The AgeTech Showroom Every Startup Needs | The AgeTech Podcast S4E30 With MyAgeTechLab’s Matt Cooley
What if older adults could actually try AgeTech products before committing to buy them? In this episode, I chat with Matt Cooley, founder of My AgeTech Lab – an initiative helping caregivers and older adults get hands-on with the latest AgeTech solutions. From personal robots to fall detection watches, Matt is building something the ecosystem desperately needs: a showroom for AgeTech. Whether you’re a foundeLet’s dive in.
Catch the full conversation on Youtube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or scroll down for the transcript (auto-generated, so pardon any oddities – the bots are still learning!)
Keren Etkin: Matt, welcome to the show.
Matt Cooley: Thank you, Keren.
It’s great to be here.
Keren Etkin: So what can you tell us about My AgeTech Lab? It’s a fairly recent venture.
Matt Cooley: It is, we’re really just getting started, but what we
focus on is building direct to consumer channels for, age tech suppliers. Uh, and we do that in two ways. One is you just mentioned we provide a hands-on,
lab experience. We call it. For age technology solutions that we curate from the broader market and actually put in people’s hands in these experiences so they can touch and feel and, decide if it’s something that they would like to purchase.
It’s a hyper-local business, based here in New Jersey. We’ve also started offering platforming services onto Amazon and other platforms for suppliers that need help building those channels, on top of whatever else they’re doing. I would call this really a direct to consumer, effort.
And those are the two ways that we’re addressing that.
Keren Etkin: this topic of distribution comes up in so many of my conversations. Most recently, in my conversation with the founder of Khyaal and what he said is that first time founders focus on product and second time founders focus on distribution. And I think one of the challenges.
For startups in our ecosystem is just that distribution. And because so many of the products are hardware products that people want to, to get a sense of like how they feel like and they wanna get a hands-on experience most, like, most of the products don’t really have a way to offer that. So, um, think
Matt Cooley: Exactly.
Keren Etkin: is really, cool thing that you’re doing. so how does it. Actually work. Like, let’s say we have someone in the audience who lives in New Jersey and they are very curious about one of the products in the ecosystem, uh, that you are showcasing. How do they
get into the lab?
Matt Cooley: Well, I’m glad you’re asking because we just had our first lab, this
past weekend. And so what we offered were four
solutions. There were three actual tangible products and one service, and I’ll
explain that in a second. but we marketed to, caregivers and, older adults in the area we didn’t give the company names, but we did say a fall detection watch, a personal robot, a virtual travel service, and a memory enhancement device. So, you know, theoretically that would’ve, that would’ve said, oh, those are interesting things that I might need, so I, I want to go do this. And then we set up stations. Where we demonstrated each of those in 15, 15 to 20 minute intervals. And then we would, uh, rotate, uh, rotate the stations. So by the end of a two hour, um, event, you will have interacted with all four solutions and, and had your questions answered, et cetera. That’s how we did it this first time. We might make some adjustments, uh, for future labs, but. Uh, as you hinted a second ago, how, how else are you going to put your hands and eyes and, and ears to, to these solutions without buying them first? If you can even find them on your own right. Um, and, and decide if you want them.
You know, you’d have to put money out and, uh, use the product and possibly return it. So, um. you know, four solutions. Kind of a small start, but, um, there could be something here. And that’s, um, that, that’s what we’ve, we’ve started off with.
Keren Etkin: And is it a group experience? Do multiple people get into the lab at the same time and they, there’s one instructor that explains about each and every product before they get to try it.
Matt Cooley: So what, what we did with this one is we had, uh,
three tables
for the tangible products and we had, uh, a lab tech, uh, we call ’em at each table. Um, and so, um,
with a number of people sort of gathering around the table, um. that way you can have some good interaction. The virtual travel service, we actually reconvened everybody at the end all together, um, to, to stare at the screen.
And then, um, we put a surprise destination in front of them with a live travel agent on the ground and, and ask the, the attendees, you know, where do you think we are to kick that off? So it was sort of like, uh, going on a trip together. Um, but, but that’s the format that we used. And each lab tech has been trained by the supplier.
I. I, I was a lab tech for one of the solutions. Um, my son, who’s, uh, a co-founder, he handled another one and then a friend of his, uh, or high school students hand handled the third one. Um, and, and, you know, did a great job. Very interactive.
Keren Etkin: So how did you pick which solutions to showcase?
