LOOP, an AgeTech Collaborative™ startup participant, is an innovative online platform dedicated to reducing social isolation and loneliness among older adults. By offering engaging virtual events and regular personal interactions, LOOP fosters emotional connection and wellness for older adults, building a community one person at a time.
We sat down with LOOP’s co-founder and CEO, Margot Biane Merrick, who shared insights about the company, its mission and its vision for the future.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Please tell us about LOOP.
Loop is an online content engagement platform; we offer events that focus on mind, body and soul to help relieve social isolation and loneliness in older adults by giving them a sense of purpose and engagement. We have more than 120 classes and events every month, including tai chi, meditation, book clubs, concerts, strength and balance exercises, world tours and much more. We’re called LOOP because we think of ourselves as “looping” seniors together through our events, which people can attend via their laptops or mobile phones.
Our events are always live, and each one has a host. For example, as people log in to the platform for a tour of Paris, our host will greet them, then turn the tour over to the tour guide. The host then manages the chat function, to facilitate conversation among the attendees and to make sure their questions get answered. We do record the events so we can post them in our library; we currently have more than 2,000 recordings on our platform.
Are all your events group-oriented?
We also have more informal settings where people can just chat. We offer one-to-one virtual companionship, where older adults can meet with a trained LOOP host once a week or once a month, for example, with whom they can form a meaningful relationship to stay connected.
We also started LOOP Cafe, which people can join while they eat so they can have some conversation and don’t have to eat alone. My dream is to have this available 24/7, so people can pop in anytime they want to have conversation in a small-group setting.
What was your inspiration for founding LOOP?
Ever since I was very young, I’ve had a compassion and love for older adults. My grandmother had Alzheimer’s, and she ended up going to a senior living home. For nine years, every single day someone in our family went to visit her, including the grandkids. When I’d go visit her, I would see people there who were isolated and lonely, and it broke my heart.
So I really had this calling. In college I took a lot of gerontology classes, and later I ended up founding an in-home care company for aging adults. Fast forward to the COVID-19 pandemic. I was talking with my LOOP co-founder and she mentioned that she had trained someone virtually — and that’s when I realized we could start a company based on the virtual model. So we founded LOOP to offer virtual companionship for older adults, and from there it spiraled into having all these virtual events, and now LOOP Cafe.
What kind of obstacles have you encountered as you've been building this company?
Founding a startup is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, especially fundraising. There are a lot of people coming into the space, which is wonderful. At the same time, investors want to know all kinds of things like your annual recurring revenue, and they always want to see more, so you’re constantly chasing that and trying to scale.
But we know we have a proven solution, and we know people want it right now. So every day I wake up and look forward to the future, and I work to get LOOP in front of as many people as possible.
You mentioned scaling. What is your vision for that?
We want to scale across different verticals, including working with payers in healthcare. LOOP helps alleviate loneliness and isolation, so we could have a real impact through the mental health component of healthcare plans — because when you’re isolated and lonely, you have a higher risk of heart disease, stroke and dementia.
We’d also like to scale to community-based organizations. For example, we work with companies that deliver food and medically tailored meals. They bundle LOOP with their services, so when someone is going to sit down and eat, they also have LOOP to give them a sense of engagement and community at the same time.
What else is on the horizon for LOOP?
We envision working more with home care companies and hospice caregivers, where every single caregiver would have LOOP on their phone so that the care recipient could use it. We’d also love to work with senior housing, and to move beyond our B2B2C model and offer a subscription-based B2C plan. There is so much we can do with the LOOP platform, and I’m passionate about giving people a place where they can pop on, get engaged and know that they can be part of a community.
Visit LOOP’s website to learn more.
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