better together columbia

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BetterTogether.com Home Sharing for Seniors

Section04, Group20

■ Noshad Irshad

■ Mehmet Onsiper

■ Carol Pak

■ Shouryadipta Sarkar

■ Bruno Zappa

Picture credits : “Alt together” movie

Interviews since last presentation: 4Total Interview: 75

SilverStars Ratings of Senior Services Providers

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• Customer sourcing:– Hospitals and Doctors– Assisted living facilities

(~homes)– Nursing schools– Service providers

• Apt search process:• Brokers• Landlords

Service providers

Key Partners

• Form large user base– Publicize (SEO/ Facebook/

Multipliers)• Identify user profile/

preferences/needs; Identity check; Match users

• Intermediate payments with guarantee

Key Activities

• What it is: – Better, more joyful and

economic housing alternative for seniors living alone

– Possibility to live in a real house/apartment with company and shared expenses (rent, utilities and services providers)- Allowing users to maintain

sense of autonomy• What we do:

– Matchmaking– Real Estate brokerage– Offer service marketplace

platform (hire care takers, house keepers, yoga instructors, etc.)

Value Proposition

• Search process: Close personal support and Guidance during search process

• Rental Period: Payment mediator and “Hands-off” automatic support during rentals.

Customer Relationships

• Seniors living alone in NYC (later expanding to other urban area), who would enjoy company and or have some sort of financial constraint

Customer Segments

• Large user base• Deep user data base• Large service provider base• Trained support staff• Money:

• Advertising• Customer Service

Key Resources

• Facebook, SEO• Indirectly (through

sons and daughters) and Directly

• Partnerships with Hospitals and homes (revenue share for indication of user). Senior oriented companies (multipliers)

Key Channels

• Publicity: reaching end user will require spending relevant amounts on advertising

• Customer support: trained staff to deal with users concerns• Programing costs

Cost Structure

• Low commission on rents• Monthly payments• Brokerage fee (if applicable)

• Low commission on hired services• Advertising revenues

Revenue Streams

Day 1

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We thought that seniors living alone would benefit from home sharing because they were either lonely or under financial pressure

■ We thought:

What we thought on day 1

Shared Economy Seniors

Home Sharing

for Seniors

■ Efficient Matchmaking would lead to senior’s with homes to share to find those who need houses, and provide a complimentary set of senior services to augment the package

■ New Market

■ Generate Revenue by commissions on brokerage and services offered

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Key Partners




• Intermediate payments with guarantees

Key Activities

• What it is: Home sharing for seniors

– Better, more joyful and economic housing alternative for seniors living alone



– Matchmaking– Real Estate brokerage– Mediate payments– Offer service marketplace

platform (hire care takers, house keepers, etc.)

Value Proposition

• Cust. Acq: Communicate with children of seniors

• Search process: Close personal support and during search process



• Seniors living alone in NYC who would enjoy company and or have some sort of financial constraint, and their children

• ‘Sub-segments’: • Veterans• Ethnic

groups

Customer Segments



Key Resources

• Facebook, SEO• Indirectly (through

sons and daughters) and Directly


Key Channels

• Publicity: reaching end user will require spending relevant amounts on advertising

• Customer support: trained staff to deal with users concerns• Programing costs

Cost Structure



Revenue Streams

BetterTogether.com - Home sharing for seniors Day 2

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Key Partners




• Intermediate payments with guarantees

Key Activities• What it is:

Comprehensive Information Portal to provide personalized insights/services into the best living opportunities for seniors

• Home sharing for seniors– Better, more joyful and

economic housing alternative for seniors living alone



– Matchmaking– Real Estate brokerage– Mediate payments– Offer service marketplace

platform (hire care takers, house keepers, etc.)

Value Proposition

• Cust. Acq: Communicate with children of seniors

• Search process: Close personal support and during search process



• Seniors who are looking for appropriate living opportunities

• Sons/Daughters who are looking for appropriate living opportunities for their parents

• Senior/Sons/Daughters looking for elderly care services

• Seniors living alone in NYC who would enjoy company and or have some sort of financial constraint, and their children

• ‘Sub-segments’: • Veterans• Ethnic

groups

Customer Segments



Key Resources• Information sessions senior

centers, NORC, etc• Facebook, SEO

• Indirectly (through sons and daughters) and Directly


Key Channels

• Website Maintenance and Research• Publicity: reaching end user will require spending relevant amounts on

advertising• Customer support: trained staff to deal with users concerns• Programing costs

Cost Structure



Revenue Streams

BetterTogether.com - Home sharing for seniors Day 3

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• Service providers• Hospitals/Doctors• Nurses• Senior centers, NORCs, etc

