Young Tech Entrepreneurs Develop Products for Seniors

When 73-year-old Ralph Harris walks down the street in Hayes Valley, he sees scores of interesting young entrepreneurs. But the San Francisco resident, who once grew his own small firm into a successful business, said he feels invisible to them.

"We see all this entrepreneurial energy, but once you get to be old, you disappear," Harris said. "They knock you over running with their cell phones to their big white buses."

So he was surprised when some startup founders asked him to join a focus group - at the Sequoias, his Cathedral Hill retirement community.

The focus group is part of a growing movement by young tech professionals to build consumer products geared toward seniors - whether it's developing ways to protect credit cards from scams or on-demand car apps for older folks.

"With most entrepreneurship, the person creating the solution is the person who has the problem," said Katy Fike, who holds a doctorate in gerontology and is advising a group of 11 startups that are working on services for people 50 and older. "A unique challenge of this space is that there might be someone who's 85 or 90 and they know the problem but they're not in a place to necessarily start a company. Why are we still taking care of people the same way we did 30 years ago?"

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Young Tech Entrepreneurs Develop Products for Seniors