Matt Cooley: Well, that,
that has been one of the interesting things. So we actually. My age tech lab really got started last summer, uh, where we did a lot of
research. Um, you know, I’ve been a member of your age tech academy for almost a year and a half. And, and actually you. would say you’re the first, uh, age tech friend that I have in the world, so I’m Kudos to you.
Thank you. and, um, it really got started last year, like, can we, we knew we weren’t going at this point to build our own solution. Um, and we knew that we wanted to bring solutions to actual end users, so we knew that at least initially it had to be hyperlocal. So we spent a lot of time looking at the market map, looking at the h AARP’s, age tech collaborative and, and our own sources for solutions that. You could demonstrate in a lab environment like tangibles, right? So we don’t do a lot of apps or things like that because they’re, they’re hard to demonstrate. Um, um, we curated it down to four. We signed agreements with the four suppliers who were all excited to be part of this, um, and, and still are. Um, and that’s our start. So. I mean that, that’s basically how it goes. And, and again, we just had our first lab experience this past weekend. We’re going to have, uh, we have a couple more in the queue over the next six weeks, and we’ll adjust, uh, we’ll adjust our model accordingly after that. But we’re kind of in study mode at the moment. I.
Keren Etkin: awesome. And people can just basically go onto your website, see what solutions are currently being showcased, and then sign up for the wait list if they wanna attend, and, and, and what do they get at the end? Like, can they buy some of these products from you?
Matt Cooley:Yeah. the way,
the way we have it set up right now is we don’t sell anything to
you. We really give you the
hands-on experience. You’re not gonna
get a heavy sell
at our lab experience. Um, but you are going to, uh, get information and get that tactile experience. And then, uh, in our agreements with the suppliers, we’ve, we’ve asked them for discount codes that attendees can use on the supplier websites. And, and so if you see something you like, you can get a compelling discount, uh, you know, by using this code that, that we give you. Um, and they’re actually, uh, actually it’s published on our website. If you go to our website, you’ll see the solutions we have, uh, we’ve been demonstrating today and those discount codes. So again, not something that you can easily get. You know, figuring this out one by one yourself, uh, on the internet. So we, we hope this is a value and we think it’s gonna grow.
Keren Etkin: how often do you expect you will rotate solution? Let’s say someone has been to the first lab experience and in six months they wanna try out something new because they haven’t quite found the right fit. I.
Matt Cooley: Oh, absolutely. And I want to tell you something about that. ’cause that’s a great, that’s a
great question. Um, so in, in our minds, and I, I don’t have a good scientific reason for this, but we think we need a portfolio or a library of about 40
solutions. And, um, we, think that will allow us to have lots of lab experiences and constantly change the mix and tailor it to the market. Uh, you know, right now we’ve got four. We’ve got several suppliers that want to be part of this, and we’re, we’re sort of, uh, you know, we’ve got a process to go through to whether we think that those suppliers make sense for what we’re doing or not. Um, but something came up, uh, that was really interesting at the lab experience and I, I think I. It’s a good thing, but it also says we’re gonna have to adjust our marketing. Um, the people that came all had different issues that they were trying to address, and so the three that came up the most, um, I’ve got vision problems, I’ve got hearing problems, I’m having trouble with balance. so, um, we kind of went wide in our marketing. Looking more for a demographic instead of a psychographic and a specific problem. Um, so, um, it, it was quite interesting to, to learn specifically why people and, uh, you know, we may not have been able to address all, all three of those issues for everybody. Um, but, um, those are the kinds of learnings that you, you bump into, right?
When, when you, when you have a startup and you’re, and you’re meeting your market face to face.
Keren Etkin: Absolutely. I mean, and eventually when you do have a portfolio, you could like tailor the experience to specific, um. Solution areas that the specific challenges people are looking for. I wonder, um, first of all, what was the feedback from that first lab experience? Uh, and also were there any like, additional requests?
So after the first lab experience, people said, Hey, this was great. Can you show me that next time? I saw this cool product online, but I, I didn’t wanna buy it because it’s, I’m not sure it’s a good fit. Can you bring that?
Matt Cooley:Mm-hmm.
Yeah, the, there, there was a little bit of that where, um, Hey, how do we stay in touch? Uh, so everybody’s in our database already and they’ve already agreed to take our newsletter and stuff, so we’ll nurture those leads over time. But there definitely, I,
I’d say two things. There definitely was. know, what, what else are you going to, uh, show in the next lab experience and when is the next lab experience?
