MIT Solve

Solution Overview

Solution Name:

Marketplace for seniors to teach seniors

One-line solution summary:

A platform for seniors to be up-skilled to become trainers to help other older adults in learning tools essential to age well in place..

Pitch your solution.

Our platform creates economic opportunity for older adults. This demographic is going to be 25% of the worlds population and have a lot of skills to offer back to the community. GetSetup provides a technology platform to up-skill them at scale to become on-boarding guides to other older adults who need to learn a range of products and services like technology, health services and connectivity solutions. We execute this as a marketplace where our supply side is re-skilled seniors and demand is also seniors who need to learn these essential skills to age well in place.

Our marketplace solution can create millions of jobs for seniors as a well as provide a safe place for other seniors to come learn from peers.

Film your elevator pitch.

What specific problem are you solving?

We are focused on creating new and good jobs for the aging community who are going to live for at least another 20+ years but don't have the financial means or opportunity to flourish. More than 25% of the US population alone is going to be 60+ and retirement and healthcare benefits won't be sufficient for them to live healthy, productive lives. The problem affects over 1 billion people globally and over 80m people in US alone. Workers 50-plus continue to receive less training than their younger colleagues, which only compounds this disadvantage. In the United States, 42% of adults ages 55-64 participate in training, compared to 56% of employees ages 25-34. This is due in part to the quality and quantity of job-related training being provided, as only 11% of employers’ spending on formal training was devoted to workers over the age of 55.

GetSetup is addressing this problem by both

Re-skilling older adults in technology and software that is in demand
Employing these workers to help other older adults gain digital literacy and stay connected

What is your solution?

Marketplace

Seniors who have a passion for teaching and sharing their skills come to GetSetup. They submit their idea for a class or topic they want to teach. We up-skill them on how to teach online as well as some other tools that might be in demand by companies catering to 60+ demographic like medicare classes, banking applications or health apps.

Academy

Our re-skilling program is broken into 3 parts ( all online and interactive, our students learn by doing, not watching)

Peer to Peer practice
Virtual Instructor Led Training ( VILT ) to learn how to effectively teach individuals and groups in a live, interactive format
Customer Education & Service ( CES ) program to teach skills on customer success and support

Our Tech

We have built an interactive synchronous video based tool that enables us to re-skill and up-skill new Guides as well as create and optimize new curriculum in near real time.

As 100% of our classes are live online, the tool provides recommendations to Guides during classes as well as provides personalized plans for learners. This makes our classrooms interactive and fun as well as allows us to increase classroom sizes and bring our costs down.

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

We focus on the 50+ (and Senior) demographic. They are often retired (on pension) and lower income. Many are former educators with knowledge and wisdom that they are ready and willing to pass to others, if only given the chance. We give them that opportunity.
As a managed marketplace, older adults are both the teachers and the learners. We founders, our staff, the Guides have education, healthcare and senior care related backgrounds. Everything we build, teach, market and message is done with the intent to make it as friendly and friction-less for an older adults as possible.
Getsetup helps our Guides (teachers) find new economic opportunity while teaching something they are passionate about. Our learners, also older adults, are often not mobile, unable to get to a class and/or intimidated by technology...get a chance to learn new skill as well as socialize and interact with others their age.

Our solution has a huge impact on the health outcomes for older adults.

Changes their perception about themselves
Creates new economic opportunities
Increases Neuroplasticity
Reduces loneliness as they learn with peers in interactive classrooms

Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Equip workers with technological and digital literacy as well as the durable skills needed to stay apace with the changing job market

Explain how the problem, your solution, and your solution’s target population relate to the Challenge and your selected dimension.

We provide the 60+ demographic, the necessary training on in-demand skills and software. This increases their digital literacy and makes them employable both on our marketplace as guides but also to companies who want to use them to onboard and education their 60+ customers.

When these re-skilled workers apply to be teachers on our platform/ marketplace, they can earn up to $25-$40 class.

As this population ages, more of their lives will move online and go digital and hence by creating this marketplace, we service a huge unmet need in the community and for businesses who cater to this demographic.

In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?

San Francisco, CA, USA

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Growth: An organization with an established product, service, or business model rolled out in one or, ideally, several communities, which is poised for further growth

Who is the primary delegate for your solution?

