seniorgeek

SeniorGeek is a SeniorTech. We devote ourselves to digitally include seniors and  to foster B2S - Business to Seniors. 

We promote meetings, workshops and courses demystifying technology and training seniors in its use. Through partnerships and alliances,  we promote senior entrepreneurship in longevity, since we believe that no one is better than a senior to understand what a senior needs.

We fight technophobia and ignorance / discomfort with technology. These issues strongly reduce our workability and sociability, compromising two pillars of a successful longevity. Besides the impact in one's quality of life, digital exclusion also means invisibility in a world where not only public policies, but all sorts of product and services become everyday more digital and data driven. 

Founded by 50+ professionals, SeniorGeek was the first 50+ startup accelerated by Google for Startups-Sao Paulo;Brazil, and is a rare case of an startup surviving its founder death.

Seniors digital inclusion. 

Granted over the last decades with 25 additional years of productive life, seniors are prematurely expelled from professional life, by unemployment or  early retirement, ending up with isolation and exclusion, leading to health and social problems. 

Digital revolution plays a big part on this, since no one can fully work or socialize today without minimum  digital skills.

In Brazil, we age even faster than most countries: today´s 30 million 60+ population is expected to double till 2050. Around 57% of Brazil´s population live in 6% of our cities and more than half did not finish high school, meaning crowded cities, low sociability and reduced workability. 

Analyzing Mckinsey & Co´s Brazil Digital Report - April 2019, we see that  Brazil has internet access, smartphone penetration and social networks numbers aligned with the developed world, but numbers drop dramatically with age. Internet access over the last three months drops from 86% among the 35- y.o. population to less than 25% among the 60+. In other words, about 22 million people today are potentially digitally excluded.

Digital inclusion means not only improved workability and sociability, but also access to services, information and education to improve them. 

Population aging imply in many challenges, both for individuals and for society. It is not by chance that England has created the Ministry of Loneliness in 2018. 

We want to digitally include seniors in urban centers, especially in big cities, where loneliness and isolation rates are higher, and translate to depression and sickness. Elderly living alone, socially excluded, means health problems and costs.

And we understand them.  Besides being seniors ourselves, and having personal experience in this isolation and tech-related difficulties, we have been in contact with thousands of seniors, learning what they seek, the pain that comes from digital exclusion, and the feeling of dignity restored that comes when we master basic digital skills and are able to work and contribute again.

We provide not only knowledge, but an environment where seniors are accepted among equals, where one´s ideas are listened, can be implemented and brought to the market, and doubts can be clarified without fear or shame. 

Over the last three years we promoted a series of meet-ups, courses and workshops with seniors, and we are active members of São Paulo´s and Brazil Longevity ecosystem. 

We are a senior empowerment venture. We promote digital inclusion in three steps:

• Aproximation - meetups, with specialists clarifying some technology or digital life aspect. For example, our last encounters were with specialists in Artificial Intelligence, Chatbots Implementation and Legal Rights and Privacy over the Internet.
• Empowerment - through workshops and courses, where seniors can learn or experiment, hands-on, an specific technology or learn new skills. Example of our next workshops will be on “Gamification”, “MVP construction” and “Collaboration over the Internet - Tools & Techniques”. Our last course was “Creating and maintaining your WordPress site”. 
• Facilitating - our acceleration program. We mentor, support and complement teams, enabling a fast track to create  senior startups, even in Brazil´s harsh business environment.
  We use networks built over lifetimes to congregate companies, consultants and business developers, and  facilitate product development, product-market fit and business development. Last companies fostered under this model were Saber para Cuidar (www.saberparacuidar.com, healthcare) and mpant (www.mpant.org, mobile learning).

Digitally, we take our courses from São Paulo-SP to other cities, establishing SeniorGeek centers. Courses and workshops can be hosted by any of them, transmitted by internet to others, where classes can be attended with the support of local tutors. For these, we use basic webconferencing services like Zoom, Appear.in and Skype for Business. 

