Onward Specializes in Safe and Reliable Assisted Transportation – An Interview With Co-founder And CEO Mike Lewis

 

Transportation is one of the biggest challenges in aging. Many older adults who are no longer able to drive, need safe and reliable transportation options – not just for running errands and going to their doctor’s appointment, but to stay socially engaged in society (during normal, non pandemic times). I spoke with Mike Lewis, the co-founder and CEO of Onward about their solution which specializes in assisted rides and deliveries for older adults. The following text is a transcript of our conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.

Welcome Mike. Thank you for joining me. 

Hello. Thank you for having me. 

Tell us a little bit about the Onward. 

Onward is a transportation company. We are focused on helping those who need extra assistance, whether it’s older adults or those who have a medical condition, and we provide transportation to them door to door and door, through door transportation to them so they can get out and live their lives and have more freedom.

So what made you start this company? 

I was working at Airbnb back in 2018, 2019, and my mother in law was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and my grandmother moved into an assisted living facility. Both those things happened at the same time, and when those happened, I got a look at what services are available for older adults.

And I was working in San Francisco, in Silicon Valley, and I saw all this innovation and disruption and new, online on-demand services happening. And then when I looked at the services available for my mother-in-law and my grandmother, none of that was available. I thought, there’s a lot of room for innovation and there’s a lot of work we could do.

I thought it was a gray area of focus. So I quit my job and I have a co-founder Nader who was also interested in this space. He and I had been co-founders of a previous company before. So we looked at this, just this whole space and there were a couple of things that really resonated with us – aging in place and the PACE project.

We actually initially started around companionship on demand. That was the first incarnation of our product, the ability to get a companion on demand.  We had different companions and we were talking to older adults who were living in their homes and it didn’t work.

While there is a need for companionship and that need stays there. It was a tough product to sell. People are very curious about who is this companion? What is their age, gender,  interests. They want to match very closely. And a lot of people don’t think that they necessarily need a companion and what are they going to do?

It wasn’t a smooth transaction, but one thing we knew while we were doing this, is that they all said they wanted a ride. They said, before I officially order a companion, can I just get a ride to a medical appointment or to the airport? What we found is the need for transportation and rides was huge.

So we flipped it. We said, great. Instead of companions, that can provide rides, let’s do rides that come with companionship. So we then started focusing on getting really great drivers who will get out of the car and will essentially be companions, but will do so in the context of giving a ride and providing transportation.

You’re based in the San Francisco Bay area, so there plenty of Ubers and Lyfts all over the place. What did your users say?  Why weren’t they using Uber?

That’s the first question everyone asks me. And what we say is, if you can use Uber or Lyft, you should do it because those services, like you said, are readily available. They’re very inexpensive, they’re on demand and they’re easy to use. It’s really for the audience and the people out there who can’t use Uber and Lyft, that we’re a great service for whether it’s, you don’t have a cell phone or smartphone, or you need extra assistance getting from your door to the car or on your ride, you need someone to help carrying something or do something, that’s really where we shine.

I think we’ve all had the experience, myself included. I’ve ordered an Uber, and come outside and try to find the Uber and can’t find it. And then the Uber driver cancels and leaves. And I’m an able bodied 40 year old, imagine if you’re moving a little slow, you have a walker and it might take you five minutes to get from the door of a building to the car.

And then if you don’t have a smartphone on top of that to go back inside and try to order it again, or pull up your phone, it can be a really painful experience. So that’s one, the pickups are a big problem, but also one thing our drivers will do is they’ll stay with the rider.

So if you’re going to a medical appointment, our driver will go into the waiting room and sit there and wait for you to be done, if you need them to, and then take you home. So for my mother-in-law, for instance, she needs to get a ride someplace and get a ride back. I don’t want to have the anxiety of her trying to order another ride somewhere.

I just want to know if my mother-in-law’s leaving the house that she’s going to get back to the house safely, and Uber and Lyft, as you can imagine, aren’t going to give me that safety or sense of security that it’s all gonna work out. 

Definitely not. So how does it actually work? How can older adults get a ride from onward? 

There’s a couple of ways. We have an app and we have a website and you can use our app just like you use the Uber and Lyft app, where you create a profile, put your credit card and order a ride, but you don’t have to do that. You can just call us.

So we have a full time concierge team who will take your calls and do that all over the phone with you. And that is how most people use our services. They just call. 

We are built , not just for older adults and seniors, but for their children. So if the adult child is managing care or rides for someone else, or if it’s a fiduciary or whoever it’s set up to accommodate that. Let’s use my mother-in-law for example, for her rides, if I set it up, I’ll get a text message.