Lawrence Kosick ( co-founder )

More About Your Solution

If your solution has a website, provide a link here:

https://www.getsetup.io

If your solution proposes an app that is currently live, provide a link to your app online or in an app store here:

https://www.getsetup.io

If you have additional video content that explains your solution, provide a YouTube or Vimeo link here:

—

Which of the following categories best describes your solution?

A new business model or process

Describe what makes your solution innovative.

We are the first live interactive platform where re-skilled seniors teach others seniors.

- Our solution is 100% online and hence even during COVID, we have been able to service and train thousands of seniors on essential tools like Zoom, Facebook, WhatsApp so that they can stay safe and connected.

- On both sides of our marketplace, we are tapping into this huge pool of seniors creating an economic opportunity on one side and driving digital adoption to millions of users.

Describe the core technology that powers your solution.

We have built an interactive synchronous video based tool that enables us to re-skill and up-skill new Guides as well as create and optimize new curriculum in near real time.

As 100% of our classes are live online, the tool provides recommendations to Guides during classes as well as provides personalized plans for learners. This makes our classrooms interactive and fun as well as allows us to increase classroom sizes and bring our costs down.

We have modified Zoom SDK to build our interactive layer. This allows us to maintain quality of our classes as well as scale over zooms existing infrastructure.

Provide evidence that this technology works.

Product Demo

We have thousands of re-skilled guides teaching over 30,000+ students on a monthly basis.

Topics on our platform range from Medicare, Essential Technology, Government services, Small Business tools etc.

In 3 months since our launch, we have started working with several Department of Agings, Area Agencies and organizations like AARP to provide rapid response services to their members.

Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:

Behavioral Technology
Big Data
Crowdsourced Service / Social Networks
Software and Mobile Applications

What is your theory of change?

I have attached a picture of our ToC

30810_Screen%20Shot%202020-06-17%20at%2011_1440x810.png

Select the key characteristics of your target population.

Elderly
Low-Income
Middle-Income

Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?

3. Good Health and Well-Being
4. Quality Education
8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
10. Reduced Inequalities

In which countries do you currently operate?

United States

In which countries will you be operating within the next year?

Australia
Canada
India
Mexico
Singapore
United Kingdom

How many people does your solution currently serve? How many will it serve in one year? In five years?

In 2020: 5000 will be re-skilled on essential software technology that include consumer apps like Uber, Health apps, Telemedicine, Zoom, Google small business tools, and many more. These technologies will become integral part of LI50+ as they age in-order for them to lead productive, healthy lives.

These 5,000 will be able to offer their new skills to a larger audience of 500,000 so that they can effectively use some of these software applications to be productive.

In 5 years: We hope to re-skill 100,000 seniors providing training to millions of older adults around the world.

What are your goals within the next year and within the next five years?

In 2020: Our goal is to re-skill 5000 individuals to become instructors on our platform. They should be teaching essential software technology that include consumer apps like Uber, Health apps, Telemedicine, Zoom, Google small business tools, and many more. These technologies will become integral part of millions of older adults as they age in-order for them to lead productive, healthy lives.

In 5 years: We hope to re-skill 100,000 seniors providing training to millions of older adults around the world.

Our vision is that each re-skilled senior will be able to make at-least $2000/month as educators on our platform or with companies that hire them.

What barriers currently exist for you to accomplish your goals in the next year and in the next five years?

Our biggest barrier is distribution and partnerships with organizations who currently service older adults. For us to increase the earning potential of our re-skilled workforce we need to put them to work teaching millions of consumers who are 60+ and this audience is aggregated in communities and institutions like retirement homes, assisted living facilities etc.

With the right funding and partnerships we can scale quickly to become the dominant employer for the 60+ age group.

Another barrier is in our technology platform. In order to make our service affordable to millions, we need to increase our classroom sizes from 20 to 100+ without loosing the magic of interactivity and socialization. Current limitation on WebRTC and Zoom, make this impossible. We are prototyping several alternative solutions to make large group interactivity possible over live video.

How do you plan to overcome these barriers?

We have raised venture money from impact investors to grow our technology and partnership team.

We are working with tech companies like DailyCo, Zoom to help them build a scalable API based solution to host classes with 100+ users and enable us to build a layer of interactivity.

We are also investing in our curriculum development tool so that we can use realtime classroom data to optimize the curriculum.

About Your Team

What type of organization is your solution team?

For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models

If you selected Other, please explain here.

