Welbi helps staff at senior living communities personalize the experience for residents. The software allows staff to get to know residents better by suggesting questions and helping them fill out an assessment. Then it can match them with other residents who have similar hobbies, are from the same town, or speak the same language. Welbi will make recommendations for events that new residents should join to maximize their engagement and get to know others. It also allows staff in senior living communities to track who attended activities and who hasn’t so that nobody’s forgotten.
Tell us about yourself?
After my grandpa’s health started to decline in 2016, my family moved him into a senior living community where he could meet other residents and where staff would look out for him. Sadly, the opposite happened, and he ended up being socially isolated. He passed away a few months later. For me, that was an awakening. Even though the staff truly wants to provide residents with a personalized experience, they don’t have the resources to do so.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
You need to have motivation, vision and a mission that drives you (beyond just making money) because it does get hard — running your startup is not easy, and entrepreneurship is a roller coaster. You need a reason to get up in the morning, help you go to bed late at night, and persevere whenever it gets hard.
What problem does your business solve?
Senior living community staff want to do everything they can for residents, but they’re overwhelmed with too much administrative work. Furthermore, they don’t have the data and information to personalize experiences for each resident at scale – even when they want to.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
After my grandpa’s health started to decline in 2016, my family moved him into a senior living community where he could meet other residents and where staff would look out for him. Sadly, the opposite happened, and he ended up being socially isolated. He passed away a few months later. For me, that was an awakening. Even though the staff truly wants to provide residents with a personalized experience, they don’t have the resources to do so. Our mission at Welbi is to empower life enrichment staff at senior living communities with the right tools and insights so they can provide residents with personalized experiences.
What is your magic sauce?
Welbi isn’t just easier to use and more powerful than other recreation software platforms – it’s also the only platform that enables data-driven personalization at scale so senior living communities can truly provide the person-centred experiences that every resident deserves.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Within the next 5 years, we expect Welbi to not just be in the conversation, but at the forefront of every retirement and long-term care operator’s initiatives. Welbi won’t just be the leader, it’ll be the standard for senior living communities.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Welbi was originally launched as a wearable technology that connected to smartwatches and sent alerts to caregivers whenever there was a change in the wearer’s habits. But we detected that the residents were either not wearing the bracelets or forgetting to charge them, so we couldn’t really provide the caregivers with the insights they needed. It just wasn’t working. Then we realized that the issue wasn’t about keeping track of residents’ vital signs or habits that way — the issue was that the staff are completely overwhelmed. But failing is a good lesson.
How can people get involved?
We’re hiring for a number of positions – check out all of our open positions at https://welbi.co/careers.
If you’re interested in learning more about Welbi for your senior living community, check us out at https://welbi.co/.