Reimagining Tech Support for Older Adults with AI and SMS | The AgeTech Podcast S4E30 With Carevocacy’s Stefano Selorio

Keren Etkin: Stefano, welcome to the show again.

Stefano Selorio: Yes. Thank you so much, Keren, for having me. Appreciate it. And I know, and this is what the second, third time being here. So excited to be here again.

Keren Etkin: So, yes. I’m very happy that we finally get a chance to like have another conversation because our previous episode that we recorded is actually the second best performing episode of all time on the AgeTech podcast. So it got a lot of streams and downloads, which I’m grateful for. And I wonder, can you sort of bring our audience up to speed on what you and Carevocacy have been up to?

The last time we had, we talked, it was around the lunch of Apol

Stefano Selorio: Yes.

Keren Etkin: I feel like there you have a lot going on.

Stefano Selorio: Yeah, so just to give everybody some context, I started advocacy because I, I’m a current caregiver to my grandma who’s living with Alzheimer’s. And actually yesterday she turned 81 years old, so we celebrated, I had a little mini birthday for her. And so the, having that kind of ongoing experience is what kind of shaped what. Work I do now, and the work that I continue to do and what I’m really passionate about, which is really helping caregivers like myself, but ultimately older, older adults have access to technology, education. And, when I first launched c it was during the pandemic. It was, I. just me tutoring, older adults over Zoom, over Google meet helping them out one by one.

Eventually we were able to work with a few senior living communities, and then eventually we, we were able to land a contract with one of the largest, healthcare insurance companies, Humana, and helped about 23,000 of their Medicare Advantage patients, which was a huge like learning. Journey for me, especially as someone who doesn’t have a background, excuse me, in aging at all, but more so just a real experience and then just having to learn about the technology space. And so, that relationship with like a major Medicare advantage plan was really an interesting time and journey for me and, and definitely for our team. And to take that on and really understand that, you know, primary care and value-based care and also meeting people where they’re at was definitely the way to reach older adults when it comes to digital literacy or specifically digital health literacy. And so that’s really kind of like we landed ourselves on the map. And then about towards the end of that relationship with that plan, we started to develop apple ai which was really to create some sort of scalability to the work that we were doing. We understood that at some point we. Didn’t have enough qualified digital health navigators to help older adults, especially in this country. And so to kind of help with that huge demand, we need to make sure we had the supply to provide that. And artificial intelligence and chat, GPT and the use case of SMS came into play and that’s where Apple AI.

Came about and Apple ai allowed us to basically scale the work that we’re doing and reach more people in a much more accessible way by delivering them a tech support, tech tutor, basically through SMS through text messaging. And then I like to say it’s almost like a grandchild that you probably, I would’ve wanted that would’ve been able to help you when it came to technology issues. But it’s even more than that. We are, we’re seeing people using it even from a companionship standpoint where they’re just asking and having conversation with APO and, and just having conversations about culture events and, and even more than just technology information.

And so that’s where we are. And then as to fast forward to what we’re doing now apple Bay has been selected by the National Institute Aging to be part of their 2025 startup challenge. And we have some amazing conversations down the road in 2025. I’m really excited about to share hopefully in this episode. And hopefully by the time this episode comes out, it all goes well. And I’m really excited because I think we have something. That is a very simple solution, but also a very tough problem to solve, especially when it comes to reaching people and having them educate about the technology that’s out there.

And so there’s a few things that in the works I’m really excited about, but I. That’s where we are. Apple A I right now I believe in around 30 states. We have 30 users across 30 states. We’re hoping to be nationwide by the end of this year, and I’m really excited about it because again, being funded by a NA National Agency will be something to put us on the map again.

Keren Etkin: Absolutely. And Apo, to the best of my knowledge, is like the first AI tech tutoring, text messaging service. Am I correct?

Stefano Selorio: I, I like to claim, so, I think so, especially in the age tech space. I

Keren Etkin: I.

Stefano Selorio: definitely the first to provide an AI tech tutor to really help people in, in a, in a very, I would say the first SMS tool that allows people to have an accessible way to reach a tech tutor. I think there’s definitely people who’ve created amazing chat bots and amazing tools, but when we think about. Reaching a demographic that would necessarily prefer a much more easier way to have access to technology, especially those with smartphones. We believe we’ve created something that’s a little bit more accessible a little bit more scalable, and then, and most importantly measurable, which is something that is so important in this space.