Key Partners

• Comprehensive searching• Clear explaining of housing

options• Create, foment, and manage

relevant content• Manage rankings and

reviews• Manage advertising

Key Activities

• Number one destination to help making seniors lives better

• Explanatory guide to all options in LALA, with recommendation mechanism

• General services• Social activities

• Ability to directly reach more seniors/clients

Value Proposition Customer Relationships

• Users:• Adults with senior

parents• Seniors

• Partners:• Services Providers• Housing

establishment• Event organizers

Customer Segments

• Large active user base• Large service provider base• Content• Trained support staff• Money:


Key Resources Key Channels

• Sales force• Content creation• Website Maintenance / Programing• Advertising/ SEO• Customer support: trained staff to deal with users concerns

Cost Structure

• Advertising revenues• Low commission on hired services and housing establishments

Revenue Streams

BetterTogether.com - Home sharing for seniors Day 4 – restarted from scratch

• AppStore & GooglePlay• Senior Centers (word of mouth)• Hospitals, Nursing Services and

Medical conferences• Nonprofits: Meals on wheels• Religious organization• Am New York, Metro, etc• Government• SEO, Facebook• Direct sales force

• Get: Acquire: with listed channels Activate: request subscription to access content

• Keep: Social activities; Community sense; Surprise offers for members

• Grow: Referral program; Recommended cross-sell

• Get: direct sales force• Keep: customer relationship• Grow: upselling ads

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From Tuesday through Friday we learned that our core hypotheses were wrongWhat we learned from day 2-4

hypotheses Experiment Result

#1Many seniors who are living alone are searching for a better condition

Talked to seniors, children of seniors and professionals in senior care

Majority of seniors living alone have a established living arrangement

#2 People are ready for home sharing

Talked to potential customers

The idea still sounds somewhat uncomfortable/ weird

#3Savings would be specially compelling for seniors under financial pressure

Talked to senior center director about their conditions

In NYC seniors have access to low cost housing and governmental support

#4 Seniors that live alone feel lonely

Talked to potential customers and professionals

In NYC seniors tend to have active social life out side of home (at least our sample)

What should we do?!?

Listen to customers!

And with the results….

Pivot!

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But we captured clues from customer interviews that lead us to a completely new value propositionWhat we learned from day 2-4

“I feel like I’ve reach a point in my life when I need to take care of my parents, not the other way around. But I have no idea where to find reliable services and professionals”

Customer Segments

Christian,52Husband, dad of 3, busy manager and now looks after his parents too

“The information is all over, it’s so hard to find. And I feel like everyone is always trying to push something, I never get a neutral opinion.”

Noeline, 79Lives in a small apartment but sure needs a little help!

Jennifer, 32Goes to customers homes. Likes long lasting relationships

“There isn’t effective way to reach new customers. It is very hard for me to publicize my services”“It would help me get a lot of customers!”

Children of seniors Seniors Service providers / housing establishment

What do they

REALLY need?

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We then pivoted to being “The number one destination for making senior’s lives better”What we learned from day 2-4

• Number one destination to help making seniors lives better

• Explanatory guide to all options in LALA, with recommendation mechanism

• General services• Social activities

• Access to large base of potential customers• Become their best sales channel

Users

Partners

New dual Value Proposition

Everybody loved it!

But…

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But we realized a few important things about the market and the business model, that would make execution difficultWhat we learned from day 2-4

1. We wanted to be everything to everyone

2. Our segments were too broad

3. Our scope was too broad

4. Very populated space

Better Together .com

Ranking/Listing Services

Service Providers

Information

Portals

Housing/Senior Centers

Housing Services Social Activities Blog

Advert. Cust. Support Ratings …

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After a major pivot, we sharpened our value proposition and created a service based on identified needs: SilverStarsWhere we landed on day 5 (1/2)

SilverStars is the best and most trusted way to find great senior service providers

Features: Search for various elderly care service

providers, incl. Home Care Services Nursing Services Senior Citizen Homes Insurances …

View independent ratings of others (previous users)

Rate and comment on your experience

Gain / Value PropositionNeed

To quickly find trustworthy and services providers

„Yelp / Zagat for Senior Services“

SilverStars

Nursing Services

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SilverStars is an information service for needy old people and their sons/daughters with several monetizing optionsWhere we landed on day 5 (2/2)

Caring Christian/Christina Son/Daughter of

75-90 year old parents who need some sort of assistance

Can‘t provide the neededassistance to parent

Customer Segments Future Business Model Options

Needy Noel/Noeline 75-90 years old Retired from a good job Needs some sort of

assistance at home Wants to get the assistance

from a third party

Revenue share of bookings through platform

Pay for content (i.e. see X free reviews, pay for further)

Advertisement Exit Strategy

(e.g. Search Services such as Google, Yahoo)

…

Market Size

Senior home care industry

$57Bn

Spent on senior home care

17kprofessionals

6mnusers

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Now we have to kick start ratings, by going after service providers, identifying users and convincing them to rate service providersWhat we’re going to do next

2016Jan Feb Mar Apr03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15

Check points

Finalize the search process– Build MVP– Test hypotheses– Analyze competitive landscape in depth– Benchmarking

Activity

YearMonth

Execute– Create business data base– Kickstart ratings (incentivize user participation)

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Thank you!

