Snow and I met for the first time in mid-2018. I was studying software engineering in UNSW, and wanted to apply my skills to improve healthcare. But I knew nothing about healthcare, so I used emails, my connections, free trial of LinkedIn premium etc., and reached out to over 200 people.
Of them, I felt Snow was the most knowledgeable.
"I'll give you one hour per fortnight."
Back then, while testing things out we decided to take part in 2018-19 MBA Blockchain Venture Competition. There were three of us, and the idea was to apply it in care sector to improve visibility. We won, and got some press!
After we won the competition, we kept working on this for a while over the weekends. We all had full-time jobs. But then, we found out the idea we were working on - for doctors - wouldn't work. And we also had a cofounder break-up.
In January 2019, we joined Antler Sydney - an accelerator program to fulfil the vision to help families of people with complex conditions book and manage care in one place.
Snow and I explored the idea with hundreds of people. We were more sure than ever that there was a need. And people were paying currently $6k/year using gov funding for humans to manage services. We wanted to charge 20x less for much better support.
To the point where one of our early 5 customers were selling on our behalf during another session.
We signed up 5 paying customers, and engaged with ~300 more, while still building the product. We formed partnerships with 2 large care organisations. Signed contracts with 10 providers. But then
There is no market anymore. It's dead. Is it?
We didn't want to leave the idea and go back to our jobs. We started thinking about other more suitable ways we could help people, that still ties in with our vision.
Then this happened.
We started seeing more and more posts every single day from carers looking for online support for their loved ones.
While carers are looking - providers are adapting to go online. But it's fragmented.
We saw an opportunity to really focus on the niche market of online support before coronavirus is over. We can later expand this to tie it into our bigger vision.
On March 28th, we decided to pivot. we quickly created an MVP within next 5 days at humanecare.com.au.
We finished MVP on 2nd April. And now are actively building our listings. We're currently trying to solve the marketplace chicken-and-egg problem.
The best way to solve this would be to make the experience really easy for both providers and carers. But this requires a lot of technical work, and we want to do this quick, to grow.
Which means it requires some money. This is where WeFunder can help.