When the pickup happens, when the drop-off happens, if there was anything that went on with the ride. So unlike Uber and Lyft, which has just a driver and a rider, we have three people involved. It’s the driver, the rider, and the person who ordered the ride, and they all stay in the loop with everything that happens.

We also work a lot with facilities and senior living communities and we have a nice dashboard for them to have their roster of patients or residents where they can put in there, the cognitive abilities, the physical abilities, and then order the rides there and see all the rides that they’ve ordered and manage different payment types, whether they want to invoice the ride or charge it directly to the resident.

We have a lot of different ways we can order, but I’d say 70% of them are just over the phone. 

And can they book the ride in advance? 

Yes. In fact, most rides are booked in advance. And you can not only book it in advance, but you can book it with a specific driver in mind, if you love Denise or Bill or whoever, and you say, I want to Bill next Thursday and every Thursday, we’ll work to make that happen as well.

That’s amazing. And I remember you once told me that many of your drivers are actually older adults themselves, so they’re sort of semi retired. Is that still the case? 

It’s common that we have an older adult in their fifties or early sixties as a driver, and the drivers come from a variety of backgrounds.

Many of them have a health background or are ex-nurses or home care aides. But the one thing we vet for among all the drivers, is a compassion gene. And so we interview them all personally, when we try to vet them out, and they’re doing it for the money, we don’t hire. We only hire if they’re doing it because they love helping and giving back.

Most of our drivers are already volunteering giving rides through their church or through another network. So this is something that they love to do. We want them to innately have the desire to want to get out of the car, to be excited to go to the front door and ask the question, what can I do to help?

That is the big difference 

When drivers apply to become onward drivers. Do they say why they want to work for Onward rather than for Uber or Lyft? 

Yeah, we ask them, what type of job are they looking for? What are their expectations, but also what is their experience? Do they have any experience with taking care of older adults or working with seniors and they all do. Across the board our drivers have that prior experience.

That’s really, really unique. 

We take hiring our drivers incredibly seriously, and here’s why: as you know, most tech companies spend a lot of time on their website and on their apps and the design and we have a tech background, so we think that’s obviously important, but the amount of time that our customer spends on our website versus the amount of time they spend with their driver, it’s a hundred to one.

Their love of our product and our service depends mostly on the quality of our driver and not on the quality of our apps or website. So we think it’s one of the most important things we can work on. 

Absolutely. So where is this service available right now? 

We’re in the Bay area, that’s our primary region. We started there, but we’ve expanded to Sacramento, Los Angeles, and will soon be going to Texas. 

You did manage to get all your drivers vaccinated for COVID-19

Yeah, we were fortunately categorized as a healthcare company. Because we are in and out of the hospital, the drivers were able to get vaccines. 

So people riding with Onward can feel safe, both getting in and out of the car and also in the cabin. 

We take COVID incredibly seriously. So not only are they vaccinated, but we supply enough masks for our drivers, so they obviously wear masks, but they can provide masks to the riders if they don’t have them.

Same with hand sanitizers. There’s wiping that’s done. We wipe down the car thoroughly before and after every ride. The high touch areas, as well as the interior. And because it’s again, not like Uber, where there’s a drive happening back to back to back there’s time in between the rides to actually make sure that the cars are our safe spots so we can protect against COVID-19, and hopefully put the pandemic in our rear view.

What’s the bigger vision? Where do you see it onward in 5 or 10 years from now? 

In the short term, assisted transportation is needed all over the place, not just in California, every city needs this. So national expansion is the immediate short-term, and then beyond that we are around compassion assistance.

So there’s lots of different ways people need assistance. Not just transportation. We’re open to it to other categories, but for now we’re focused on transportation and bringing that to everyone in the US. 

You did add some extra services because of COVID-19, the grocery delivery and the prescription delivery, those are new.

Yes. I like to joke that having a company whose mission is around getting seniors out of their homes was probably the worst possible message you could have when the pandemic started. Yeah. Because everyone was staying in their homes, but they still needed the same things.

They needed groceries and prescriptions, but it was just shopping in general. We don’t try to compete with Instacart or with whole foods delivery, but we can do any type of shopping someone needs to. So if you need to go to multiple locations, if there’s a corner deli that doesn’t have online delivery, our drivers can first go to the deli, then go to the post office.

Then if you want to go to the liquor store and bring all of that home whether by themselves or with the rider, we have customers who do it every week, you know. So that is something we added into our app. You can see all the items that you’ve ordered and you can track it.

If seniors weren’t able to get out of the house, you were able to help them shelter in place and stay safe in their home while bringing everything to them.

Exactly. We normally will bring seniors into the world, but during the shelter in place, we will bring the world to them. 

Is there anything else you would like to add?

No, just that I appreciate everything that you’re doing and shining the light on this part of the world. 

Thank you so much for your time and for being here. 

Thank you for having me.