Why AgeTech Startups Struggle: Industry Veteran Jon Warner on AI, Funding, and the Future of Aging Innovation | The AgeTech Podcast S4E17

Keren Etkin: Jon, welcome to the show.

Jon Warner: Thank you very much, Keren. It’s great to be here.

Keren Etkin: So first and foremost, I would like to take your perspective.

or take

On the past year or so, I feel like our ecosystem has changed so much and the technology landscape has changed so much that it’s very difficult to predict what the future holds. And I wonder what’s your take on this?

Jon Warner: Well, it’s a nice big question to start with. So let’s try and anchor a little bit. So, Keren, I think you know me well enough by now to, to, to know that I’d like to start with context. And I think the context in this case is, is innovation and technology in broad terms.

I, I think we’re seeing what we all experience these days that it’s increasing in pace almost at every aspect of our life. If I go back even five years, I’m doing things I wasn’t doing then. If I go back 10, there were even more life versus say, 20 years ago, it was almost completely different. So I can do things now on my phone.

That I was doing with various other devices or even manually in many cases. It’s incredible. It’s that famous statement that Andreessen Horowitz made. Software is eating the world. Indeed, it is, you know, microchips everywhere. I think when it comes to health and health care, we’ve been relatively behind many other sectors, perhaps not last, but, you know, in the last quartile, but I think we’ve realized we can’t stay there.

It’s just too important to ignore. So, and I think it’s why we’ve seen so much investment going into health tech generally and that’s enveloping everything we might talk about in this conversation. So digital health and virtual care and devices and so on. And I think we’ve, we’ve had a very good period and particularly I think about the last five years from the investment perspective, we’ve seen an explosion of startups everywhere.

You yourself produce a very good summer, summing up of that in the, in the space that’s about healthy aging. There are now hundreds of companies that are in existence. But you’re right. We’ve caught a cold in the last 12 months or so. And I think it’s because we’ve thrown so much investment into the pot and simplistically, we’re just not seeing.

Quite as much return on the investment as we might have hoped. And I think it’s made people nervous because that story hasn’t been strong enough. Now, there are other complicating factors. We’ve just come through COVID and in fact, it’s not gone away completely, of course. I think we’re worried about whether another epidemic or pandemic might be around the corner.

And that made a huge difference. And of course, we’ve got the big elephant in the room now, which is where is AI going next? Because it’s another turbocharger. We might argue AI is a little bit like the software revolution of 30 or 40 years ago. And it’s probably going to go and evolve much more quickly as things tend to do.

So I, I think we have to reframe, reimagine the future a little bit now, particularly from a return investment perspective, but also Can we really get tangible outcomes for the people we’re serving, whether that’s the end customer or whether it’s the intermediaries so in this case it’s often clinicians are they getting value out of this, because I think we’ve, we’ve relegated that to, to lower position, so that’s, that’s at least in general what I, I think has changed in the last year.

I think 24 was almost a holding pattern year for that reason.

Keren Etkin: There is so much to unpack, so I want to first maybe ask, since you hold various advisory roles in various organizations, what is the conversation like? Are people excited about what’s to come in, in healthy aging or in healthcare in general? Or are people just overwhelmed and confused and they want to sit it out and see what happens?

to answer your question contextually again, I’ve been in health and healthcare now for over 30 years, so a long time. So I go back to the days of pre internet, pre devices, pre EMRs, you know, etc.

Jon Warner: So, what was innovation and technology like back then? So, you know, in some ways we’ve, we’ve come a long way. I think the, the The aging population was always known to us even back then that this was coming like a train people living longer, much larger numbers on the planet. I think we’re up over eight billion now on the planet.

