The Hidden Goldmine for AgeTech Founders with Richard Caro | The AgeTech Podcast S4E20
What do older people want? That’s the trillion dollar question that’s been boggling AgeTech startups for years.
Customer discovery and user research might seem like a hard thing to do if you’re a small startup strapped for resources, but my personal belief is that you shouldn’t build anything until you talk to potential users (not just your grandmother). But before diving into user interviews, I always like to start with some desk research, and one fantastic resource for that is Tech Enhanced Life.
In this episode of The AgeTech Podcast, I sat down with Richard Caro – founder of Tech Enhanced Life and the Longevity Explorers, to try and answer this question. We dive into why most products miss the mark, what older adults actually want, and how you can get early-stage insights (even on a budget). Enjoy the episode – and don’t forget to subscribe if you want more of these honest, nerdy conversations about the future of aging.
Catch the full conversation on Youtube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or scroll down for the transcript.
Keren Etkin: Richard, welcome to the
Richard Caro: Thanks, Karen. Good to be here.
Keren Etkin: So tell us a little bit about Tech Enhanced Life and the Longevity Explorers, and maybe why you started both of
Richard Caro: So, I and some colleagues in Silicon Valley got interested in the whole intersection of aging and technology, maybe a decade ago, and we started going to conferences and things and. What we noticed was there was never anyone with gray hair at any of the conferences. And they were always exciting and fun. And people would get up there and talk about how they were developing this product. And there was just no older adults involved. And so we thought to ourselves, Hmm, that’s a bit odd. And also we decided that we were interested in trying to get to the bottom of what some of the big problems were. And that the way to do that was to go out and talk to the people who had the problems.
So we Put together a few little groups of older adults in various places around the San Francisco Bay area and started having these discussions about, you know, problems that people had and things they’d like to have solved and stuff like that. And we realized that there was really this untapped wisdom among older adult community that no one seemed very interested in. In tapping. So we thought it would be a fun experiment to create the Longevity Explorer community. weren’t sure if it would work. And so we created a little groups in five different places of different types around California. And we started having monthly conversations about the sort of topics I’ve just discussed. And it, you know, people liked it. People kept coming back. We felt like what we would. Uncovering was useful. So we kept doing it and that’s how the longevity explorer community started
So you’ve been working with, over the past few years, you’ve been working with startups and tech companies to help them get Insights from, like you said, gray haired people and build better products for Can you maybe provide some examples of products that you were involved in that you are incredibly proud of your insights and how they impacted the final You know, I wish I could tell you that there’s a long laundry list of fantastic products that have come out When we started we didn’t really think we were going to do it working with companies much we we were picturing the people we wanted to help with the older adults. But after we spent a couple of years having these group discussions and trying out various products, the explorers started saying things like. know, Richard, we’ve tried all these products and they’re all really bad. wouldn’t it be good if we could somehow help the people developing these products to create something useful that we’d actually want. And so then we did, after a while, start getting involved with companies. And we’ve worked with quite a few now ranging from very very small startups to huge companies that everyone’s heard of. The results have always been very promising in well, we can talk more about the sort of things we’ve done in a minute, but when I look back on having done this for 10 years, it’s very hard to point to really good products that have come out. And that’s not our process so much as when I look at the AgeTech landscape, I have trouble identifying very many really exciting products at all. so I think there’s some fundamental underlying problem that perhaps we can chat a bit about. Maybe you’ve got some interesting ideas about it. somehow good aren’t emerging from the ecosystem. And I think that’s a shame. I’d love to figure out how to fix that.
Keren Etkin: I Think that is definitely a topic worth discussing further. what is your take on
Richard Caro: I think it’s more of an ecosystem problem than anything else. And I often ask myself why. This problem exists and don’t have really good answers, but I’ve got a few thoughts. They’re different categories of problem, I think. So there’ve been some products that we’ve used and actually rather liked and we thought worked quite well, but then they somehow never got widely adopted and the companies failed and went out of business. So that’s one category. And that’s more somehow about. Adoption channels, those sorts of issues. So that’s topic one, but those are the minority though. Those, those products are few and far between. Then there’s quite a lot of other products which, haven’t really done a very good job of identifying the real problem that needs fixing or have come up with a solution that sort of touches some of the issues, but not all of them. And so for the end user, you know, they’re a bit unsatisfying. So that’s the second type of issue where the problem solution match isn’t very good. there’s a third group of companies which, you know, it looks sort of promising, but run out of steam and can’t raise money. So that’s problem number three. And they’re all kind of different, right? We can dig into any one of those if you like.
