The Rise of the Rest by Steve Case

Author:Steve Case
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Published: 2022-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

An Omaha Startup’s Family Values

The winner of the Nebraska Rise of the Rest pitch competition was LifeLoop, an app-based connection service for families with elder adults in care facilities and assisted living. The founder of LifeLoop, Amy Johnson, who graduated from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln with a degree in human resources and family science, had never aspired to be an entrepreneur. After a number of years working in various capacities for Mutual of Omaha, she took a job running sales and marketing for her father-in-law, an entrepreneur who had started an insurance company. She was starting to feel restless, wanting a new challenge when one presented itself.

Amy’s husband Kent’s elderly grandmother had been placed in a memory care facility, and the family was struggling to keep track of what was happening to her. The worst problem was the lack of communication. Amy’s father-in-law, the primary advocate, would show up and be given a surprise laundry list of issues, and a demand to pay for more services, without a coherent explanation of why his mother’s needs had changed. He wanted to do right by his mother, but he felt out of the loop. “We always felt like it was very reactive,” Amy said. “We’d go to call her, and she wouldn’t answer, so we’d call the front desk, and there had been a shift change. Nobody had a way to know what happened that day, to accurately communicate it to us. That just created a lot of assumptions. Assumptions are usually not great because you make up a scenario in your head that you’re then believing.” There was also a quality-of-life issue in finding ways to engage grandma with her community and with family across the country.

Amy and Kent, a commodities trader, knew nothing about the senior living industry, but they strongly believed there had to be a better way. Along with their friend Phil, a lawyer, they began doing research about creating an app that would help keep families connected while providing a needed backup for staff. The simple idea started with the thought, “There has to be a better way.”

It was a grueling process of trial and error. “We were so naive,” Amy said, describing those early days. “None of us knew how to build software. Now we do. None of us were from senior living. We just started saying, ‘Okay, what step needs to happen first?’ At that point, we engaged with a freelancer, and it did not go well. Not because of them. We had no idea what we were doing. Then we found a software company based in Omaha, called Aviture. They do a lot of government contracts, but those contracts come in waves. During the downtime, they wanted other projects to work on in what they called the Garage. They took us on and were a huge part of us getting off the ground with that initial product.”

The app is simple to use and comprehensive, with full communications and record-keeping functions. It allows residents to

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