NA

How many people work on your solution team?

5 full time employees

10 engineers

10 contractors who help with content and quality control.

How many years have you worked on your solution?

1

Why are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?

Our leadership team has experience building scalable education non-profits globally as well as leading partnerships at large internet companies.

Our CEO, Neil Dsouza has founded 2 ed-tech companies and non-profits which has reached over million students around the globe. He is an EchoingGreen Fellow 2012 and has deep expertise in developing learning tools that can scale.

Co-founder Lawrence, a Silicon Valley start-up veteran, has been building enterprise technology companies for the last 25 years. Lawrence was part of the senior management teams of companies such as Yahoo, Contenix, Sight Machine and IFTTT.

Our Chief Learning Officer, Moira Gagen developed the curriculum and training program for 30+ years for the Apple Genius Bar and retired recently to join GetSetup.

The proposed project will be managed by Tim Johnson, Tim has worked in a variety of K-12 education reform roles over the last decade and is the founder of One Year Education Partners where he supports schools, non-profits and start-ups with leadership development, talent and strategy. In Denver, Tim launched Denver Fellows, a service year program employing 300 recent college graduates and serving thousands of students in schools across Denver.

Our performance monitoring and evaluation team will be lead by Judy Stelling ( 68 ) who has build applicant tracking and data analysis systems for 30+ years.

What organizations do you currently partner with, if any? How are you working with them?

We currently partner with

AARP - We provide rapid response education to their members during COVID
HomeCare Providers - Our Guides teach their aging members tools on our platform
DevotedHealth - We provide classes to their members
AgeSmart - We provide classes to their 60+ demographic
Healthcare.com - We provide medicare education to their user base.

Your Business Model & Funding

Partnership & Prize Funding Opportunities

Why are you applying to Solve?

Solve can help us with our Technology platform by connecting us to engineer and teams at MIT media labs

Solve can also help build partnerships with organisations who might want to employ or use our platform to provide education to their members.

In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?

Solution technology
Product/service distribution
Talent recruitment
Monitoring and evaluation
Marketing, media, and exposure

Please explain in more detail here.

One the main drivers for older adults to join our live interactive classes is that they get to socialize with other seniors as well as learn new skills. The socialization part has a huge health impact in reducing loneliness epidemic that is affecting this demo.

With good M&E team we want to start monitoring and measuring the impact of our classes on the mental health of our customers.

What organizations would you like to partner with, and how would you like to partner with them?

MIT - for technology support

Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use the Innovation for Women Prize to advance your solution?

90% of our older adults who apply to be re-skilled are women aged 60+. Also majority of our customers/learners are women. We believe that by providing this re-skilling opportunity, we are changing how they age with dignity and celebrate their knowledge and skills.

Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The GM Prize on Good Jobs and Inclusive Entrepreneurship to advance your solution?

We provide the 60+ demographic, the necessary training on in-demand skills and software. This increases their digital literacy and makes them employable both on our marketplace as guides but also to companies who want to use them to onboard and education their 60+ customers.

When these re-skilled workers apply to be teachers on our platform/ marketplace, they can earn up to $25-$40 / class which provides them with an important economic opportunity.

As they age, more of their lives will move online and hence by creating this marketplace, we are servicing a huge unmet need in the community and for businesses who cater to this demographic.

Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use the Gulbenkian Award for Adult Literacy to advance your solution?

We provide the 60+ demographic, the necessary training on in-demand skills and software. This increases their digital literacy and makes them employable both on our marketplace as guides but also to companies who want to use them to onboard and education their 60+ customers.

We can scale this solution to Portugal by enabling older adults there to become instructors on our platform.

When these re-skilled workers apply to be teachers on our platform/ marketplace, they can earn up to $25-$40 / class which provides them with an important economic opportunity.

As they age, more of their lives will move online and hence by creating this marketplace, we are servicing a huge unmet need in the community and for businesses who cater to this demographic.

Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use the the Future Planet Capital Prize to advance your solution?

We are the first live interactive platform where re-skilled seniors teach others seniors.

Our solution is 100% online and hence even during COVID, we have been able to service and train thousands of seniors on essential tools like Zoom, Facebook, WhatsApp so that they can stay safe and connected.
On both sides of our marketplace, we are tapping into this huge pool of seniors creating an economic opportunity on one side and driving digital adoption to millions of users.