Keren Etkin:
Okay. So that, you know, that happens in many other markets. And I wonder since, you know, over the past few years, I feel like startups have been getting better at really including older adults in the design process.
Richard Caro: Do you? That’s interesting, I don’t know that I agree with that
Keren Etkin: I feel like they’ve gotten better. I’m not saying that everyone’s perfect. I’m not saying that all startups include hundreds of older adults in the process.
But at least most startups are trying to, other, most startups are aware that they need to do that rather sit sit in their basement and guess what needs to be built.
Richard Caro: I would probably push back a bit on that, but
Keren Etkin: go ahead.
Richard Caro: that’s okay. We have a slightly different perspective. I think that’s still a big problem.
Keren Etkin: I’m not not, it’s not a big problem. I’m saying that the awareness today is better than it was a decade ago.
Richard Caro: Maybe.
Keren Etkin: but it’s still, I it’s still like a, a resource problem. So it’s not a motivation problem, but rather a resource problem. Cause not every startup has the resources to have someone full time doing research. I would argue that that’s the founder’s
Richard Caro: Me
Keren Etkin: do that.
Richard Caro: Me too, I don’t think it’s a resource problem at all I mean,
you know, the way startups work in all fields is you’re supposed to figure out what the customer wants. And that involves talking to the customer and in startups, that’s the job of the founders to go out and discover that. so, you know, I think calling it a resource problem might not be quite right.
Keren Etkin: so how would you describe the
Richard Caro: Well, I think it’s a combination of two things. I think it’s a lack of understanding that they need to go figure out what the customers want, and perhaps some missing skill sets. I don’t know. That could be also an issue.
Keren Etkin: That is a valid hypothesis which I, I tend to agree. And I, I feel like user research or customer discovery is a skill. That one has to develop. And if you’re not, if you don’t have the product or research background, if you’re, let’s say, an engineer, or someone who comes from the, from the business side of things, and you want start building a product, maybe that doesn’t come as naturally
Richard Caro: That’s
Keren Etkin: as it might to some people with other skills.
Richard Caro: And the other thing that I think is, makes it a bit tricky is you know, if you’re developing a new app for like you, whoever you is, you know, if you’re the engineer or the designer or the CEO or whatever, and you’re developing an app for people just like you, you sort of probably have some other people like you, you can go talk to and anyway, you’ve got a bit of a gut feeling of what people like you want. if you’re develop, you know, if you’re 30 and you’re developing a product for someone who’s 80 and has various physical or cognitive issues that you might not quite appreciate. It’s just a bit harder to put yourself in their shoes. I think that’s why we keep hearing this, at the beginning of everyone’s. up pitch that I’m a bit sick of hearing about how their grandmother had a problem and therefore they decided what they needed is solution X. And so they’re commercializing it. And, you know, then you say, well, who else have you talked to? And they say, well, my grandmother. And that’s really. So, you know, I, I feel like maybe there’s a bit of a, two issues there.
There’s a challenge with identifying with completely different people than yourself. And there’s maybe just a lack of understanding that you have to go talk to a lot of people.
Keren Etkin: I agree. Uh, I would, I would say that you can’t, you can’t build a product for someone who isn’t yourself unless you’ve spoken to many, many people who fit your target audience or years user persona. And your grandmother is a, is a great motivation to start with, but she’s, she could never represent everyone’s grandma.
