Like most other new business ventures, AgeTech startups need to attract investors to fuel their innovation and grow their business. Yet, many founders find this essential part of the startup journey to be an anxiety-riddled ride into a mysterious “black box” — but it doesn’t have to be that way. The AgeTech Collaborative™ from AARP includes dozens of investor participants, giving us a unique opportunity to help give startups and other ecosystem collaborators a candid look at what drives investment decisions in the longevity space, to help them make informed decisions.
To get one insider’s perspective on how investors are thinking about the AgeTech space, we spoke with Rob Runett of Motley Fool Ventures, an AgeTech Collaborative™ investor participant and venture capital fund focusing on software, platforms and tech-enabled services — including solutions in the AgeTech space. With a front-row seat to the evolving AgeTech landscape, Runett shared his perspective on what Motley Fool Ventures looks for in startups, the importance of passionate founders, and what it considers a winning investment.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Please tell us about your work at Motley Fool Ventures.
We’re a sister company of the Motley Fool financial services company, which has been around since 1993. In 2017, we started thinking about venture capital. The idea was that Motley Fool’s members — those who subscribe to the Motley Fool’s investing services — were looking for some different places to invest, and we wanted to give them an opportunity to get involved in venture capital.
We launched our first fund in 2018, and we raised $150 million, which was beyond our wildest dreams. All our investors are Motley Fool members. We launched a second fund, which we closed in 2024.
What sorts of companies are your funds focused on?
We’re primarily focused on tech startups, and we’ll start talking seriously to companies when they’re getting close to $1 million in annualized revenue and close to 100% year-over-year growth — though we’re willing to meet with them much earlier than that. We’re investing in a lot of different sectors, including FinTech, AdTech and even various areas of healthcare. The common denominator is this: We’re looking for sectors where there is a true need for disruption.
What characteristics of a startup are attractive to you, from an investor’s perspective?
Because we invest in companies so early, it’s really all about the founder and the problem they’re working on. We want to see that they’re extraordinarily passionate about solving that problem, because the first solution they come up with might not ultimately be the solution that takes their company across the finish line. And that’s fine — we actually expect that. The key is that they’re “in love with” the problem.
We’re also looking for things like: Do they have a clear understanding of their ideal customer profile? What is the desperate need that their customers have that they are willing to pay for? We also want to understand why they and their team are the right people to be building the solution today — at this particular point in time. We don’t expect to get all this information from the first 30-minute phone call, but these are the kinds of questions we want founders to be able to clearly explain in the course of our due diligence.
Can you say more about why you want to know if a founder is the right person “at this particular point in time”?
We like to know if a founder is bringing something new to the problem they’re addressing that wasn’t possible before. We meet a lot of founders who have been working on the same problem for a long time without much success, but now they’ve had a breakthrough — for example, maybe they have new knowledge, or a new team, or a technical advantage they didn’t previously have.
And a founder’s team plays an important role in all this.
Especially in the realm of healthcare, founders are often highly motivated to find solutions because they or a family member have had personal experience dealing with a broken healthcare system. They might even quit their job to focus on a solution. But they don’t always have all the necessary skills for success.
For example, a founder might have the coding experience to develop a great technical solution, but they need to find a co-founder or a team that has the skills that they don’t have — expertise in marketing to get that solution in front of potential customers, for instance. So having a great co-founder or team surrounding and supporting the founder is something that we look for.
What got you interested in the AgeTech space in particular?
Many of our investors are experiencing the felt needs that AgeTech solutions aim to address — they’re caring for aging parents or are dealing with some of the challenges of aging themselves. This is true even for us on the Motley Fool Ventures team.
Another reason is that the technology coming out of AgeTech innovation is fascinating, and the space seems ripe for disruption by some fundamentally new approaches. Take aging in place, for example. With new home sensors and advances in remote monitoring, the question of whether a loved one can age in place versus going to an assisted living facility is a different kind of question than it was a few years ago. Plus, investing in AgeTech makes a lot of sense from a financial perspective when you consider demographic changes in the U.S. and the sheer size of the AgeTech market.
Where do you see the biggest growth opportunities in AgeTech right now?
There are so many different needs that also present opportunities, including Alzheimer’s and dementia care, aging in place, and retirement and financial planning. We’re looking at a lot of different areas, and we don’t know what will be on the other side of some of these breakthrough innovations, such as artificial intelligence (AI). We’re not looking for AI companies per se, but we are interested in founders who are incorporating AI in a way that’s meaningful for building their companies — especially on the operations and sales side of things.
One thing about AgeTech is that the needs aren’t going away, even when the landscape for startups gets difficult. The same services that were needed yesterday are still going to be needed tomorrow, for an even bigger population.
What do you think defines success in AgeTech investing?
The biggest win for us is to make an investment where there’s a ton of alignment across the founder and their team, the Motley Fool Ventures team, and our investors, so that we can all pull in the same direction toward a great outcome. That’s why we’re always excited to meet with founders, even when they’re very early-stage, because we want to understand the challenge they’re trying to solve through their eyes, as someone who is very close to the problem.
Then, ultimately, the biggest win is for those companies to have a great outcome. Typically, that means either going public or getting acquired. That’s a long path, but everyone feels really good about that kind of win at the end of the day.
Want to learn more or connect with investors like Motley Fool Ventures? If you’re already in the AgeTech Collaborative™, log in to explore the ATC Directory and start a conversation. If not, join us today and tap into the power of purpose-driven innovation in AgeTech.
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