This is just a, you know, a crazy number of people. And I think we’re going to hit over 10 before it starts declining. So I think in general, people know we’ve got to do things differently. I mean, just think about that in terms of Access issues and rendering care with current systems. When you have any growing market at the speed and size, this one is growing.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t been backed by enough innovation, and that’s got two sources that you need. You need people who are willing to ideate and innovate, and you need capital to help them get from A to B. And it’s been underserved for the whole time I’ve been, and I’ve been, I’ve been focused on the aging space now for the best part of 20 of those 30 years.

And nothing’s changed. I think in some respects, we’ve always been chasing the goal. We need more startups. We need more investment in this space. And I think that’s what we have to debate much more. Why are we missing the mark compared to other marketplaces that have attracted huge investment? And when I think about consumer goods, when I think about automotive, when I think about airlines or anything else like it we lag behind.

And there’s lots of reasons for that, but I think it’s got to change fundamentally. And I think that’s where the conversation’s going now. Why have we got this disconnect between knowing that we have a lot more people to serve, which in theory is a good thing, right? It’s a bigger market, that should attract investment and startups to the space.

But why can’t they make money in the space? You know, there are no unicorns in H tech at this point. And if one’s come even slightly close, they’re not really an age tech, you know, when we think about companies that have exited that have got aging, at least in the mix, it’s usually because they, you know, there’s some consumer element to it.

That’s that’s made them, you know, money more than it is because it’s really in the aging space.

Keren Etkin: It’s an, it’s an interesting point. Because, I mean, if you look at the amount of funding that specific startups have raised

in terms of the valuations they were given, at least during 2021 or 2022, you could say that they were already unicorns. But it’s a different market. we’re in early 2025. that is a valid question because we know that we have a good total addressable market and we have trillions of dollars in opportunity. What’s your take on this? Why don’t we see even more investments and even more startups?

Jon Warner: I think there’s a few reasons.

I mean, I think one of them just to go and slightly push back on the view about, you know, what is a sustainable unicorn versus what isn’t. I think too many startups think that raising capital is part of their success. You know, so you might raise 50 million, 100 million, and you might get valued at 500 or more.

You might even get up to, you know, sort of the billion dollars but it’s not real, is it? Until revenue follows that, you know, real success, real traction. And I think that means understanding and I, I bang on about this a lot in in my, my written work. I blog a lot, as you know, and I write a lot.

I think it’s because we don’t understand the end customer very well in the aging space. And Keren, you and I have talked about this, so this is not new, but you know, we throw a plus sign on the end of 65 at best and then we treat everyone the same. So apparently men and women are the same and all those age groups are the same, let alone getting into psychographics in other ways, they’re different.

If you and I were serving a children’s market, we wouldn’t begin to do this. If we were selling shoes and socks, we’d be having one year increments, for example, between individuals because they wouldn’t sell our shoes or socks. And I think we miss that all the time. And then add to that, we need to get deep on this.

So if there is nuance in the market, are we really building for the end customer? You know, in ways that are truly valuable to them and truly valuable to the people who are serving them, and that’s a big population of a lot of complexity in and of itself. People who live in institutional environments are very different to people who are living at home, for example.

So I think this kind of one size fits all, you know, it’s almost like the sort of the one shoe, the one sock, right? It’s just never going to work in this space. So I think we need that nuance. So, so this is more complicated perhaps than other markets because of the nuance within it. But I think some companies have made a better fist of understanding that and being successful in the space.

And I think that we need more of those. So I think that comes down to passing what we see. So that others could emulate that success rather than just keep trying and failing. I think we see too much failing in the space.

Keren Etkin: I think you hit the nail on the head. It is an incredibly complex ecosystem to build in. Because not only do you have to be very good at segmenting the population

And then figuring out who your ideal user is,

Jon Warner: Yep.

Keren Etkin: you also have to make multiple stakeholders happy. So, potentially,

Startups that do manage to raise funding

Jon Warner: need

Keren Etkin: to raise more capital because they need to have a longer runway to figure things out.

Jon Warner: That’s right. Yep.