So, you know, that was very positive. The other thing, even though people came with specific needs that they were looking to address, um, I have to say like the engagement and the questions were really deep and, and interesting. So I, I, uh, was running the table with the ElliQ personal robot, which I know you’re, you’re quite familiar with. Um, and just a lot of detailed questions about how you engage. Um, with ElliQ and, uh, the types of things that you can do to make your day a better day. Um, it was really impressive and, and same feedback from, from the other tables. So, um, you know, again, we’re in, we’re in learning mode, but you’re absolutely right.
As we grow the library of solutions, it’ll help us tailor our marketing and it’ll help us, uh, you know, build how we, how we message. In the lab experience. So I all cool things ahead of us. Um, but I’m also, I’m also excited about the inbound interest starting to come from, from suppliers. I wouldn’t call it a tsunami, but uh, you know, there are inbound, uh, inbound suppliers coming and so it’s not just us hunting for them.
So I think we’ll be able to build that library, um, you know, sooner than, than I was expecting.
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Keren Etkin: I have no doubt. I mean, it makes, it makes so much sense because like each one of these startups, um. Might have a need to showcase their products and, and put it in the hands of potential, uh, customers. And you don’t, you typically don’t get that in, in shows if you’re a direct to consumer startup. Uh, but also it doesn’t really make sense for them to a physical store. uh, it’s just for one product. Just doesn’t make sense. Um, so. wonder what is, like, what’s next? Okay. Let’s say you, you, run 50, a hundred live experiences, Uh, this year. you plan to expand to adjacent states? Do you plan to expand nationally?
Matt Cooley: Well, I like your numbers. I, I wish we
could do 50 to a hundred this year. We’ll see what happens. Um, yeah, so it’s very, it’s by nature. It’s, it’s hyperlocal, right? Um, but from a business model standpoint, I. Sure. Like if this, um, if, if we see the traction that, that we think we can see with this model, absolutely. Um, you, you would start expanding to places with large communities of older adults. Um, and depending on your library of solutions that would sort of guide you to, you know, which, which communities, which states, uh, of older adults do. They skew older, which is probably more of a sell. Which quite honestly we’re, we’re not a hundred percent interested in doing at the moment.
We’re more interested in that probably 65 to 75-year-old cohort where, uh, you are acquiring age tech solutions that help you live your fullest life, uh, versus medical. Um. You know, so as this evolves, I think that will steer us into a growth, uh, a growth vector. That, that makes sense. Um, you know, I want to comment real quickly on like medical versus non-medical, that, that’s another interesting thing. Like, uh, at the lab experience, people came with, you know, as I said, the vision, hearing, and balance issues, they weren’t necessarily looking for a medical type device or solution. They were looking for something that could enhance their life to age in place longer, and avoid having to, uh, be stuck to a medical advice, uh, device or, um, you know, uh, moving into a, you know, assisted facility. So everybody that came actually was aging in place. Uh, and that’s, that’s important. So we’re kind of geared towards that. Um. You know, uh, solutions that, that help you live your best life, um, that aren’t necessarily medical, but we’re open to where the world takes us here.
Keren Etkin: you considered, um, um, doing a traveling lab experience, just getting a, a mobile home like equipped with all of these solutions? Going around New Jersey.
Matt Cooley: you’re clearly interested in
being our chief marketing officer. I
love it. Um, yeah, that, that’s a possibility. I mean, right
now we have,
uh, we all
have day jobs. Um, you know, this is something that takes a, a while to build.
Um. That’s something, that’s something that’s in, in the back of our minds.
Uh, you know, could, could we do it that way? Um, I think we’ve gotta get some, have to get several lab experiences under our belt, build the library, um, build the Amazon platforming services, uh, that we also offer to suppliers, um, and see. See where we get traction because again, big picture, it’s about, uh, direct to consumer channels and, and building those so that people can actually touch and feel this stuff.
Uh, not just it on the internet and decide if they wanna buy it or not. Just discover it through their insurance coverage. Which is where a lot of age tech solutions are today. I’m not, I’m not saying that’s the wrong approach for the companies, but a lot of these technologies are really hard to get your hands on. If you’re just sitting at home saying, wow, I need help moving my laundry from, you know, this room over to that room, or, uh, you know, whatever the challenge might be.