Uh, Everyone in your target audience. What would you say are like the most pressing challenges startups should go uh, in this day and
Richard Caro: In the field of age tech or whatever you want to call it. You mean
Keren Etkin: It, you know in in any like what products would the longevity explorers want to use and can’t seem to find the right solutions for
Richard Caro: there’s a long list and where to start, you know, I think the areas I’m particularly excited about usually involve AI or robots or something at the moment. And that’s because it’s not just because they’re trendy, but it’s because they seem to open up new possibilities. So some of the problems that have been around for the last 10 years, they’re still there. No one seems to really want to address them. When people try, the solutions fall a bit short. And it’s just a bit, monotonous to keep talking about them. But, but we can, if you want. Whereas with AI and robots, I feel like we’re on the cusp of there being some new things that could be tackled. so I feel like that’s kind of exciting actually.
Keren Etkin: I agree. These are definitely the technologies that I’m super excited about. And I wonder, I read some research lately uh, for some people the, if product descriptions use it actually deters them. It makes them distrust the product, makes them not want to use it.
Richard Caro: Right. and I, and I wonder if like, Since you’re Bay Area, or most some some have some sort of tech affiliation or they are more tech savvy than the average person. I wonder if that’s still a deterrent or if in in the Explorers would just happily hop into a Waymo car to get a ride.
You know, that’s an interesting question. I think that I think Waymo and, you know, then Tesla self driving that’s coming along, not that far behind maybe those are examples to talk about that. That in fact, I have a blog post thing coming out in a few weeks on this topic, but that any new thing does have adoption challenges and there’s early adopters and late adopters and all that stuff, and I’m sure that that’ll be the case here. It has a lot to do with the magnitude of the problem, actually. I think with something like the Waymo self driving car what we’re seeing in San Francisco is that people of every age might have some reservations about it. You know, it’s a bit scary and all that. and at least among the people I know, after they’ve tried it, they’re like astonished it seems so much better than they expected. And so There’s several people I know who’ve, you know, started to use them quite regularly. And that’s people of all sorts of ages ranging from, you know, 20 to 90. so I think, so first of all, I agree with you. There’s, there’s the idea of AI and robots scares lots of people. Definitely. Second of all, I think it’s going to be like lots of other stuff.
There’ll be an adoption curve and some people will start using it before others. But the final point, the one that I want to just kind of reiterate and leave you with there. Is think that If the problem is big enough, then people are motivated to adopt stuff. not really a big problem, then they’ll put it off. So if they’re stuck in their house and they can’t go anywhere because they can’t drive anymore you know, and the public transport doesn’t work very well, then I think they’re going to be much more motivated to hop in the Waymo self driving car than if they’ve got their own car and they’re happily driving around, or they can walk to somewhere or whatever.
Keren Etkin: I
Agree. And I also feel that getting into um, an autonomous car. Uh, And having the robot do the driving, it’s really like in your face, whereas products that use AI can do it under the hood. You don’t even have to know about it as the end consumer.
Richard Caro: That’s right. Actually, that was the other point I was wanting to make. I mean, lot of these things, what they care about, what people care about is solutions to their problem. And so, the product that solves their problem that might happen to have AI built, you know, buried inside it. It’s not necessarily, you want to lead with the idea that it’s solving their problem, not with the idea that it’s an AI product, right?
Keren Etkin: Absolutely. So what problems would you like to see AI or robots solve in the next five or 10 years?
Richard Caro: know what’s interesting is back a few years ago before COVID, we had a whole series of brainstorming sessions with the longevity explorers in multiple different locations over a few months about there were robots and AI, what would you like it to do for you? And at the time, it seemed very futuristic, you know, people were thinking, well, there’s no such thing as robots and AI, but let’s imagine what we’d like it to do. And. have a bunch of discussions which we kind of summarized on the Tech Enhanced Life website. About what people cared about most and there was kind of a long list. There was some Some everyday type jobs like unloading the dishwasher and folding the laundry Maybe doing the laundry bringing the groceries in from your car stuff like that and then there were a different category of Problems that they thought might be useful to do with the social aspects of life maybe loneliness, maybe meeting new friends, things like that. Probably not just having a chatbot as your friend, which is the thing people think of first, but you know, other, other ideas around social life. And then I think there were some other ideas too, but that I’m not recalling right now, but there’s basically a long list. And I just realized the other day that suddenly, you know, this might all be about to be real, which is kind of exciting.