Keren Etkin: Absolutely. So what are some of the key takeaways from apo? It’s been in. In, in public availability for over a year right now. Right.

Stefano Selorio: So I would say from a personal and founder standpoint about the key takeaways, I think something that I’m learning as we’re kind of using this being, being our flagship product is that we’re basically back to square one again as a company. I think learning, and that’s, I think that’s an exciting thing because I’ve obviously created Kezi that first half of providing those tech tutors and digital navigators in person.

But to kind of transition to, from a. Fully service-based model to a, a tech stack model, a SaaS model has been really an interesting transition. One thing for me that I’ve learned is that, it’s, it’s, it’s a different sell when you’re selling you know, like a service-based model versus a, a tech-based product. And I think the value that people place into that is very, very different and important. And so learning to navigate through that and you also kind of explain to individuals of like how simple the product is to onboard someone is something that is also surprising to me to kind of, go interact with. So I think that’s the biggest takeaway. I think because of the product hasn’t been, has been there for about a year and a half. We’re still in that growing pain of trying to figure out what is the best way to go to market, what’s the best way to talk to customers, what’s the best way to maintain our customers and our users as well. And so we’re in that process right now as like every other startup right now of just trying to learn and maneuver through that. And I think the other takeaway from outside of the founder. Perspective is more so having conversations with people to collaborate with a tool like this. I think because of our past and our legitimacy and our work with, in, with the health tech space, with healthcare with aging and senior living, we’ve created a reputation that a lot of people would rather work with in versus to when it comes to the usage of AI tools.

And so it is interesting to see Apple AI take on this kind of, I think a tool that can be used within existing platforms out there, like, you know, colleagues of ours are that we know are, are trying to look into artificial intelligence to be implemented into their platforms. And so, you know, I’m having conversations with folks who, you know, don’t necessarily have a tech team but would love to implement Apple AI into their existing platform and to have it be something that they could.

Give a value add to their existing customers. And I think that’s an interesting avenue that we’ve been looking at. And then the third thing that I think from a business model standpoint that I’ve been trying to explore is working with distribution partners. With distribution partners could be mean.

Anybody people who either currently be selling technology to individuals or organizations or existing organizations that. Sell some sort of platform, but they, on top of it have like existing other technologies or products with that bundle, that platform. And so it’s something I’ve been really interesting in having conversations with is our, our new distribution partners, hopefully in 2025. And then the other thing is, as I said I think it’s so interesting because we, we set out to just let it be a tech tutor for people who. You know, are just curious to ask more questions. But we’re seeing conversations that are taking place that are outside of technology conversations. They’re using it as a companion.

They’re using it to have a conversation once a day, twice a week, whatever, how they ever use it. I think for me it’s really exciting that the tool and the user has taken it beyond what I expected it to be used. I think that’s a really, a really cool thing to see, especially as a founder and especially in this age tech space where, you know, you’d normally just wanna build it for this specific purpose, but then your user ends up using it for more than what it is.

And I think that’s a great thing and I hope to continue to see that more and I’m really excited about that.

Keren Etkin: I’m super excited to see how this all develops. And I’m curious. Yeah, I, I love the fact that you built APO as, as an SMS text-based product rather than an app or a custom GPT. And I wonder sort of, because, you know, tech tutoring is always a chicken and egg thing, right? Because a lot of the times you provide tech tutoring.

Online via Zoom, and then if your users aren’t even able to go on Zoom, then you sort of, you inevitably miss a huge segment. So has Apple SMS availability sort of compensated that? Does it allow you to reach people who don’t use any technology at all, which is probably not a lot of people these days, but.

They still exist.

Stefano Selorio: Yeah, think when we. Well, again, coming from ex our experience from building this in the first place we built this for actually one of the reasons why we built this. This tool wasn’t just always so that we can scale our operation or scale to reach more people, but what we found was when we were providing tech classes in person and our work with Humana and these primary care centers, was that what would happen is that we would schedule a class on one week.

