Aloha!
Concluded a start-up journey and refocusing myself.
Before reading this further and to understand the context, please check out the below posts.
Time indeed flies when you do what you like. It’s been almost 16 months.
Today,
We are moving on to different things. We both foresaw this day from the beginning, but he had to try and I wanted to help him achieve his vision.
It is not an easy market to enter, and the product we tried to build is challenging, and disrupt-worthy (from the perspective of the sector, not the technology). Not anyone can implement something like this without everyone being on board.
I learned from him about the senior care health sector in the UK and the challenges they face every day. The staff politics, blame games, and quality of life for both the residents and staff, etc. It is clear as a crystal if we look through a macro lens.
He showed me evidence of why a system like this needed to closely examine and fix issues. Because they conduct supervision via a paper and it is only for formality in almost all cases. No insights are being generated and no issues are being monitored in a follow-up manner. The only time some actions are taken only if there is any noise.
I saw the impact Jijo’s vision can make and I believed its core idea - A data-driven approach to staff supervision in care homes.
Sometimes, it is very difficult to convince an idea or thought to someone. They all ask for product market fit. We had a lot of disagreement conversations about this. We knew that It was there but it is a blue ocean market. We tried open1 and closed2 systems, but to develop an MVP we needed funds. Prepared multiple decks and prototypes for investment-seeking purposes, but realized that it is not just that easy to convince someone to release funds. Because it is a long game and it takes time to generate profit. It is not suitable for the current market situation.
Slowly we realized we needed someone from the care home industry to back up our idea for the trial run. He prepared a lot of in-depth questionnaire workflows to gather data, but due to their unfamiliarity, care workers hesitated. Remembered the good old saying, humans fear what they don't understand.
They all see it as breaking their comfort zones. But it is not. At a point, I understood that one needs to manually do these surveys and generate insights to showcase that it won’t do any harm, instead it will open a path to address their issues and it can be transparent.
We both knew that a system like this is necessary for the coming years as the population of people over 85 is projected to nearly double by 2050, increasing the need for care homes. From his stories, I understood that problems with staff turnover and care quality are common.
Although it is essential and necessary, it is not easy and convenient to conduct supervision every now and then - we are talking about 20 to 50 staff per home. At first, everyone thought that we were simply replacing supervision with these surveys, but it was not, we were just preparing the supervisors before the actual face-to-face supervision with relevant pain points to address. The care home can be ready for their new CQC inspection anytime they want because it was planned to be conducted every month randomly.
Pivots
We pivoted the overall workflow several times. Conducted research in his care worker’s community. Did one-to-one interviews to understand how they all feel about the current methods and practices, and our suggestions. They were not happy and they all had concerns, but no one wanted to address them because of fear and lack of support from the management.
He was 100 percent sure that he was on the right path, all we looked for was the light at the end of the tunnel - unfortunately not visible, yet!
But he has still that feeling that it is there and maybe he just needed to course correct. He is not ready to give up. I never saw a founder like him in my real life.
Conclusion
He considered pausing this journey several times from January, and I was okay with it. As I said earlier, start-up life is a roller-coaster ride, a lot of emotions and uncertainties are there - no cakewalk.
We may not know if the job is there tomorrow, just work towards the vision every day. He wrote about my impact on his entrepreneurial journey - I really liked that shout-out.
In August he decided that he needed to take a break as he is also sunsetting his second product. We both believe that it is for the good and maybe our paths may cross again. I learned from him that decision-making is not easy, it’s easy to preach, but it is not easy to do. Make a decision and live with it. If you can, control the damage. Otherwise, learn from it and continue the journey.
Aloha3 and good luck on your journey!
A news, job, and professional profile-building platform dedicated only to healthcare workers.
An anonymous survey platform controlled by care homes, but in full privacy and security.
The Hawaiian word "aloha" can be used to mean both "hello" and "goodbye.