Please note that we will never be a fully digital training venture. For seniors, socialization in our meetups, classes and workshops is as important as skills development.

In the future, we intend to use the recorded digital content generated in our face-to-face and semi-face-to-face courses and workshops to compose both digital training and content offers for seniors. 

To operate, we do as we teach. Our startup does not have an office, we exist on the internet, using free collaboration tools like Slack, Google Drive and TrelloToday and communicators like Zoom, Skype and WhatsApp.

First and foremost, we materialize our innovative B2S concept: we are a business for seniors created and operated  by seniors. Through an adapted learning & skill building  process, we are empowering otherwise excluded citizens to create and commercialize solutions in today's digital world.

Second, we demystify technology using a senior language and his/her repertoire. Different from all tech-related courses, workshops and trainings, we use references that make today´s tech more understandable. For seniors, it is much easier to explain Cloud Computing using a Mainframe architecture paradigm, or to  explain AI using movies like 2001, Teminator or AI. 

Third, we are a social impact venture for profit, which is by itself an innovation in Brazil. 

We want to empower seniors through digital inclusion and B2S promotion.

To do so, first we have to re-create the seniors self-image, showing that they are, indeed, able to learn and work. We promote examples in our social networks, bringing seniorgeeks and senior enterpreneurs  who are willing to inspire, share, compose or lead teams to our meetups.

Second, we run a continuous survey on what they want to learn, and to what extent they want to do so: just a clarification meetup, a hands-on workshop or an in-depth course. Just to answer these questions already brings new ideas to our public, as many hear for the first time about some techs when doing so (Todays version, in Portuguese, can be accessed at bit.ly/pesquisaSG2020). Based on their answers, we prepare and offer the knowledge they find relevant to uspskill themselves, creating a sense of community and belonging that helps socialization and learning. 

Once they are skilled, we help them either to participate or lead new ideas. Everyone above 50 has an unfulfilled dream. We help them to materialize their dreams. Part of this is to explain today´s means of production, a geek economy where selfpreneurs can be enrolled ad-hoc to build new ideas. 

And once they have understood this new production model, we promote contacts and partnerships that can materialize business and ideas. 

Today, our meetings impact about 50 people a month, our workshops 60 and our courses are designed for 30 attendees per month.  We want to promote 10 monthly meetups (Feb.-Nov.), 3 workshops and 2 courses. 

In B2S, we are currently supporting two startups (saberparacuidar.com and mpant.org) and are selecting three to support next semester. 

In one year we want to double these numbers in São Paulo, and reach an additional number of this size (6 local meet-ups, 3 transmitted workshops and 2 courses) though our 2 first  SeniorGeek centers.

In five years we want to have Senior Geek centers in the 100 most populated cities in Brazil and to provide training and information digitally to all country and implement an acceleration process with equity in supported ventures.

Within the next 12 months: 

• host 10 meet-ups, 3 workshops and 2 courses
• establish two seniorgeek centers, one in the north-east and other in the south of Brazil

In five years, we want to have in place:

• a replicable model to create SG-centers
• a process to train new seniorgeeks to staff our centers
• an replicable acceleration process tailored for senior entrepreneurs, with an established network of partners

Our biggest barrier is the lack of working capital to run our business throughout the product definition and product-market-fit processes we plan for the next two years.

We have knowledge of the pain we are solving, we know our clients and we are sure that they value and need our services. We are aware of the impact we already have in people's lives.  

Our major challenge is the free-of-charge culture that reigns in Brazil social impact ecossystem. People, specially our focus client, are pretty used to access free training and meeting offers, and even some of partners require us to serve customers free of charge. Which leads us to a sponsorship model as the only way to finance our operations, which is particularly  risky and tough  in Brazil´s currently depressed economy.

We want to change that. We understand that part of our mission is to stop this victimization of the seniors. We want productive and connected seniorgeeks, partners in business. And this means understanding that there is  no free lunch, so if you are not paying for something, is because you are the product. And a product has no voice, it exists just to be used.

First, we will limit our free of charge services to our monthly meet-ups.