That’s particularly true in health care. And you know, I like it. I mean, I I think it’s really interesting watching overseas countries get success in their own operation, their own geography, for example, and Israel’s a very good example of that for, you know, just as a for example.

And I think it’s because you can test things in microcosm and you can get things up and running. But then if you’ll come into the United States, as so many do, because it’s the great prize, I think you’re right. You have to have a lot more patient capital. You have to treat it as a, as a multifaceted market.

I mean, not only is it, you know, a gigantic country, but 50 states, a federal system sitting on top of that. So it’s, it’s like launching an all of, all of Europe at the same time. And, and, you know, I don’t think anyone would sensibly do that. Even gigantic countries think about the big companies like.

I don’t know, Microsoft and so on. They went to one country when they got outside the U. S. They went to Japan, in this case, and they got strong there. Or take Ikea in Sweden who said, Well, wait a minute, we’re gonna go next door and be really big in Poland. That’s, that’s a much more sensible strategy.

We seem to forget those lessons in the ֿAgeTec world and just suddenly think everyone’s gonna love us and we can scale like crazy. Well, I haven’t seen that too often.

Keren Etkin: Well, I think it really depends on how regulated is the market that you end up addressing. If you sell to a highly regulated industry,

Jon Warner: Yeah, that’s true. Well, then that has two implications for me. One of them is do your research, understand the regulation and what’s in place. We’ve seen a lot of good change in that space in recent times. Now, we’ve got a new administration in the U. S. as we’ve all been reading about, and it’s already making headlines in terms of changes.

We’ve got lots going on. But we’ve seen lots of new codes come to the market. Z codes for social determinants being a good example in recent times, but there’ve been lots of others. Some of them are very age friendly. We’re starting to envelope things that allow for care coordination caregiving chronic conditions to be managed in the older adult population in different ways.

But I think you’ve got to understand it, and again, I would go back to my point about complexity of the U. S. It’s understanding it federally, what’s going on at policy level, which is complex but nonetheless learnable. There are people that unpack that and do it well. So, you know, what is available through major programs like Medicaid or Medicare, but then what can you do in an ISNIP environment, for example, and if people on this podcast don’t know what an ISNIP is or a CSNIP.

Go find out, because they operate under different rules, AdWord and ACO, AdWord would a PACE organization. And then underneath all of the federal system, you’ve got the state system, where Medicaid, for example, is administrated, and there might be a whole bunch of sub rules. There might be very special pots of money, there are waiver money there’s I 15 money, there’s all sorts of things that’s out there.

But it has reimbursement rules associated with it. So I think the first lesson is, you know, do your research properly in terms of what’s available if you’re going to go out to the reimbursement market. Of course, we’ve got two other markets that we should not forget. One is consumer pay. 5 trillion market.

10 percent of it is private pay. That is one hell of a big marketplace. That’s a, that’s a 500 billion marketplace, private pay. And you can sometimes get to reasonable scale, if I think about someone like Maven in the women’s health area, for example, did all of their early scaling on a B2C model in the private pay space early on.

And, and proved themselves until the payers finally came to them and said, wait a minute, we’ll reimburse this. You’re starting to go and provide value. So I think that’s a, that’s a huge difference you know, in terms of what you might do. And then although it’s had, you know, a very lumpy history, value based care is finally starting to get an uptick.

Now who knows what it will be called under this administration. I know they don’t like the whole Obamacare beginnings of this, but I think we’re seeing more people now taking both upside and downside risk. And if you can design your solution to take advantage of that provably. Through your customer discovery and doing this in microcosm in a in a tested environment.

I think you’ve got a real shot. So I’m an optimist when it comes to where the pots of money are, but only if you’ve done your research. And again, I see too many startups just thinking, Oh, we’ll figure that out. You know, this is like a new boat. Well, who cares what the rules are? We’ll figure it out. You know, move fast, break things that doesn’t work in health care for my money.