Keren Etkin: Absolutely. I think it touched upon a very important point in, there’s a challenge with discoverability, so just you don’t know what you don’t know, and for many of the startups, they just don’t have the marketing budgets to make their presence known. And like, if you’re helping on that side, that is also a tremendous help. I mean, even just putting the word out there, even if people who can’t get into the lab, uh, hear about the product from you for the first time, that is, that is a big deal for some of these companies.
Matt Cooley: To totally agree. And can we talk about marketing for a
second?
Keren Etkin: Go ahead.
Matt Cooley: Wow. Super challenging, right? Um, you can blow so much money. I, I.
On marketing and, and
what’s nice about this model at
the moment is it is hyper-local. So we did a lot of outreach to associations, uh, that have older members. Uh, we did a postcard mailing.
We have lots and lots of, uh, 55 plus communities in Central New Jersey. Um, outreach to government offices. Um, lots of different things in our marketing plan. Uh, we went wide intentionally. Um. not sure that was the right strategy. again, people show up with different needs and, um, as we build that library again, I think that will help our help, help marketing.
But I’m curious what you see, um, not only as TheGerontechnologist, but the head of the AgeTech Academy. Uh, how is marketing developing right now?
Keren Etkin: it, it depends. I just, uh, I just had Jeff Weiss from age of majority on the podcast, uh, a few weeks ago,
Matt Cooley: Mm-hmm.
Keren Etkin: it seems that many still struggle. I mean, not I not necessarily in the age tech ecosystem, but broadly many or most direct to consumer. Brands struggle with marketing to older adults, so they either don’t do it at all or they, they, get it wrong because they target based on demography, based on someone’s age rather than based on someone’s need.
And I think one of my main. Takeaways from my conversation that I had with Jeff was, when you’re marketing a solution, you need to market it according to the problem that it’s solving and not even mention that it’s age related. Um, and that I think is the, is the, main point. And also, I mean, when, when I look at, again, when I look at startups, it’s at the end of the day.
It is about resources, right? Because for for small startups, for the early stage startups, they raise million or two or even $5 million in seed funding, they have to decide on whether they’re going to allocate that on, on product development or uh, marketing or. hundred other, uh, places, and you know this better than I do. Uh, Figuring out how to, uh, budget is hard. And for, I think for first time founders, it’s incredibly hard. Um, so startups are doing really well direct to consumer, it takes long time to figure it out, to figure it out. Your positioning in the market, your messaging, like what is your, not just what is your value proposition, but the wording, are you gonna deliver the message about your value proposition?
And that takes a long time to figure out. And you know, that’s, it’s just one more reason why startups in this ecosystem. Uh, take longer sometimes to scale than in other ecosystems because it, it, it, really is challenging to figure out who’s your ideal user, who’s buying, how are you gonna get your message across?
And even if you have figured it out, going out and making your presence known. costs a lot. I mean, unless you’re, you have an incredibly creative team and you can do like guerrilla marketing and put out like viral content on social media. really, really hard and expensive.
Matt Cooley: Right,
right. And, and honestly, that’s, that’s why I was excited to offer the
platforming services because, um, we, we can do that for. in a way that
quite honestly, their costs are close to zero and it really minimizes their risk if, if they fit a certain profile. So I’m sure we’ll continue to have more and more discussions with suppliers on that side. Regarding the age tech lab, um, you know, I mentioned, I mentioned ElliQ, great company, intuition Robotics, awesome company to work with. Super supportive and they have, they have a good partnership model already established. But out of the four solutions, um, all. For companies, uh, were very, very open to, um, you know, going on this journey with us and, and, and still are.
I mean, they’re, they’re all committed to see how this lab experience, um, you know, continues. And, um, if, if I’d like to mention, so Discover Live, um, we did an outreach last fall and, and the CEO of Discover Live, a virtual travel service was the first. Person to call us back and say, Hey, I think this is a great, could be a great partnership. Um, and, and that CEO, he actually came and, and helped lead that session at our lab experience. And people loved having a CEO in the room. Unaliwear, uh, they make the Kanega fall detection watch, uh, which ranks better than Apple in terms of fall detection quality. Um, that was another. Um, product that we demonstrated.
It was a lot of fun to, uh, to demonstrate that. And then a brand new company, a really cool company called Memory Board, they make a very simple, uh, communication device for people that are starting to have memory issues. And their care circle can communicate very, very easily to that board. the person with the memory issues can, can see it.