Keren Etkin: I’m super excited about that. I can’t wait to have the laundry be folded by a robot. We’ve seen, I mean, we’ve seen that presented at CES before, but somehow those robots never commercialized.
Richard Caro: No Did they?
Keren Etkin: uh, But they, but they will. I mean, it’s, it’s only a matter of time. Um, And what, you know, what’s interesting in the past it was sort of The assumption was that we would uh, robots specialize in specific chores. But now what we see is that we have multiple companies developing humanoid robots in theory, do all sorts of things around the house. So what’s your take on
Latest Articles
Richard Caro: I think it’s fascinating. I mean, it’s really hard to predict the future, right? So the timeline is, hard to predict. But I think is exciting about the humanoid robots is, I mean, back in the day, there was people developing a laundry robot and people developing a robot that would go to the fridge and bring you something on a tray and various other efforts. none of them quite got across the finish line really, but also they suffered from this problem. You know, do you really want 25 specialized robots that each can only do one little thing and then you discover, you know, maybe they can fold your shirt, but they can’t fold your pants or something like that.
So. But I think there was a problem there, whereas the attractive idea of the humanoid robot is perhaps it can do quite a lot of things. I’m sure it can’t do everything, but you know, maybe it can do a suite of things and that seems a more useful and maybe more cost effective too, because these things are all going to be expensive to start with, it seems to me. And so buying one that can do multiple things, maybe that’s a bit more appealing than buying 15 different robots, all very specialized.
Keren Etkin: Absolutely. I mean, you have to have, you would have to have like an entire storage room in your house to store all these robots
with, and with their charging stations.
Richard Caro: That’s right. Yes.
Keren Etkin: So what else, what else are you excited about? We’ve, we’ve, there’s a lot of buzz around AI and robotics. Uh, What else are the longevity Explorer is particularly looking forward to see? Okay.
Richard Caro: I think one of the things that’s really tantalizing is the potential for kind of smart homes to help with things. that’s been tantalizing for 10 years. And, you know, I’m almost reluctant to bring it up, but I still think it’s tantalizing. And, you know, one of the longevity explorers, I’ll just give a plug for his name is Frank Engelman. And he started writing on the Tech Enhanced Life website. And now he’s got his own sub stack. And he writes about do it yourself solutions of smart home things that can help older adults. He’s an older adult himself. a lot of the ideas are really. I think they, you know, they’re simple.
They’re things like when you got to get out of bed, have all the lights magically turn on on the way to the bathroom, you know, strip lights in various places, things like that. Not just the main lights. And lots of other clever ideas. The one issue is that all of these ideas that he’s done require some level of do it yourself capability.
You know, he’s an engineer and so he, he has the Alexa talk to the light and talk to something else and programs a few routines and things. So they’re really good and they’re really promising and they sort of show you a direction, but they require some do it yourself skill that lots of people don’t have. see any good reason why that couldn’t all be made much more consumer friendly and mainstream. And I think that would be great. It’s just reason it hasn’t happened yet, but I, I continue to think that’s a really promising area.
Keren Etkin: I agree. And I feel that right now we’re at a point in time where we are on the verge of really letting end consumers do a lot of the stuff that was only stuff that engineers could do. Uh, Like the stuff that Frank, your friend is doing, and it sounds like he’s having a lot of fun with Uh, But most people couldn’t be bothered
Richard Caro: Right.
Keren Etkin: to, set everything up, but we’re on the verge Saying, Hey Google, I just got this lamp or this bulb or whatever. I’m gonna plug it on to, I want the light to be turned on when I go to the bathroom at night.
I just had my phone start talking to me because I, because I said the wake Uh, But I feel like we’re on the Hey, I got this, I got that, I’m going to plug them both do your thing, I want this to happen. And like, there’s really no reason why that wouldn’t be possible for end consumers in the near future, just by using their voice.
I mean, I feel like the technology is ready to do that.