Keren Etkin: that is such an astute observation. And I was not familiar with Maven. And it’s interesting that they’ve managed to do that, to make the transition, to prove their value. In direct to consumer and then have healthcare providers chasing after them to get this as a benefit.

Jon Warner: Yeah. And in fact, they brag about it now.

You know, I think their VCs, early VCs said, don’t go after B2C. It’s a heavy lift. I mean, most VCs would say, and it is a heavy lift. It’s more capital needed to stay alive. But I think they proved them wrong. And then they proved them wrong that they could then pivot to B2B. And they used everything they were doing, I mean, particularly around, you know, just managing things like pregnancy, for example and then early, early child life, and it’s where they’re moving now.

They’ve become one of those unicorn companies, and in fact, now they’re serving women across the whole spectrum. So, not just younger women who are having babies, but all the way up into the older adult sphere. So, I just watch this space. I think you’ll see Maven get Deeply into the menopause space and then deeply beyond it into all things women’s health, which is another very underserved area in our space.

Keren is we both well, no,

Keren Etkin: It is and we see HTX startups going the opposite way. So trying out direct to consumer understanding that it’s too expensive and then chasing after the B2B business model.

Jon Warner: Yes, that’s right.

Keren Etkin: So I want to talk a little bit about the AI revolution that’s just, Accelerated over the past year, year and a half, I wonder what’s your take on this?

Because I read a lot about consumers

Having trust issues with products that mention AI in the product description.

Wonder what’s the take of businesses or healthcare businesses on this? Are they looking for artificial intelligence in products, or, or does that something that deter them?

Jon Warner: Yeah, of course, we’re generalizing, but let’s stay with generalizing for a second, and I’ll get more specific. I mean, I think it goes in both directions. Are they looking for it? Absolutely. I think they don’t want to miss out. There’s lots of FOMO around that if I miss this, someone will gain some advantage over me, and they’ll be crunching data in such ways as we can get some real advantage.

But I think they’re also nervous. And I think it’s because health care deals with human life. And I think for that reason they they want to be cautious. So it’s almost a strange push pull scenario. That’s going on. I think, though, the situation going forward is promising. As long as we Think about how it’s going to apply in our business, whatever that business is in health care.

And again, I think we then got to individualize. We can’t generalize. If it’s in a, you know, applying an independent living or assisted living or memory care, for example, vs. Applying at home. It’s a very different story. So I think we need to think that through. I read a very good book, which I think is still only about four months old called A.

I. Snake oil, which wasn’t suggesting that I was snake oil, but it was suggesting that some of it is And I’ll, I’ll just give you two things that I thought were really interesting from the book. One of the way, the book opens by actually saying that if you, if you, if we only had one word for every vehicle on the planet and that word was vehicle.

In other words, we don’t have a word for car or train or boat or plane. And we, I would just say Keren, you know, I think your vehicle’s going too slow. It needs to go faster. It would be, you know, really a very different conversation if you rode a bicycle and I drove a very fast car and in the other direction.

So we’re using AI in this generalized way unhelpfully because what do we mean by it? What role is it playing? What kind of AI are we deploying here? There are at least half a dozen versions of it at the broad category level and lots of subsets in that. And I think that’s right. I think we’ve got to start.

being not so general in terms of the way we talk about it. The other thing that the book says, and I think this is the problem in healthcare is, we healthcare lives on largely randomized control trials. I mean, it’s how drugs are developed. Just for example, we have almost none in the AI space at the moment.

I mean, even in the big ones, if you think about anthropic now with Claude, or you think about chat GPT with open AI solution. You and I cannot see any of the randomized control files trials if they existed, and in fact it’s secretive. Which means we can’t see the LLM that is behind all of this tech.

We can only see the answers. We can’t see the workings if we were students in a class. And I think that’s problematic because then people realize there may well be mistakes and hallucinations and all the things that AI is capable of. I think we need a different approach. I think we need to develop AI in a much more open way, a much more collaborative way.

