NextDoorHero is a project we have briefly experimented when participating YC in the summer of 2016. The thinking behind NextDoorHero is that:
- California has a caregiver shortage, finding great professional caregivers is really difficult
- 80% of a caregiver's task is doing common household chores, can we somehow use the normal population to help seniors who only needed help around the house?
- Everybody who receives care would prefer to have caregiver who lives closeby to come in
We tested this idea for about 3 weeks in Mountain View and neighboring cities, and realized it wasn't a viable business mode because:
- We couldn't find a consistent, cost-effective way to recruit people who want to use their spare time to help seniors
- Some seniors expressed the concern of credibility because professional caregivers are properly trained with first aid and CPR-C
- More than 50% of the early clients used our service as a cheaper alternative to hiring home cleaners and yard work helpers. But most people who want to serve seniors don't want to do hard labour work around the house, this created a bad first time experiences for a number of our caregivers.