Richard Caro: It is well close anyway. I don’t know whether that is going to happen in the near term though. I hope it does. That would be good. I think you’re a techno optimist.
Keren Etkin: I
Richard Caro: Yeah, well, let’s cross our fingers
Keren Etkin: let’s cross our fingers. Um, So I, I feel like, and I’ve, I’ve said this to you in the past that even, that was actually really helpful when I was doing the research for my book, The AgeTech Revolution. Uh, The tech enhanced life (website) is like this goldmine of insight uh, that I, I really wish more people would know and Like, dedicate time to, to read through because I feel um, the preliminary phase.
When you do go and decide you want build a product and launch a company, I feel like the first thing you need to do is desk research. And the Longevity Explorers and Tech Enhanced Life is one of a few places online where you can get a lot of distilled insights in one place. like, What is your advice for people just starting out?
How do you, how to go about using Tech Enhanced Life as a, as a resource for starting out with their desk research before they go out into the field to talk to real
Richard Caro: when you say for people, you mean for entrepreneurs, right? Who want
Keren Etkin: Mm hmm.
Richard Caro: something?
Um,
Think probably the most useful way to use Tech Enhanced Life’s website is that there are lots and lots of things on there about problems that real older adults really care about. And usually if it’s featured, you know, prominently, then it means not just one older adult cares about it, but quite a lot.
So we’ve tried to make it so that things that bubble to the top are things where they’re common themes among people. You know, significant numbers of people. So there’s a lot like that. People sometimes say it’s hard to find, which is probably true, but it, you know, it’s sort of organized in various different ways. So I think looking for problems is a good use. a good way to use it there’s a little bit about solutions, but it’s more about the problems. and I think what’s good about that is it suggests it, it, it helps you I mean, there’s lots of other problems probably that aren’t there, but, but it’s a place to start and get a bit of an idea of how people think that might be, Even more important than discovering the problems is getting a bit more of an idea how older adults think about these problems. Because one thing I have noticed is many of the entrepreneurs that reach out to us for, you know, just to chat or for help or whatever They often have a somewhat simplistic view of what an older adult cares about. And it’s very hard to talk about this topic because you can’t make sweeping generalizations about, you know, millions and millions of people.
Right? But there’s, there are some common themes I see that Mistakes about which possibly immersing yourself in, you know, here’s what the older adults really talk about sort of thing might help a bit with that. And just to flag one of them, I think there’s this misconception that this category of customer we’re talking about a sort of patients and that mostly what they need is being cared for. And. I think that’s that’s maybe that, that sends people down in an incorrect track sometimes, because I think that there are certainly some people who see themselves as patients and needing to be cared for, but also in these millions and millions of people we’re talking about, there’s quite a lot of them who just see themselves as people like you or me. And You know, they’ve got lots of things they care about in life and being cared for might not be their biggest one. And so if I was an entrepreneur, I think I’d be looking for problems that weren’t about being cared for, but were about one of the many other things that people would like to have.
Keren Etkin: That is an astute observation and I couldn’t agree more. Uh, We definitely, I think whatever it is you’re building, you definitely need to look at your users as holistically as possible, and never just as patients. Even if you are building a product in the healthcare space rarely will you only need use that user persona as like a person with diabetes, a person with cancer, a person with whatever.
Uh, So that uh, great advice. Thank you so much for that, Richard.
Richard Caro: Sure.
Keren Etkin: now that’s actually my last question. And before we wrap up, is there anything else that we didn’t talk about that you would like to add?
Richard Caro: Actually, you just made me think of one more thing. Can we, do we have time to talk about one more thing? So,
Keren Etkin: We have,
Richard Caro: you know, since we seem to be talking about entrepreneurs and, you know, what they should be thinking about I’ve noticed there’s this common theme, people come and say, say, we’ve got this great idea.