And then use RCTs as our methodology. So we can see efficacy, right? So if we’re trying to do something very practical, let’s say it’s patient admission or discharge, we would have a normal piece of software, not AI driven at all. Trying to improve a process alongside an A. I. Process that’s doing this without human hand touching it and we compare them.

It’s not hard to do a randomized control trial across those two groups, maybe 100 patients in each and see what results we get. I think we then have confidence and ally in the way we don’t have it today. So I think we need to move to that approach generally, and I think it then gets us into a much more ethical space.

And then I think health care will start to adopt this. Mhm. And of course, it will start in administrative areas and it’ll start in, you know, workflow areas which don’t have much risk on the patient side associated with it. But the more that confidence grows, I think the more it’ll, it’ll hasten. The book ends up, by the way, saying that AI is inevitable.

It’s coming like a train. But don’t expect it to go quite as fast as all of the hype suggest. This is not our life is going to be tipped upside down in months. This is going to be a much longer journey than that as we figure this out. So they’re thinking this is a decade or two.

Keren Etkin: Well, that’s encouraging because I feel that at least, At least for me professionally, things are advancing so fast in a good way, Thanks to the software that I’m using on a daily basis being way smarter than it was two years ago.

Jon Warner: Yeah,

that’s right. It is. There’s plenty of good things to see about what’s happening. And, of course, back to the same point of earlier we’re seeing AI using that as a general term in other sectors.

I mean, I think if I think about social media and how things are served up, most of that is done by chatbots and bots generally. It’s not done by human hand. So and it’s true in retail, it’s true in, in automotive and so on. So I, I think you’re right, where there’s, there’s lots of good things to think about in this space.

We’ve just got a different task in, in in healthcare, and particularly with the vulnerable populations of older adults I mean, there are issues there around understanding how it’s working, how it shows up. I mean, how would we do this in the dementia space, for example I think is not just, you know, do it do unto them without sort of input without customer discovery again.

I think we should do that much more cautiously.

Keren Etkin: Absolutely

So what are you excited about in this day and age, early 2025?

Jon Warner: I think a couple of things. I think we are going to see A lot of capital coming back to the market much more intelligently and cautiously. I actually I did a post on linked in the other day about this.

I think we had a flat year between 23 and 24. I think 25. We might see some some uptick on that. And that’s exciting, even if I think we’ve got to prove out the ROI arguments much more solidly than we did. And I think we’ve got to design into workflow much more solidly than we did. And we’ve got to go and prove real world outcomes more than we did.

But I think we’re now up for this. I think we’ve learned those lessons. And I think startups know that’s how they have to show up with their pitch decks. And then indeed in terms of the real implementation execution that goes on. I think we’re finally starting to appreciate also that, We should make sure we’ve enveloped preventive health And precision medicine much more closely into the solutions we’re designing.

And I think this is particularly true because of what we talked about earlier in the older adult community. I think we’re finally able, we’ve got the tools and largely it’s because AI is available to us now, to be much more nuanced about who we’re serving. So we can individualize down to group level for certain, in some cases individually quite a lot of rendered care that is just for individuals.

For example just for whoever it is that we’re aiming it at. And I think that’s exciting. I went to a conference in Calgary recently and saw some of the innovations going on. Around precision medicine in terms of things like diet, nutrition and sleep and stress management and exercise, for example, relatively simple things you would think.

But I think they will benefit hugely from being individualized because we can use tools that are AI driven to, for example customize what’s going on. So your microbiome and how we metabolize food can be taken into account. And that’s hugely exciting. Because it means we really are starting to do things on the wellness side of the fence that we weren’t able to do even five or 10 years ago.

Keren Etkin: I’m super excited about that on the personal level. I, I tried, telling ChatGPT about all of my meals in a specific week.

And then I asked it, did I get enough protein this week? And, and it was like, so, so, so helpful, like, I could never have done that myself.