So, um. You know, they, they have a good idea of how they want to go to market and they’re at the beginning of that journey. But, um, they’re totally taking our feedback and, um, you know, we’re having a very good discussion, uh, on how to adjust, uh, you know, how to adjust the messaging for that as well. So we’re seeing sort of. In this ecosystem, established companies like the Kanega watch all the way to, uh, brand new startups that have just started going to market. And the the constant factor, I’d say, is the willingness to try different things by, by the leaders of those companies. Um, and they’re just great people to work with. So, uh, I think we’re lucky that we, we started off with these four.
Keren Etkin: Absolutely. And I, I think one of the great things about this ecosystem and the reason why I enjoy doing what I do so much is that everyone is very purpose driven and also very. Like open to collaborations. So it feels like a very supportive ecosystem to build in, which is great
And I mean, I I
Matt Cooley: built that in the age tech academy. I
mean, kudos to you.
Keren Etkin: thank you.
Matt Cooley: that.
Um,
you
know, where I, I know I’m reaching out a lot more to members of the
academy for advice and we comment on each other’s posts, et cetera. Um, you know,
but that’s the challenge, right? I think there is so much interest because how do you market age
tech, right? This is the age old question in our industry, um, given that end, end user needs are so disparate, right?
Keren Etkin: Exactly, and there’s no, there’s no, right or wrong answer. There’s no like one size fits all. I mean, even if, if you see a company who’s doing really well in terms of direct to consumer marketing, you can’t necessarily copy that. And I think obviously it makes a lot of sense to me that that founders or CEOs would reach out to you to partner because what have they got to lose? I mean, it sounds like you’re taking on all the risk.
Matt Cooley: Y
yeah, we’re taking on the risk, but
again, because it’s hyper-local, um, and even with
the platforming business, um, you know, we’ll see where that goes. Um, I, it’s relatively easy to mitigate that risk. Now, if I was a supplier and I, I just ordered a million widgets, you know, from China, and I suddenly have to deal with tariffs and I’ve gotta sell those widgets so that I. Don’t lose my home or something like that, that’s different, right? That that’s not what we’re doing. The fact that this is hyper-local, there’s a lot of sweat equity going into this. If we get to the point as you, you raised earlier that we need to, uh, you know, expand across the country, great. Your lips to God’s ears, my friend. Um, you know, we’ll need some funding to do that, but, um, it’s a lot of sweat equity with our business model and I think that. It nicely with these suppliers that have taken bigger risks and they see us as, uh, you know, an extension of, of their marketing team. anyway, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll see where it goes.
Um, but that’s, that’s what we’ve been up to. And, uh, you know, so far it’s been a lot of fun.
Keren Etkin: Of course. I mean,
why wouldn’t it? be?
Matt Cooley: it? Right? Why
Keren Etkin: Of course.
Matt Cooley: this?
Keren Etkin: Uh, so I think that was actually my last question. Uh, is there anything else that we didn’t talk about that you would like to add? Any call to action to, uh, either older adults or family caregivers or startups watching us?
Matt Cooley: Well,
definitely for startups, you know, ha have an open
mind and see if, uh, a hyperlocal model, like our lab experience makes sense. We’d love to speak
with you. Um, would say for
caregivers and older adults, it’s. And maybe this is more to our ecosystem. You know, folks in the academy and the age tech collaborative, et cetera, hard for end customers to find a lot of these very compelling solutions. can Google stuff and, and waste two weeks trying to find, um, some of these very, very strong solutions. So. have an open mind, reach out to age tech, uh, luminaries like you and, um, you know. Plugging into all of the things that can help you live in, live at home longer, which 80% of older adults want to do at least 80%. Um, and, and, and live your best life possible. We’re all gonna age, we’re all gonna have, you know, problems pop up, um, the older we get. But, um. Age tech really can enhance our lives and, uh, you know, help us live at home longer. And so be open-minded to finding those things, um, beyond just a Google search.
’cause right now that’s pretty tough to do. a lot of good stuff happening and, uh, I, I’m excited, uh, that my age tech lab can help, know, build some of those channels directly to the end users that need what we’re producing.
Keren Etkin: Absolutely. Matt, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. It was as always a pleasure to chat and I wish you lots of success with my AgeTech lab. I wish I could, I could, come to Jerseys, uh, to experience it in first.
Matt Cooley: Next time you’re in town, my friend, we’ll, we’ll set you up at one of the tables. Uh, you can, you can run one
of our solutions, but I appreciate it very much in the collaboration with the Aged Tech Academy and you has
been outstanding. So thank you so much.
Keren Etkin: Thank you. Thank you so much