SilverStarsRatings of Senior Services Providers

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Appendix

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Agenda:

■ Day 1: We thought that seniors living alone would benefit from home sharing because they were either lonely or under financial pressure

■ Day 2-4: We learned:• hypotheses was wrong:

– People under financial pressure had already help from government– People living alone, are just fine the way they are

• There is a general lack of information on senior services• We identified a need among sons/daughters of seniors: They want to hire reliable/trustworthy service

providers – We decided to create a comprehensive informational portal– We decided to narrow our product offering

• Talk about current players/competitors(?)

■ Where we landed: SILVER STARS Senior Service Provider Rating (~Zagat, ~Yelp) (Value proposition + mkt size [total spent on service providers]

■ What we’re going to do next: Kickstart ratings

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Virtuous cycle: Incentivizing reviews will increase user base and service provider listingsWhere we landed on day 5

Initial Phase: incentives to kickstart

Input ratings and reviews

Consult reviews and get recommendations

Source clients

Identify and add providers to data base

Future: Sign up to directory to be rated

2

3

4 5

6

1

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Yelp is a ratings and review company with a $1.62B market cap

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To grow, SilverStars will mimic Yelp’s growth strategy

■There are 3 components to the success of Yelp’s launch 1. Strategic regional launches2. Business Database3. Trustworthy, community-sourced, high quality reviews

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Strategic regional launches

■ We plan to launch in urban and sub-urban areas that • Are popular for the aging population

– Miami, California, and Connecticut (TBC?)

• Have a high-density population– NYC, Chicago, and Philadelphia (TBC)

“We didn't have a lot of money, only $1 million in seed financing. We focused on marketing and making the site useful just in San Francisco. We thought that pattern of expansion might be the right one from looking at Craigslist, which started in the Bay Area and then expanded from city to city.”

-Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of yelp

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Business Database

• To kick start the process of building a platform for unsolicited business reviews, Yelp created the framework by buying a database of over 20 million business locations

• This foundation of un-reviewed business locations was an open invitation for people to review the business locations

• Likewise, SilverStars can build a pre-populated database within its launch cities

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Quality reviews

■ Based on the growth of mobile, the behavior of leaving reviews, and the personal nature of the types of businesses and end-users that are using the services on SilverStars, we believe that there is enough incentive to source high-quality, user-generated content and engage users

– A lot more research and interest on where your mom is residing compared to where to buy coffee or cut your hair

– A lot more caution and emotion regarding your parents’ housekeeper and grocery shopper

■ To encourage initial reviews, we have 4 ideas in mind:

1. SilverStars driven reviews- We could have a team on the road to objectively write up initial reviews and take engaging photos

2. Super reviewers- We could hire freelancers who support the initiative mentioned above and/or compensate (non-cash) community members to become super reviewers (similar to Yelp Elite)

3. Incentives for businesses to drive reviews

- While paying reviewers may elicit low-quality or fake reviews, we could incentivize businesses to grow their SilverStars page through the participation of their respective communities

Location based pop-up notifications for seniors to leave reviews for a SilverStars business and weekly nudges to ask them to leave reviews in exchange for discounts, prizes or status

■ Once SilverStars reaches critical mass in a geographic area, businesses will want to further promote their service to increase revenue and new businesses will need to create a SilverStars profile to compete with others

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• Keep previous revenue model• Spin-off home sharing platform

• Commission of rentals and services

Revenue Model

• Advertising revenues• Low commission on hired services and housing

establishments

Multi-channel, Get Strategy and revenue model

Channels & Get Strategy

1st

2nd

Two-phased revenue model

SE

OW

ord

of

mou

thD

irect

S

ales

• AdWords to be found by Partners & Users

• Activation: request sign up to access contact

• Guerrilla tactics to reach Users not online

• Reaching Partners with direct sales

Activation: request sign up to access contact

A hard to reach customer needs a lot of channels, especially in a two-side market place

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Testing Channel, ‘Get’ strategy and Revenue model hypotheses

Experiment

Get Partners:

Partners have a hard time to advertise their services and reach customers

Get Users:

Users get information in social centers

Pass/Fail criteria Resulthypotheses

Offering a platform to advertise by charging fee

Offering a platform to advertise by charging revenue commission

Users get information online

At least 25% accept ?

Surveys online and interviews in social centers At least 50% say ‘yes’ ?

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Better Together .com

Ranking/Listing Services

Service Providers

Information Portals

Housing/Senior Centers

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