With them for one hour, and then the next class would happen either a week later or two weeks later. Right. But what happens was that the retention between that first class and that second class would basically decrease. Right. And the only problem was that we didn’t have. You know, in our contract with ’em, we didn’t have people that could provide that support ongoing after post class, right?

And so by creating this tool and being, giving them this tool, it allowed them to basically interact with a tech tutor like ourselves to have someone that they can ask questions on a consistent basis, which is. I think a really good thing because what ends up happening again is like they receive so much information about technology and then they lose out on that information because either they forget, they don’t know how to apply it, or they just don’t have somebody they can ask questions back to again.

I. When it comes to reaching certain users, we definitely designed it so that we can reach a majority of smartphones or phones that have access to SMS. But I do, I would say the precautionary thing is that individuals or organizations. Do have to sign up the user or the learner through a website first, and that’s the best way to do it.

And they only have to give us like a phone number or an email address, or we’re not asking too much of the, of the end user or the organization for that. But I do think we’re reaching more people who normally would not have access to physical locations that would allow them to go to that location, ask somebody, and which I think is the best.

Plus for us, but also to be realistic. We know that there is also a population of older adults that may not know exactly how to do SMS or text messaging, or may have asked a smartphone. But I will say to this to, to that counter, is that. believe communication, especially messaging or phone calls, is the best way to establish some sort of digital literacy relationship with older adults, right?

We don’t wanna start them off with learning how to use chat GBT or AI or going on a browser right away. I think the best way to reach people is, is through SMS and through texting is through phone calls and, and I will say from my experience of. Building this company. We’ve reached more people than the, in the first three months of launching oppo AI than the first three months of me launching Careba.

Right. And I, I’m excited about that metric and that, that success rate for us. I do think there are opportunities and plans for in the future where we can expand this beyond SMS, but I think for, for. For me and for what we’re trying to do, I think we’re content with trying to solve that initial preventable problem.

When it comes to older adults facing the lack of digital literacy, which is barrier, the the number one barrier that I see that’s happening is that older adults don’t necessarily, at least the ones that we work with, have a trouble with. Asking the first question. And so if we can get them to ask that first question by sending a message, by just simply reaching out to someone, it could be anyone, whether they believe them to be real, a human or not, but, but if they can just be curious and that allows ’em to have an answer back to them, I think that allows a lot of opportunities and doors.

For folks to have access to some sort of education when they normally don’t. And I think for us, that’s why we’re trying to work with a lot of nonprofits, a lot of area agencies on aging, a lot of organizations that do amazing social work and even ones who are currently doing existing technology support in the community.

Like we are not afraid working with. Folks who are already doing technology education services for older adults, because we know that that’s hard work. I built that myself. But we now have a tool that can allow them to expand that work that they do and reach more people. And I think I. So back to repositioning ourselves to kind of like, let us be the product that allows you to continue to do the work that you do.

We don’t necessarily have to be the ones that are on the ground anymore, but let’s be the catalyst that allows you to, to expand that work. And I think that’s really exciting. And so, yeah, I do, I do think SMS is definitely a, a starter point. It’s definitely a way to reach more people. It’s gonna be something that I think is still gonna be around for a while, especially, especially now with everything that’s happening and to kind of reach more people.

I think the best approach has been SMS.

Keren Etkin: I really, really, it’s very interesting to hear you say that because I think it’s an, an, an approach that not many startups take. I think the, the most, like the, the, the first thing that’s that tech companies do in general is just to build an app and that may not be the best way to reach. Everyone. And that may not be the best way to reach older adults.

And I mean, for, and for all of us, we, we only already have so many apps on our phones that we download. Maybe open once and then forget about them. And when you have SMS you can maybe be more proactive and also more like top of mind. ‘Cause they just save

Stefano Selorio: think,

Keren Etkin: APO as someone on their contact list.

