An AgeTech Collaborative™ startup participant, OndeCare connects professional caregivers with families who need in-home care for loved ones of all ages and needs, all backed by concierge support. By giving caregivers control over scheduling and reimbursement, OndeCare helps match caregivers with the best opportunities for them, while ensuring care recipients get vetted, qualified caregivers well suited to their needs.
We sat down with Nicole Paolozzi, OndeCare founder and CEO, to learn more about the company’s solution, how it works and why it’s a great time to be in AgeTech.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What is OndeCare?
OndeCare is short for “on-demand care.” We’re the only matching and bidding home care marketplace that’s backed by concierge-level service. We have a network of professional caregivers including EMTs, medical students, nurses and teachers who can come into your home and care for your loved one.
The industry average that caregivers make for traditional home care is $14 an hour, which is impossible to live on in this country. I built OndeCare in a way that allows our caregivers to bid a rate that makes it worth their while and a schedule that allows them to succeed. Essentially, with OndeCare, our caregivers — who we call “heroes” — control what they make and when they work.
How does the OndeCare platform work?
The client starts the process. For example, you could specify that you want someone to accompany your mom to her book club to make sure she can ambulate to and from the car safely, then have brunch with her and maybe do a little light housekeeping afterward. Our algorithm analyzes that information, along with your budget and other criteria. It then sends the job out to our heroes in the area who would be a good match and tells them, “Here’s an opportunity.”
Our heroes then have full control to bid on it or not, depending on whether the budget and timing meets their needs. This generates a short list of good matches and you, the client, can look at their star ratings, their references that we’ve collected, and even a video introduction. Then you decide who to book, and you don’t pay for the care until it is actually fulfilled.
Meanwhile, we have a concierge team available to answer any questions, and our app has a communication system for voice or video chats, so you can send messages back and forth.
It sounds super convenient.
We’re trying to eliminate a lot of the work associated with managing care. For example, if a caregiver’s schedule changes unexpectedly, they can ask the client if they want them to start the job earlier or later, or if they want to cancel instead. If the client cancels, OndeCare automatically creates a new job, and new heroes can bid on the job. This also makes it easy for grown children who live far from their parents to manage their parents’ care through OndeCare.
So that’s your B2C model, but you also have a B2B2C model?
We have an employer platform with two hospital systems that offer OndeCare as a perk to their employees. That started during COVID-19, when we approached them and said, “Hey, we can help your staff get to the front lines during this pandemic” — and we did. We helped their employees get to work by caring for their families. The employer platform tracks adoption and utilization of OndeCare by all the employees of those two hospital systems, and we calculate a return on investment for those employers.
That B2B2C was my first go-to-market strategy, but sometimes the B2B2C route with employers is slow going. Trying to get the information to the actual employees at the right time is a challenge — it can feel like pushing rope. Our biggest growth channels are through hospital discharge, hospice, and home care and home health agencies that refer patients to OndeCare.
What was the catalyst for founding OndeCare?
The time came when we had to move my father-in-law, Ray, into an assisted living facility, where he developed a UTI. Because of the infection, the facility wanted to move him to the nursing home side — but he didn’t want to go. So my 5-year-old daughter and I actually moved into his tiny one-room apartment to help care for him so he could stay in the assisted living side.
I had been thinking about the concept for OndeCare for years, and that’s when I decided to try it out. I used Facebook to find caregivers, and I asked them that one most important question: “What would make it worth your while to take care of Ray 12 hours a day in his room?” And the answers were simple: Caregivers wanted control over their schedule and a little more money than the going rate. Through this process I found someone, worked out a schedule that worked for them, and within a month Ray was back on his feet. It was like a miracle.
That experience was the impetus for me saying, “I can do this.” There are other more technical solutions out there, but I knew that a better solution needed to be built around the caregivers’ needs to make it worth their while to join the caregiving workforce. And that’s what we built with OndeCare.
What are some obstacles you’ve had to overcome, and how have you navigated them?
I’m a first-time founder, and I originally thought, “Once I build this, of course investors will want to invest!” — which was overly optimistic and naive. I’ve since learned that investors are typically quite cautious about marketplace-type investments.
I was able to raise funding, but it was in fits and starts: Here’s a few hundred thousand dollars; here’s a few hundred thousand more. And each chunk of money would get us to an “Aha!” moment where we would know what to do next. So I think my biggest hurdle was not knowing the fundraising climate, especially in the last couple of years.
About how I’ve navigated that challenge: I don’t feel the risk first, I feel the positive first. People think that having resilience is about being impervious to risk, but it’s not that. It’s that people with resilience are eternally optimistic: “I just got turned down by 50 investors. OK, but what about this next one?”
Do you have any final thoughts to share?
Timing is everything. Thanks to AARP, other organizations and all the AgeTech startups out there, we’re finally talking about caregiving for our elders, our families and caregiving in general. It’s part of the larger conversation in society — it was even a big topic in the 2024 elections. So today, it’s a “thing”; it was not a “thing” when I started OndeCare. I had to explain to investors why AgeTech is a good investment. But now is a great time to be in this space and driving for solutions, and I’m glad to be part of it.
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