Caring for our parents, grandparents and elderly friends is one of the most important things we can do in our lives. Sadly, later life brings all kinds of challenges, to the point where we often need outside help to care for our loved ones. Families sometimes have weeks or months to make a decision, sometimes just a few days or hours.

Finding a care home or at-home care service is not something we do many times in our lives, so the first place we turn is Google. But beyond knowing the local care home, it’s hard to know what to look for - care homes are good at care, not consumer marketing. Squinting at grainy photos and deciphering arcane price lists is a demoralizing experience. To learn anything useful, we’re asked to enquire by phone or email. We end up with a prehistoric PDF and none the wiser on what it will cost and whether there is availability. 

Digital marketplaces have transformed most areas of our lives: we expect glossy, transparent, low-touch experiences when booking holidays, buying groceries and doing everything in-between. But for some reason, eldercare has been left behind. 

The aging population in western markets will be one of the most important challenges of this century, but barely a handful of companies have emerged that can capture the significant revenue opportunities this will create. The proportion of the population over 65 across the US and UK is approaching 20%, roughly double what it was when our parents were born. Eldercare is often overlooked, but it may be one of the most valuable venture opportunities of the coming decade, hidden in plain sight.

Meeting Will and Chris at Lottie is an experience you don’t forget. They’re an ambitious, high integrity team on a mission to level up an industry stuck in the dark ages. Lottie began by offering consumers the modern discovery and booking experience they deserve with a clean, high quality UX and genuine transparency around pricing and facilities. This isn’t just a win for consumers: care providers love that Lottie drives high intent and well-informed leads, rather than speculative enquiries that end up going nowhere.

And Will and Chris didn’t stop there. In parallel, they’re determined to upgrade the day-to-day running of care homes, offering a suite of cloud-based and modular tools to shift operations online and help providers manage their services better. This drives day-to-day efficiencies and better outcomes for customers. At the heart of this is their care home operating software, Found, which fills an important whitespace between archaic incumbent software and complex, unfit-for-purpose enterprise solutions like Salesforce.

As the company announces its Series A, we’re excited to be partnering with Will, Chris and the Lottie team. We’re welcoming them to the Accel Family of mission-driven disruptors alongside Kayak, Kry, Monzo, Spotify and many others. Let’s reinvent this sleepy but important industry with the experience eldercare deserves.

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