It’s called the Sandwich Generation for a reason.
In the United States, millions of people are caring for elderly or sick parents. The often demanding caregiving demands of working and raising children at the same time can take a huge toll.
It’s not uncommon for caregivers to feel overwhelmed by the administrative and logistical complexities of caring for their parents. All right is a startup that aims to help caregivers be more equipped to handle every aspect of their various responsibilities by acting as a self-described “tech-enabled care concierge.” Its founder, Lindsay Jurist-Rosner, experienced the challenges of nursing first-hand. She spent 28 years caring for her mother with multiple sclerosis. During that time, she also worked as a full-time marketing manager at Microsoft.
Image credits: All right
Jurist-Rosner founded Wellthy in 2015 (the startup actually Introduced that year at TechCrunch Disrupt as a Battlefield player) to help people like her who juggle work and care. At first, the company offered its services directly to consumers, but by 2017 it began working with employers so businesses could cover Wellthy’s costs as an employee benefit. Companies like Salesforce and Snap signed up immediately.
The way Wellthy works is by hiring “skilled” people, many of whom are social workers, and connecting them with their families, helping them with follow-up doctor’s appointments, providing transportation to those appointments, and getting needed equipment and supplies etc.
“Our goal is to make their lives better and easier while also helping them save money,” Jurist-Rosner said. “Care is so expensive and opaque — and access is an issue.”
Considering that one of the reasons people leave their jobs is because it is difficult to care for a loved one, employers are interested in helping their employees with care.
“It’s not an uncommon issue, but it’s rarely discussed,” said jurist Rosner. “It feels like mental health and women’s health are starting to get some well-deserved attention, but nursing is still really getting attention.”
Wellthy’s business “exploded” in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Jurist-Rosner said, as care became more challenging and “employers were figuring out how best to support their employees.” fnumber of lives covered by rom 2019 to 2022 All right Benefits increased from about 100,000 to 2 million. While the company declined to disclose hard revenue figures, Jurist-Rosner said the company’s revenue grew 17-fold from 2019 to 2022.
Today, Wellthy works with health plans and hundreds of companies, including 30 of the Fortune 500 employers, 6 of the top 10 employers, and companies such as Best Buy, Cisco, and Hilton. To support its continued growth, Wellthy just raised $25.5 million in funding. To expand its product range, the start-up acquired Lantern is a public benefit corporation formed in 2018 to provide guidance to individuals and families in life before and after death.
Wellthy still has a private payments business, but isn’t promoting it. It exists primarily so that if an employee leaves a company that pays for access to Wellthy’s services, they can still get help.
In total, Wellthy has raised more than $77 million since its inception. Its most recent funding round was a funding round, but Jurist-Rosner said that wasn’t the company’s focus.
Founder and CEO Lindsay Jurist-Rosner with her parents. Image credits: All right
“It’s an opportunistic raise for us,” she said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do on the technology side to support our growth, and we’re working with some health insurers. So we’re hoping to continue to support a lot of momentum with some real investments.”
Previous backers Hearst and Eldridge co-led the financing (both also clients of Wellthy), which included participation from new backers Citi Impact Fund, Cercano Management (Paul Allen’s family fund) and Stardust Equity, as well as existing backers such as ReThink Impact.
Currently, New York City-based Wellthy has approximately 350 employers, 90 percent of whom are full-time employees.
Eldridge Chairman and CEO Todd Boehly, bTrust Wellthy for both Define and drive innovation in the nursing market.
Ryan Alam, senior vice president of the Citi Impact Fund, noted that one in five adults in the United States is a caregiver.
“That’s a big number and it’s only going to grow over the next few decades,” he added. “Anyone who’s ever cared for a loved one can probably tell you that it’s one of the hardest jobs they’ve ever had. one. In fact, people are dropping out of the workforce at an alarming rate as they grapple with the challenges of home care. Wellthy is the market leader in solving this problem and it is an honor to support their mission. “