Jon Warner: Absolutely. It’s super quick to do it. And the only caution I would have is I think how we upload files, for example, like our diet plan I think has some other contextual data.

So I, I mentioned your metabolism, for example. I mean, I think there are things, for example, genetically my wife and I are a good example of this. I know because we’ve we’ve both got apps that track this. I’m a big user of technology inevitably given what I do. And we metabolize potatoes completely differently.

If I eat potatoes, I spike my blood sugar at about the 20 percent level. She hardly spikes hers at all. And it’s because of genetic difference between our microbiome. So that’s a factor we’ve got to start to weave into the mix, right? Now, we can’t randomly do that for a start. We need to have a, a full sequencing available and not just a sort of a 10 percent sequencing.

This is not Ancestry or 23andMe alone. It’s a full sequencing and you’ve got to pay for that. But once you’ve got it, it’s once and done, right? And we can genuinely then start design diet plans. And then we can think about, you know, where you’re not sticking to a diet. How do we get you back on the right way?

How do we, you know, if I love potatoes, how do I get me to, you know, eat something as a substitute, which tastes as good and stops me eating things that spite my blood? Sugar at quite the level they do so I think you’re right. It’s helpful and it’s exciting and it helps us to go the right way. But on a sustained basis, we’ve got to make sure we’ve enveloped all of the data set that’s germane to the outcome we’re looking for.

And I think that’s the challenge for startups generally is to make sure they’ve thought that, that that bigger picture through.

Keren Etkin: Absolutely. So if we have any entrepreneurs in the audience who want to get into the aging space, but they’re not quite sure what to build,

What research would you recommend them to do to find out what is the most exciting direction for them right now?

Jon Warner: Yeah. So without being repetitive, I think you’ve got to hang out with older people. I don’t know, Keren, you’ve done that. And you know, I think it’s just eye opening just to go and hang around. And I don’t mean you go and do it on a designer basis for 10 minutes. You’ve actually got to hang around with And you’ve got to understand them at the individual level in terms of how they operate.

Now, that might be older adults in their homes, it might be older adults in other environments, it might be where they play. But either way, I think it’s about listening, doing your discovery work, looking at the things that are problematic for them to navigate. There are Thousands of issues that people struggle with just at the individual level.

And here I’m thinking B2C alone. And therefore solutions you can, you can render because you can see patterns if you hang about long enough. And, and I think even in the B2B world, you can go into environments that serve older adults. So let’s just use, say a skilled nursing environment. You can, you can actually just.

be in a skilled nursing facility for a couple of hours, you will see opportunities galore to serve older adults in a different way. And it might be the way they come into facility, the way they eat, the way they exercise because they might be there for many, many days on end. They’re going to develop pressure ulcers, whatever it might be.

But I think it’s that. Basis of, of customer discovery and understanding that allows you to render a solution that’s fit for purpose. That’s the step not to jump over. In fact, it’s my first question when I listen to a startup pitching to me, tell me what customer discovery you’ve done. And if the answer is, which so often is, well, my, my grandmother suffered with this and she was really in pain and I love her a lot.

And I decided that everyone’s got the same problem as my granny. Well, great. That’s a great beginning. It’s a catalyst. , did you corroborate that? And particularly in the way that it showed up for your grandmother you know, how much did you sort of say that that is a, a common issue challenge across the the, the board?

So I, I think that’s the, that’s the big issue. But there’s, there’s no end to possibilities in terms of innovation. And incidentally, Keren, I think you know this, I mean, one of the. Boards that I the advisory boards that I chair is is a linkage board up in Ohio here in the U. S. Who’ve been in the aging space for 25 years they have just launched a venture studio called Linkage Launch, and I think they’re trying to look at this institutionally.

