Candoo Tech, an AgeTech Collaborative™ startup participant, provides tech support and training designed for older adults to help them become digitally literate to stay safe, independent and connected. With clients that include health plans, hospitals, senior living communities and individual consumers, Candoo Tech is helping older adults realize they “can do” it.
Candoo Tech’s founder, president and CEO, Liz Hamburg, sat down with us to tell us more about the company’s offerings and mission.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Can you tell us about Candoo Tech?
We are one of the leading providers of tech support and training specifically designed for older adults. We work remotely with our clients to help them get comfortable with their technology through a combination of one-to-one training, online support group sessions and a growing library of on-demand content. Our training gives them the confidence to use technology to improve their lives.
What’s the scope of the technology you work with?
We typically work on devices where we can remote in so we can help someone directly by sharing the screen — primarily smartphones, laptops, computers and tablets.
Is there any bootstrapping involved — where you already need a certain amount of technical know-how before you can get started?
We have worked with many clients who have absolutely zero technical knowledge and have never used a device.
For example, we had one client who was given a tablet and we helped her set it up, because she’d never learned to use one before. Her very first session was with our tech concierge, who called her on the phone. He helped her get onto a shared screen and literally showed her where the power button was, where the volume controls were, and other basics of the tablet.
A few days later, she called back because she didn’t have an email address, so in another quick session, we got her set up with email. A month or two later, she called again and we helped her download her healthcare provider’s app, which she used to get in touch with her doctor. So she went from literally never having touched a tablet before to being able to use it to communicate with her doctor in just a few months.
What sets Candoo Tech apart from tech support services from, say, a big box electronics store?
We’re not just about fixing what’s broken or not working; we’re about teaching and empowering people to give them confidence to know that they can do something — that’s literally our name.
A lot of it is about helping people realize the why, instead of the what, of technology. Someone might ask me if I want an iPad, and I’d think, “No thanks — what do I need an iPad for?” But if that person asked me, “Would you like to see pictures of your grandchildren? Would you like to play card games with your friends who are out of state?” then I would understand the benefit. We help people see how technology can improve their lives.
These improvements are important. The American Medical Association has called digital access a social determinant of health because it’s critical for decreasing social isolation and for gaining access to things like healthcare, food and transportation. If you don’t have access to technology and the ability to use it, that has a significant impact on your health outcomes.
What inspired you to found the company in the first place?
Like so many people in the AgeTech space, I was inspired by my family members. My father was always the first guy in line at Best Buy to get the newest gadget, and he had Geek Squad on speed dial. As he got older, he had macular degeneration, was hard of hearing and had mobility and cognitive issues. At that point, Geek Squad just wasn’t cutting it for him. I’d been a tech entrepreneur for 20-plus years, and I realized there wasn’t anything out there that could help him. That was my original impetus to start Candoo Tech.
We’re a for-profit company, but we’re also a public benefit corporation. Even before the pandemic, we had social impact goals around using technology to help improve the lives of older adults. So from a fiduciary standpoint, we have an obligation to maximize shareholder value, both economically as well as from an impact standpoint.
What’s next for Candoo Tech?
We’ve pushed ourselves into healthcare more. We’ve got some exciting pilots going on, and we have our first health plan customer with a large health plan in New York.
There’s recently been another huge development: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) came out with a new ruling that requires all Medicare Advantage plans to provide digital health literacy training. We are now the leading provider of digital literacy training and support for older adults, and the fact that CMS has recognized digital literacy is a key part of health equity and that the plans have to offer it — that's really a game changer, and it puts us in a really interesting and important position.
The healthcare space is critical. One of the things I set out to do is build a for-profit business with strong culture and values, that also has an impact on people’s lives. I feel like we’ve done that, and it’s exciting.
Visit Candoo Tech’s website to learn more.
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