And the first question I often ask is, well, who’s the customer? There’s often a lot of confusion about that in their mind, whether the customer is the older adult or perhaps it’s the adult child, or perhaps it’s the professional. know, aging services industry. Those are three groups. Usually the customer is in their mind going to be one of those, but often they say, well, it’s the older adult, but really what we’re going to do is we’re going to talk to the adult child. And so there’s this fuzziness and boils down to a discussion that, well, we know how to reach the adult children using Facebook or whatever because we’re expert at that and we don’t know how to reach older adults. So we’re going to reach the adult children, but really what we want to do is help the older adult. and so there’s this kind of confusion at many levels about who the customer is. And that, that makes it hard to succeed, but also where that often ends up with people, thought process is that they sort of don’t really end up talking to the older adults at all. So. make this product that’s somehow going to be useful for the older adults, but all they talk to is the adult children. And then when it gets to the older adults, they say, wait, I don’t want this really. So that fuzziness of who the customer is, I think is a very common theme that I see. And so maybe fixing, you know, trying to be clear in one’s mind about who the customer is, is a good place to start.
Keren Etkin: Absolutely. And I think, I mean, that’s one of uh, tricky things about building a product in this ecosystem is that sometimes your user isn’t the person buying the product. So it’s possible that the older adult will buy the product for themselves. And it’s also possible that they will get it as a gift or be advised by a trusted child, grandchild, Friend, colleague, whatever, on what to buy um, because not everyone feels confident about making their own buying decisions uh, when it comes to technology, across all age groups, I would And that yeah, it, it makes things more challenging for the entrepreneurs and the people building their products, but it also means that if you manage to, to get it, if you crack this, then. That’s uh, possibly a way to set you up from your competition, possibly a way get your startup not just off the ground, but actually build a sustainable business around your product.
Richard Caro: I think you’re right about that. Yeah. Yeah. And if it’s a case like that, where there’s multiple involved in question of who the customer is I think then it’s important to have a separate reason why each of them should care, you know, maybe a whole different value proposition for the different people which is complicated, but doable, I think.
Keren Etkin: Absolutely. You definitely need to have a very unique value proposition for each persona, whether it is the user, whether it is the customer cause you do want to make sure that there is a little, an alignment of interests and not, not just getting lots and lots of people to buy your product for their older parents and then have the parents put it in a drawer and never want to use it because Whatever it is it’s on the box is offensive or just
Richard Caro: So Karen, you and I have similar opinions about a lot of this, I think. Why do you think we’re not seeing millions of fantastic products? Cause
they’re
all
Keren Etkin: I, I,
Richard Caro: courses and things, right. And, and you’re telling them all this stuff. And so what’s going wrong?
Keren Etkin: well, I think you, you found the problem. Not everyone is coming to my courses. That’s probably the problem.
Richard Caro: got
Keren Etkin: Uh, but but it’s also, it’s, it Honestly, it is incredibly, incredibly challenging to figure out who your ideal user persona is, who is the customer who is buying the product, making sure the value proposition is right for both, making sure you sometimes find yourself needing to build two dashboards for one for the user, one for the customer.
So like the level of complexity founders and product developers in this ecosystem have to deal Is unlike what you typically find in like B2B SaaS or, you know, any other consumer product where you only have to make one person or one user persona happy. Uh, So that’s what, one reason why I think we, we don’t see millions and millions of successful startups.
And also there is still a challenge with. Just getting startups off the ground, there is still a challenge funding. Not, not just seed funding, but sometimes growth funding. And it’s really, it’s really challenging uh, to get to that product market fit and to get to the stage you, you got um, as fast as you can make the product, people are, are, are buying it. It’s really, really challenging to get to that
Richard Caro: it is challenging. Hmm. Yeah.
Keren Etkin: but it’s doable. I mean, we’ve seen startups do it. Uh, One of the, one of the episodes that we’re, we are about to publish actually this week, I believe uh, is with a startup managed to. to crack this one and to really solve that
Richard Caro: good.
Keren Etkin: in a really big way.
Richard Caro: excellent.
Keren Etkin: it is, it is doable. We have, we have examples.
Richard Caro: be watching that with interest.
Keren Etkin: Richard, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. It is always a pleasure chatting with
Richard Caro: My pleasure My pleasure enjoyed it.
Any questions or comments? Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter and subscribe to my YouTube channel and Spotify!