caregiving
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Empathy Turned Grief's Worst Chore List Into a 50-Million-Person Benefit
The startup began with an app for the brutal paperwork after a death. Its bigger invention was persuading insurers and employers to put practical, human-guided care inside benefits people already have.
The Backup Plan That Became the Business
Sharon Lurtsema spent decades learning what happens when care falls apart. Then she built a company around making the backup plan feel less like a scramble - and more like infrastructure.
The Toy Guys Who Sold 750,000 Robot Cats to Fight Loneliness
A former Hasbro team took a $60-to-$180 robotic cat, aimed it at grandparents instead of grandkids, and turned play into a public-health tool. State agencies now hand the pets out by the thousands.
Because Built a DTC Brand for Bladder Leaks. Then Its Customers Sent It Back to the Drugstore.
The founders used family experience, phone calls and repeat orders to redesign an awkward category. The clever part was not staying online - it was knowing exactly when to put the product back on a shelf.
The Employee Benefit That Only Sends a Bill When Care Shows Up
CorporateCARE Solutions is betting that family care works better as infrastructure than as a perk - and that employers should pay for the hours their people actually use.
LifeCare
LifeCare is a Shelton, Connecticut-based provider of employer-sponsored work-life benefits, best known for its Backup Care Connection service and the LifeMart employee-discount marketplace. Founded in 1984, the company helps large employers and federal agencies support their workforce with last-minute child, adult, senior and pet care, along with senior-care management, tutoring, and everyday savings. LifeCare has served tens of thousands of client organizations covering roughly 100 million members and, since October 2020, has operated as part of Care.com (an IAC company) under the CareBenefits umbrella.
SafeinHome
SafeinHome is a remote supports company that helps people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) and older adults live more independently. It pairs a system of discreet home sensors and a two-way tablet with trained staff available around the clock, so individuals get reminders, check-ins and real-time help through the day and night without a caregiver physically present at all times. The service is delivered as a Medicaid Home and Community-Based Service (HCBS) across 17 states, aiming to cut per-hour support costs while preserving each person's dignity and autonomy.
Waterlily
Waterlily is a San Francisco-based startup that uses AI and more than 500 million data points to predict when and how a person will need long-term care, what it will cost, and how to pay for it. Built primarily for financial advisors and insurance carriers, its software turns one of retirement planning's most avoided questions into a concrete, personalized plan - from care projections to matching families with optimal long-term care insurance policies in under a second.
Lily Vittayarukskul
Lily Vittayarukskul is the co-founder and CEO of Waterlily, a San Francisco AI company that predicts when a person will need long-term care, for how long, and what it will cost - then helps families figure out how to pay for it. A child prodigy who started college at 14 and interned at NASA by 16, she pivoted from aerospace engineering to healthcare after her aunt's terminal cancer diagnosis exposed how unprepared most families are for the cost of caregiving. Waterlily runs more than 500 million data points through proprietary AI models, has raised roughly $10 million from investors including Genworth, Nationwide and Edward Jones Ventures, and landed Lily on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
Joy Zhang
Joy Zhang is the CEO and Co-Founder of Mon Ami, a San Francisco-based healthtech company building HIPAA-compliant SaaS for agencies that serve older adults and people with disabilities. A Stanford MBA who has volunteered in hospice and dementia care since high school, Zhang co-founded Mon Ami in 2018 after interviewing 150+ seniors and caregivers to understand what the system was missing. Today Mon Ami is used by government agencies and nonprofits across the US, helping them replace manual paperwork with automation - so their staff can focus on care instead of administrative burden. The company has raised over $12M and grown to 180 employees, making it one of the most visible startups in the aging-services technology space.