They’re trying to go and say how are these larger B2B organizations trying to solve problems that have as yet been unaddressed by most startups? So I’d suggest it’s good to pay attention. Linkage have had venture funds with Ziegler, the investment bank in Chicago for many years now. I think you can learn the lessons from the blog posting and the other social media that those organizations put out because they’re talking about the issues that keep people up at night.

Keren Etkin: Absolutely. And I, I just held a masterclass yesterday and we talked about customer discovery and research. And I always say, I would start if you’re a newbie to this ecosystem and you have no background in aging and you just have your grandma as a catalyst, start with desk research. Follow the biggest organizations, see what they’re saying, go online, find out online forums and, and Facebook groups and immerse yourself in the conversation.

Learn the language.

so when you get to your user

Keren Etkin: Interviews, you are asking intelligent questions

and not wasting people’s time

Jon Warner: I agree. I agree. And I would even broaden your DES research even, even more.

There’s amazing content that’s available on LinkedIn, in the medium environment, people writing articles that are incredibly insightful in some cases. There’s reddits and subreddits that are out there. There’s stuff on Quora. So I think desk research can really de risk what you’re doing massively.

And then when you get to customer discovery, I think it not only allows you to show up intelligently but to listen harder because, as you know, I like to distinguish market research is critical, but it follows customer discovery market research is me holding up my solution and saying, Look, I’ve got this new device, let’s say, and saying, What do you think?

And it comes in pink or blue. And people say, Well, I like blue over pink. Well, great. But discovery is about not actually going in You know, convincing them that you’ve got the greatest solution in the world. You know, I’ve just built a robot and how good is it? Because they may not want a robot in the first place.

So what is it, what is it solving for? So I, I think the desk research allows you to show up with that sort of deep listening. And it allows you to ask the sort of the deeper questions. So when they’re talking and you say, tell me more. You’re steering the conversation, much like a podcast interview, into realms of interest.

Because that’s where the nuggets of gold are. It may not be the presenting issue you think you’re solving for. It might be something much more nuanced. And in fact, that’s so weird that so many startups have pivoted, usually, into something that’s more nuanced. They thought they were solving one problem, but actually there was a bigger problem hiding underneath.

It’s what they’re really solving for. And I think that’s what makes it exciting.

Keren Etkin: So true.

Jon Warner: So before we wrap up, is there anything that we didn’t talk about that you would like to add?

I, I’m excited. I don’t want to come across as if I’m, I’m skeptical about the aging space. I love this space. I think we’ve got wonderful opportunities to do things differently.

Jon Warner: I’m very excited about what I’m seeing around community health. In the marketplace, I’m seeing a lot of green shoots in that area and this is in this case older adults helping other older adults and using technology as the means to communicate with one another. I’m a psychologist by profession, my PhD was in psychology, so I’m very interested in the application of behavioral economics, for example You know, in this space, I think we’ve got a lot of upside there in terms of nudging people again.

We’ve got to do it intelligently. But I think if we can do that on a community basis, I think we’ve got some wonderful opportunities in the older adult space. As people do get particularly the boomer population, my population, I have to say. You know, goes, goes into their older age. I think they, they, they’re tech savvy enough to, to really leverage this technology on these community platforms.

And I think it’s going to see care coordination improve dramatically and I’m excited about that. So it’s one thing we didn’t talk about, but I think there’s there’s startups that are playing in that space that I’ve been I’ve been paying attention to.

Keren Etkin: Awesome. And that is fantastic and direction for our next conversation.

And I do want to encourage anyone listening or watching this conversation to go follow Jon Warner on LinkedIn. Jon is J O N

and he puts out the most insightful. And easily digestible content,

that I’ve ever seen on LinkedIn. So Jon, thank you very much for another insightful conversation. And I do hope to have you on

a do

hope to have you on the podcast again.

Jon Warner: Very good. Well, great talking to you, Keren. And of course, you’re being too humble yourself. Your content is pretty spectacular and everyone should pay attention to it also. So,

Thank you.

out there.

Keren Etkin: Thank you. Thank you so much.

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