a lot of things for us.
Speaking of content, you create most of the content in house, right? And you come from a background of, you’re a creator basically, that’s what made you start the company. So how does your past experience translate into Solo these days?
It was a very, very interesting experience for me because I have dealt with content for the last, let’s say 15 years with my background in the entertainment and music business.
And it was very, very interesting to create content that actually creates some kind of an emotional twist with people. So we started with only listening in the app. So you had the ability to listen to personalized music videos from your past. Nostalgic music like Elvis Presley, Elvis Costello, every individual with their own favorite Elvis.
And now we have six different activities or 6 different categories in the app. So it’s listening, but also creating. So it’s videos of hobbies; pottery, sewing, knitting, wood crafting, and more. We have relax, which are the kind of videos that will make you relax. We have smiles, which is a very successful category in Japan.
It’s called Kawaii in Japanese, which is something cute. Cute cats, cute dogs, cute people, hugging people, smiling, panda bears and more. And we have travel and socialize, which is also very interesting category. Those are the two things where we really feel the innovation because people in nursing homes and you see it with a lot of VR systems, if you provide them the ability to travel for five minutes to Italy or to Jerusalem or to New York is a very impactful experience, but also socialized. We brought a new category that actually chose group activities. So people playing bingo or drinking coffee, people having beer. So a lot of different things that really reduced social isolation because people see the group activity and they feel less alone. So it was really, really amazing to see.
One last anecdote about the Japanese market, we had a video that we created for the US market of soldiers coming back home. And it was very nice in the US market. When we took this video to the Japanese market – catastrophe! Because you changed the population, you changed the culture. You suddenly look at the video in a different way. So American soldiers coming home was not a very positive thing for the Japanese to watch. So now we’re really creating two tracks, one content for the US side and one content for the Japanese side.
There are two things here that are super interesting. One is when people watch videos of people in social activities, it actually reduces their sense of loneliness, that’s what your AI has found, that is fascinating. And the second is that obviously different videos in different cultures mean different things.
I wonder. Because you mentioned that now, basically instead of together, it’s a Solo experience. How have your users basically dealt with it when they were isolated? Was there any challenge in adoption? Because people had to figure it out by themselves with their own devices.
So it actually, for us, was a good thing in terms of the change, because Solo provides you the ability to use it in your own room by yourself.
And when COVID hit, a lot of the group activities were canceled. So no people together, you can not leave your room in some communities. And Solo actually provides activity in a contactless way. So even in COVID matters with germs and sanitation and everything, you don’t need to touch the screen because it uses your face to trigger the app.
So it was another positive thing, that we have created this in COVID times because it’s a COVID fit. So the ability to use it in a contactless way, without touching, completely automatic, the ability to do it one-on-one – you don’t need to wait for the family member to visit and specifically in COVID it didn’t happen.
So it actually enabled us to improve and increase the engagement levels from the actual users, because now they can use it 24/7, whenever they want wherever they want and enjoy a personalized way that Solo says hi, Keren, good morning. I can see you’re very calm today. Would you like to listen to music?
Would you like to watch smiling videos with me? So the entire experience with the very companion, social isolation based app.
Contactlesss and COVID free, hopefully. So it sounds like you’ve had quite a journey in the past 18 months. Where do you see solo in five or 10 years?
I don’t have that detailed of a roadmap, but definitely when we say in our tagline that we digitize human emotions, that is something that we see as our own great added value, because specifically now in Covid, it’s very difficult to know how people are feeling.
So for us to take and create emotion-based experiences using our technology, it’s something that we see a lot of interest in. So it’s now in the older adult space, but we also get inquiries from the employee wellness programs of high-tech companies. We see it in special education. With children on the autistic spectrum that are having a tough time, reflecting their emotions, also understanding emotions, the automotive industry, you will now have autonomous cars.
So definitely it’s something that can be installed in your car and to change the music according to your energy levels. Us having a very simple nonverbal autonomous solution that actually knows how you feel and helps you feel better is something that can go a long way.
What are some of the reactions you received from the staff in the senior living communities that solo is available in, what do they get out of it?
It’s a great question because it’s definitely a challenge. We want them on board. They need to believe it, and they need to trust us that we can do amazing work.
So first of all, they are using it themselves. We have a home care agency that bought 300 licenses for their members, but also 300 licenses for their caregivers, professional caregivers. So that’s a meaningful way. Other than that, caregivers don’t have the time, specifically in communities. They have a lot on their hands and the turnover is quite huge.
So they can have Solo engage with the resident. The staff member can walk away and can return in 15 minutes or 30 minutes or 45 minutes. The length, the duration of the session is a very important thing for the residents to be able to operate in it by themselves and have the staff more productive. And some communities even have duplicate devices.
They have four or three tablets, so they do it simultaneously. So one staff member can actually engage with five, six people simultaneously using solo. So it gives them a lot of benefits. And the last benefit of that, that I’m going to mention is finally the ability to quantify in an outcome-based solution, how my residents are feeling and to validate my programming, to share it with the family members, to let them know how their loved ones are feeling and actually provide a metric that sees over time, how my community is reacting and how well being is treated in my community.
Do you get any pushback from staff fearing that they might be replaced because your app is so entertaining that they’re not needed anymore?
Yeah, sometimes they say, okay, so Solo can do it. Why do you need me? But I think that as they understand that Solo is something that helps augment them, not replace them for instance, after hours when they leave for their home.
But the resident stays there and has a lot of time, but still needs something entertaining and personalized, a wellbeing thing to do, they understand it’s an augmentation and we add, and they definitely see Solo as another professional caregiver that has super powers and can work 24/7. He will not quit his job; he knows all of the residents. So this is why Solo can provide them a lot of information that they actually need in their day to day operations.
And it’s so on point having that after hours entertainment, because families used to visit during those times, but not anymore.
So Solo is incredibly valuable when staff isn’t there or when most of the staff isn’t there.
Roy, is there anything else you would like to add?
I do meet a lot of entrepreneurs like yourself that really devote their life mission into improving older adults’ lives in general.
And I, in a very honest way, recommend to every entrepreneur that is looking at the older adult space. It’s an interesting space, it’s a sexy space and I’m not afraid to say that. It’s very engaging, it’s a very innovation driven space and it also contains a lot of business opportunities.
So, if you want to do something good in the world and also create a good business, sustainable business, go to the older adults market and you will find it both emotional and rewarding and a very, very unique experience.
By the way, are you hiring?
Yeah, actually we are expanding and hiring.
So we’re looking for more great people to join our team. We’re looking for people in the sales department, in the customer success department. So if you’re encouraged to work in the older adult space and want to make an impact in the world with a young and humble start up all the way from the Silicon valley of the middle east, contact me and we’ll give you more details.
Silicon Wadi is here!
Roy, it’s been a pleasure speaking to you again. Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you for having me again.
Any questions or comments? Feel free to direct-message me using the contact page. You can follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter or subscribe to my YouTube channel!