Bracing for the Silver Tsunami: Our Seed Investment in Hera

There’s a crisis quietly looming on our economic horizon as the “silver tsunami,” a metaphor to describe the unprecedented number of baby boomers reaching retirement age, starts hitting American shores. Estimates vary, but approximately 1 in 5 Americans will be 65+ by 2030, which portends to overwhelm a healthcare system that already spends 25% of Medicare costs towards end-of-life care alone. That’s to say nothing about the growing shortage of qualified professionals; we simply do not have enough people or facilities to take care of our elders as they progress through old age. It’s hard to discern what’s cause and what’s effect, but the net of it is a rapidly shifting consumer preference towards “aging in peace” at home.

The responsibility for managing this, of course, is increasingly falling onto adult millennials, the so-called “sandwich generation” thrust into caring both for their parents and their children. Admittedly, this has been in the back of my head as my own parents age and enter their 70’s. It’s not an uncommon topic among my friends, a pervasive feeling of under-preparedness for when we each will eventually need to step up and manage this. Millennials all around me are going through self-taught crash courses on how to quarterback care for their aging parents - usually precipitated by a crisis health moment - stitching together information and logistics in group text threads and Google documents. Occasionally, they are supported by a hodgepodge of well-intentioned-but-stretched-extremely-thin care providers such as the primary care physician themselves, their staff, and social workers. Other times they’re left with no choice but to turn to dedicated experts which can be prohibitively expensive.

Jenny Lee and I have known each for many years now, first meeting as part of our Accel Scholars program at UC Berkeley seven years ago and then working closely together at Headway, where I recruited her to be our first PM. Our scholars program continues to be an incredible hotbed of top tier talent, and Jenny is no exception. In fact, she’s exceptional. During her 3+ years at Headway, she consistently punched above her weight, managing to drive many of our early wins and product initiatives with a rare combination of urgency, taste, and customer empathy. It was an open secret that Jenny was eventually going to leave the four walls of Headway to start her own venture. When she honed in on and gained conviction on the elder care space, she took the leap.

For Jenny, the elder care space is personal. When her grandmother died after a long bout with dementia, Jenny learned the truth of the toll it had taken on her aunt who had heroically stepped up to manage her care. As Jenny explored the contours and texture of the space, her focus was trying to balance building a business that could sustainably make the largest impact possible for the people who needed it the most. Jenny even spent time working as a care manager at a health plan serving families to get closer to the metal to better understand the problems faced by families. Throughout this period, we collaborated with her to pressure test different approaches until finally landing upon what is now Hera.

Hera is solving the labor shortage problem by building a new workforce, “Hera Heroes”, spiritually named after all of those who’ve stepped up for their families in this impossible role just like Jenny’s aunt. These heroes act as care managers, serving as an invisible “orchestration layer” providing important information, handling communication between relevant parties, managing travel and logistics, arranging for financing, guiding through weighty decisions, and more. Through a combination of Medicare reimbursements and AI- and tech-enabled services, we’re able to bring this service at low prices and incredible quality. Joining her are co-founders Connie Kang, a very early Headway employee and star operations doer, and Myles Novick, a renowned technologist who had incredible ~9 year run at Palantir leading a number of the company’s largest government contracts.

Hera is now supporting 300+ families, and the customer feedback is the most positive I’ve seen for any product or service in 10 years of investing. Whether it’s the acute need, the authenticity and care infused into every family interaction, or a market whose moment has come, it’s a recipe for something special. That’s why I’m thrilled to announce that Accel is leading Hera’s seed round, alongside our friends at IA Ventures and Box Group, as well as leading healthcare CEOs and operators from Headway, Nourish, Tandem, Bamboo Health, and more. This represents our latest healthcare investment in what’s becoming a growing investment focus for Accel, and in Hera we see the same early telltale signals that lead us to believe they can become a leader in its category and a large-scale, important consumer company