If you’re looking for a straightforward way to earn, opening an online store is a simple option 😉 The key is to target a large and growing market. This startup is focused on the elderly market, where, just in the USA, there’s an addition of 10,000 people every day, and its size will soon grow to 88 million people. And it sells products to them in this way.
Project Essence
Jukebox Health’s slogan is “Safe homes, safe future.” But it’s not about protection from thieves and earthquakes, it’s about the safety of elderly people living in their homes.
Elderly people inevitably experience a loss of coordination, which can lead to falls on flat surfaces. This is not to mention more complex tasks like reaching for the top shelf or the increasing danger of slipping and falling in the shower.
The problem is that falls become the number one cause of non-disease-related deaths for people over 65. However, only 6% of American homes are equipped with everything necessary to reduce the likelihood of falls in everyday life.
Moreover, 90% of Americans prefer to age at home rather than in nursing homes.
This is also related to finances. The services of caregivers, who help elderly people with simple movements around the house and dangerous activities, which even taking a shower can become, cost $55,000 per year in 2022. The cost of a place in a specialized nursing home is $94,000 per year.
Jukebox Health offers services to retrofit homes where elderly people live. On average, retrofitting a home will cost a one-time payment of $1,500 — but it significantly eases daily life and reduces the risk of falls.
The startup offers a full range of home retrofitting services — from setting tasks to solving them.
The process begins with therapists inspecting the home, finding out the living habits of the elderly occupants — and compiling a report listing areas of particular risk and ways to reduce it. After that, startup specialists visit the site and install the necessary equipment in all critical places.
The necessary equipment can be chosen and purchased at the Jukebox Health online store, which offers different equipment options for every taste and budget.
The target audience of the startup is not only the aging people themselves but also family members who care for them. As many Americans age at home rather than in nursing homes, family members are forced to take care of them. Currently, 17 million Americans are involved in such care.
Moreover, 25% of them are simultaneously caring for elderly relatives and raising their own children — making their lives doubly complicated. Naturally, they may be ready to reduce their own problems by paying for home retrofitting, which allows elderly people to perform some tasks independently and reduces associated risks.
Jukebox Health was founded in 2020, but only now has it raised its first investment of $5.09 million to expand its operations.
Interesting Points
Cynically speaking, Jukebox Health is a store selling and installing specialized equipment for a large and rapidly growing market.
The main difference from regular stores selling and installing the same equipment is reaching a different level of trust with customers. This trust is provided by sales consultants who are certified therapists, responsible for equipment selection and installation control.
The growth of the target market is driven by increasing life expectancy. As a result, the percentage of Americans over 65 will rise from 13% in 2010 to 22% by 2050.
The absolute market figures are staggering. Every day (!) 10,000 Americans turn over 65. In the next few decades, their number will grow to 88 million people.
And it’s not exclusively an American market issue; the increase in the percentage and number of elderly people is observed worldwide.
Moreover, falls are a really serious problem for the elderly. It’s not a child who falls, gets up, dusts off, and runs on. In old age, bones become very fragile, and every fall leads to severe consequences.
In 2019, in the US, every 11 seconds, elderly people contacted emergency services with problems arising from falls. Two-thirds of them were taken to the hospital, as these problems were serious.
As a result of such falls, an elderly person dies every 19 minutes in the US. If they survive, the average cost of treating the consequences of falls is $30,000, and the older the person, the higher the cost.
In September, I wrote about the startup Bold, which created an online fitness service for the elderly. Almost its main goal is to improve coordination and balance, which helps reduce the number of falls.
Bold received a new round of investment after signing an agreement with the US government Medicare program, allowing their online fitness to be covered by this insurance. In total, Bold raised $27 million in investments.
Today’s Jukebox Health approached solving the same problem from another side — offering to appropriately retrofit the living places of the elderly.
Importantly, this is not a competing but a complementary property — suggesting that different types of services targeting the same elderly audience need to establish closer partnerships to increase the effectiveness of their own promotion without significant additional costs.
Where to run
The overall direction is the market of services for a large and growing audience of elderly people.
However, it’s absolutely wrong to think that these can only be medical and related services, as in the case of today’s Jukebox Health or Bold.
The thing is, “60 is the new 40.” Modern elderly are active people, actively spending money. If we look within the overall economy, household expenditures of elderly people have been rapidly growing since the early 2000s — and by 2040 will approach the share of expenditures of traditionally most active age groups: 30-49 and 50-64 years.
Moreover, the amount of money spent by people over 50 on leisure, travel, restaurants, and clothing already exceeds what people under 50 spend on the same things. And by 2040, this difference will become even more striking, as seen in the image above.
To put it another way — if Americans over 50 were a separate country, its economy would be the third largest in the world, behind only the US and China!
I particularly draw your attention to the fact that there’s a separate large audience — people who have to take care of their relatives due to their illnesses, injuries, or age.
There are more than 50 million such people in the US alone. And at least 17 million of them, as inferred from the image at the beginning of the review, are people forced to take care of their close ones due to age.
These people are also the target audience for elderly services. Today’s Jukebox Health sells its services to them, as it allows them to spend less effort on care and avoid the risks and even greater effort expenditure due to potential consequences of falls.
Additionally, more specialized services are emerging, targeting this audience. For example, Wellthy, created a service helping these people solve a whole range of organizational, financial, and emotional problems.
The startup’s specificity is that they sell their service to companies! Because 75% of company employees are involved in some way in caring for their close ones — causing them to miss workdays, and when at work, they perform worse due to stress. Wellthy helps company employees spend less effort and nerves on caring for their close ones, as a result of which productivity in the company increases, and companies are willing to pay for it. Wellthy has raised $78 million in investments.
A similar direction is taken by the startup ianacare. They have raised $18.1 million (new investments were received after my review).
In general, there are many different options for entering the market of services for the elderly and their relatives — online and offline clubs for socializing elderly people, banks for the elderly, communities, and marketplaces for the elderly, etc. I won’t list them all here, but if you’re interested in this topic, feel free to browse through my reviews of startups that have created services for the elderly.
But this is indeed a big and growing topic. And most importantly — there are already enough examples that can be taken and copied.
About the Company
Jukebox Health
Website: jukeboxhealth.com
Latest Round: $5.09M, November 28, 2023
Total Investments: $5.09M, Rounds: 1