Stefano Selorio: Yeah. So from a, from a, I always think about I think this is what talks about a lot in, in the tech scene about how do you create a relationship with your end user, or in our case, how do we create a relationship with our learner? And I think strategically being accessing them through SMS has been working in our favor because of the fact that. you said, like we’re saved onto the phone as a reliant contact that they can save onto the phone so they can reach out to, on top of that, you know, instead of having to have an additional application that they have to go through. I. They also are able to look at the conversations and the answers and the questions that they ask and have it be almost like a note taking or some sort of way to record of those questions that I’ve asked. Because what typically happens, I think for, and we don’t think about this, but when you go into Google, right you may have your search history yes. But what usually happens is, what I see a lot happens is they go onto a browser and then they just type up their question on, on Google or browser, but they use the same webpage and so they don’t remember what they asked before. And so what happens is I. There’s no record of that, of that, of that unless they know how to go to the search history. And so I think being able to do it through SMS allows that conversation thread to be able to be seen. And then again, involving caregivers like myself in the process allows them to also be able to say, Hey, they can share to their loved one that this is the conversation that they’ve been having with this tool to learn more about technology.

And that way the caregiver. Doesn’t necessarily have to go through another application or browser or some sort of loophole just to find out what that conversation’s like, because now we’ve made it easier for folks to access that. And so I do think, you know, for. Newcomers into the H Tech CI do think people should definitely look into creating a little bit more simpler products, especially reaching simpler, but not reducing the fact that older adults can still have complex interactions with these products. But ultimately, I think approaching it through SMS and making sure we reach a mass market is something that we’re thinking about all the time. And, that’s why, that’s why I’m like when I said like, we’ve been able to reach way more people in the span of the first three months versus the first time I did this in the first three months is because of how accessible SMS has been.

And, and I never, I never, I never would’ve thought in I. Within the first year of our launch or anything that we’d be able to reach states across the country or users across the country with this tool. I thought I’d be in Florida for the rest of our company. But to basically be able to build this and kind of reach more people is something great.

And we even have, we have a few international users as well too. So this tool can be used. Across, across. And so it’s interesting to see and, and to be able to also see people who use it in different languages. I don’t know if I was able to mention this, but this, this tool speaks in about 50 languages.

And so it’s really interesting to have people conversations, have conversations with it in their own language as well. And so. the end of the day, I think it’s all about trying to build something simple so that they can have an access to a solution that typically would take them either a day or more or, or physically take them longer to have access to that information.

So hopefully we’ve made that a little bit easier for people. I.

Keren Etkin: It sounds like you definitely did. I wonder you mentioned that you have users in 30 states and also internationally, so how did you spread the word so far?

Stefano Selorio: Yeah, so it’s a, I I’ll say it’s still an experiment for now. As, as I said, we’re in this state of like trying to figure out exactly what’s the best fit for this. But if you don’t know me already, you know, the best use case for us of spreading the word of the work that we’ve done has all ultimately just been using.

Social media? I think it’s been one of the best tools that we’ve used. We’ve reached people through TikTok, through Instagram specifically especially LinkedIn as well and reaching people via that way. I think the biggest thing has been creating stories and Instagram reels and TikTok videos, and. Fun little post about the work that we’re doing and reaching more people. And then ultimately, we’ve been asked to speak about artificial intelligence in the world of aging, senior living, and when it comes to caregiving. So those have been some really great opportunities for me. Like, especially about a year ago, I think when we first met each other physically was at San Francisco at the On Aging Conference. And they had asked me to speak on artificial intelligence when when literally three months before that we had just launched off. I like officially and so I. It was that whole year was like a whole rollercoaster of basically being invited to speak at events and meet a lot of people. And I think that’s been the best way for us to to kind of. and all, ultimately been a lot of word of mouth. I think we have a really good job. I do a really good job in building those relationships with people and making sure that our product is helping and measuring those outcomes as much as we can so that we can reach and really impact individuals and learners.

And so honestly, social media has been our, our best friend for when it comes to that. As, as you probably know, you. But it’s really been a really a tool that has reached more people that I, I hope someday that I can meet, but reach people that I know that I would never be able to meet. But it’s been interesting to see that and take that on its own.

And so another thing that we’re exploring as well is, something I’m trying to do for next year is doing like webinars and other things. I know that’s nothing new, but like I, I’ve some, I, I, I. have somebody who I’ve been trying to work with who’s been really encouraging me to do webinars, to do those things, to put that out there.

And that’s something that I’m really excited about to do, hopefully next year to create more content around that and kind of help people guide them through the use case of ai, especially in the aging industry, when sometimes, you know, things like that don’t necessarily men well together. And so, yeah, that’s been our way of, of spreading the word about APO ai.