Innovation Spotlight:

DUOS

As part of our Reinventing Caregiving blog, we will be featuring different innovators from the caregiving space in our “Innovation Spotlight” series. This month, we spoke to Karl Ulfers, Co-Founder and CEO of DUOS.

DUOS, a company that provides a personal assistant service to older adults so that they can age independently at home while providing peace of mind to their caregivers, was launched last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The Longevity Project recently sat down with DUOS co-founder and CEO, Karl Ulfers, to talk about launching a company during a pandemic and how DUOS operates. 

Why was DUOS created? 

Our founding team decided to launch DUOS because all of us have had direct caregiving experience ourselves and we saw a clear need. As you care for a loved one, you end up having to do a lot of tasks and it can create a lot of stress for caregivers. We created DUOs to take care of those tasks for the older adult, so that they can get the fundamentals needed to age in a safe way. We help with everything from arranging transportation to setting up doctor’s visits to helping them get groceries and arranging house cleaning (which is super important when it comes to reducing fall risk). These things really help older adults to age at home, since 9 out of 10 older adults don’t want to leave home while aging. 

What was the experience of launching DUOS during the COVID pandemic like? 

It’s been amazing to build DUOS in a pandemic, because we thought we would need to be in-person support first, virtual support second. The pandemic has taught us that it’s actually the opposite: we can do a lot virtually to support older adults and their caregivers. We’ve learned that for every four virtual interactions, we need one in person interaction. We’ve found that there is a need for social interaction, but that’s not always the first rank order for a lot of older adults. Since we start by being a personal assistant, we are able to earn their trust and then we are able to address social isolation issues as they come up. As far as building the team, we are a fully remote organization in many different cities across the country, so it’s been natural for all of us and we’ve gotten very comfortable with daily standups via Zoom and remote client pitches. 

Are there any other innovators in this space that you’re excited about?

There are numerous types of solutions that are coming into this space. We’ve learned that today’s older adults don’t think of themselves as seniors, they think of themselves as fiercely independent older adults who are aging. Since they think of themselves differently, traditional solutions like assisted living and home health aides don't necessarily fit with what this generation is looking for, so we think that this is where we can come into play and serve as a sort of connective tissue to help them get all the services they’d need. As far as other companies that have been innovators in this space, Ask Umbrella has a very different model than ours but is trying to solve a similar need. You have companies that are focused more intently on trying to solve social isolation, like Papa Health, which uses college kids and family on demand. You also have organizations like Home Thrive that solve household issues. There are lots of others, but these are the three that we’re really watching. 

Who serves as a personal assistant at DUOS?

We’ve done a lot of research on older adults and also learned by talking to our members that we should really tap into what is known as the 9-3 movement, which is made up primarily of stay at home parents who are looking for something to do while their kids are at school. These are typically adults between 30-50 years old who have either been caregivers to their own children or to aging parents and grandparents. Primarily, the older adults are interested in assistants who have caregiving experience, and they primarily prefer females as their companions. That has been an incredible group for us- there are about 11 million adults who fall into the 9-3 movement and have great life experiences and are usually pretty highly educated, and they’re very motivated to do this work because of the mission and the impact they can have. These are what we’re screening for as we’re building out our workforce of personal assistants.

On your website, many of the testimonials feature stories about how DUOS helped a client secure a COVID vaccine appointment. How do you see this experience benefitting DUOS in the future?

We’ve discovered that what we’ve learned from this experience tees up how we can help with other vaccines and preventative care. COVID has really changed the digital utilization patterns of older adults- there are a lot of older adults who spend dozens of hours per week on social media, but this hasn’t necessarily translated to being able to go through booking an online vaccination appointment or doctor’s appointment. We’ve had to really be an advocate for older adults who are trying to secure their first appointment or who’ve missed their second appointments, and we think we can make an amazing impact in this way in the future, as people need boosters or preventative medical care.

As you’ve built DUOS, what are some of the challenges you’ve faced?

The challenge for any company like ours is figuring out our product market fit. There is a very clear demand and need for us from the older adult and caregiver standpoint. The main challenge has been how do we get our product to its targeted market? We have developed a two prong approach- one prong is going directly to the consumer, so a subscription service that people can buy, and the other has been going to the enterprise, so we are working with Medicare and selling to insurance providers and even some employers. The direct to consumer side has made us think of what we can do for these adults from an in person versus remote perspective, as well as how we keep everyone informed. One of the largest challenges we’ve faced is how do we get connected to an older adult? One way is when an older adult finds our product and signs up- the challenge there is making sure you earn their trust and also identifying who their caregiver and social support is, because the last thing we want is to have the caregiver and support networks out of the loop. On the flip side of this, when a caregiver comes to us, it has been a challenge to understand which mode to go into. One option is to be invisible to everyone but the caregiver, which is the exception to the rule. The other option is to have the caregiver introduce us to the older adult, and we check in once a week in order to build a relationship. This can be tricky to establish as well, because the older adult may initially not see a need for DUOS in their life. 

What are you most excited for in the future for DUOS? 

We’re most excited about the impact that DUOS can have and the amazing potential of the mission. By 2050, 90 million Americans will be over 65 years old, and we’ll also be at a place where there has never been further geographic distribution between caregivers and their support systems. So we see an incredible opportunity to be a force to help these older adults live their fullest lives.