older-adults
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The Health Plan That Asked the Neighbors to Help
Wider Circle sells health plans an old-fashioned intervention: people who live near one another, meet regularly, and help each other get care. The machinery behind that simple scene is far more deliberate than a potluck.
Kristina Lugo Is Making the Case for a More Human Kind of Scale
She doubled a program by listening closely, rose from the service floor to the CEO’s office, and now wants technology to return time to people. Kristina Lugo’s career is a study in scaling care without sanding away its humanity.
Alexi Suvacioglu Learned the Business by Packing the Boxes
Before Because reached national retail shelves, its CEO answered support calls and packed orders in a garage. That close-range education still shapes how Alexi Suvacioglu builds: listen first, learn the details, then earn the right to scale.
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.
Avenidas
Avenidas is a Palo Alto-based nonprofit that has helped older adults on the mid-Peninsula stay active, connected and independent since 1969. From its flagship enrichment center at 450 Bryant Street, plus the Rose Kleiner adult day health center in Mountain View, it runs fitness, arts and lifelong-learning classes, door-to-door transportation, caregiver support, the Avenidas Village aging-in-place membership, a Chinese Community Center and an LGBTQ Rainbow Collective - serving thousands of seniors and their families each year.
Bold
Bold is a Los Angeles-based digital healthy-aging company that delivers personalized, clinically validated exercise, nutrition, and virtual-care programs to older adults. Available at no cost to roughly 12 million Medicare members through partnerships with Medicare Advantage plans and provider groups, Bold treats movement as medicine: its programs have been shown to reduce falls by up to 46%, increase weekly physical activity by 182%, and earn 91% member satisfaction. Founded by Amanda Rees and Hari Arul, the company has raised $27 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, and Rethink Impact.