Workshops and courses, even if sponsored, will only be hosted if attendees pay, no matter how much. Even a symbolic pay, as low as U$ 10,00 /workshop, has to be enforced, because we want to change their minds.

Today we are seeking sponsors, angels and partners to finance our operations. Partners are already contributing with internet connection, classroom and event infrastructure, but this is not ideal nor enough. 

We want to achieve financial sustainability and partnership / sponsorship model is always a bigger risk. We aim to develop products that bring recursive revenues, like subscriptions, content generation and tailored outplacement training program´s for companies. 

On the B2S side, we are testing models that compose a recurring and a success fee. For example, in Saber para Cuidar we were a 4-seniors team, compensation was U$ 1.000/month and success fee was a 40 % stake.

Senior digital inclusion is a pain everywhere. And, in ServiceNow primary markets, we already see social understanding of costs and burdens consequent to digital exclusion of an ever growing senior population.

Our plan is to establish processes and products in Brazil, and then replicate our experience in other countries, especially in Europe, where public policies are already in place to tackle this problem, and sponsors are interested in positioning themselves in the senior market.

Full time staff - 3 

Part-time - 5 (based in São Paulo/SP) + 3 (based in Natal/RN)

Contractors and partners (mentors, instructors and consultants): 20+

We congregate several experiences in senior training. labor and sociability along te last 5 years. Among us, we have already created:

a) two digital magazines for 50+

b) an online dating community

c) three different approaches to senior training (one fully digital, other part digital and a last fully face-to-face)

d) mentored more than 10 B2S startups 

e) a cooperative consultant company formed by 50+ professionals    

We have 3 kinds of organization partners:
a) Courses and event infrastructure - UNIBES Cultural, Google for Startups, Daryus Consulting and Casa Séfora. They host our events in São Paulo SP and Natal RN, for free, low charges or revenue share.

b) Longevity related initiatives and Communities - Instituto Mongeral Aegon de Longevidade, Maturijobs, Lab60+, Trabalho 60+, MaturityNow, We help each other providing content and/or promoting events. 

c) Longevity events - Congresso Municipal de Envelhecimento Ativo e Maturidade - SP. We partner to realize seniorgeek tracks in major events, and seek seek to partner with Campus Party Event and  Sistema S, a joint system of social contributions paid by companies in Brazil.  

Our key beneficiaries are the seniors themselves. We provide not only knowledge and digital inclusion, improving their socialization and workability, but also  enabling work  and revenue in today's digital society, as entrepreneurs, team member or digital influencers. 

As we previously cited, we intend to fund our operations with three revenue sources:

a) Sponsorship from organizations that want to relate to seniors, such as telephone companies, insurances and health plans

b) Courses admission and tuition, charging seniors that participate in our trainings 

c) Professional services as mentors, advisers or consultants for B2S startups in Longevity

In the future, we intend to complement these revenue sources with three additional ones:

a) a seniorgeek quality seal for products, services and trained professionals

b) return on stake in created or accelerated companies

c) subscription fee on digital content

First, we are currently seeking angel investors,  sponsors and  grants (such as this).

Second we  sell workshops and courses, bringing revenue by tuition and admission fees.

Third, we  sell mentoring and consulting services to B2S startups  .

These are the initial revenue sources. As we said, we plan to include new services and models that can improve sustainability, specially those who bring recurring fee´s. Today, we foresee subscriptions, tailored content generation and product/professional certification seal as future additional revenue sources. 

The U$ 100,000 will enable us to execute our plan without investors, at least till we have tested our products.

ServiceNow endorsement also add to our market recognition, besides motivating business contacts and new partners that could accelerate our plans.

As sponsors or partners, we would like to have companies that aim the senior market, such as:

- insurance & financial institutions (incumbents and fintechs)

- health plans (specially those focused on seniors, like Brazil´s Prevent Senior)

- private education ventures, like Laureate Universities and  Kroton 

Also, we seek to partner with Brazil´s Sistema S, specially SEBRAE and SESC and with Campus Party.