Lily Vittayarukskul (photo above) studied aerospace engineering when his aunt was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. Her aunt lived under the same roof as Vittayarksukuru, and she was growing and helping her to raise her. “We took care of her,” she remembered.
After the chemotherapy, Vittayarukskul's aunt was “very weak,” so her family was born in Cambodia and sailed for about two and a half years about the need for long -term care every day. “It has finished us financially,” she told TechCrunch.
The emotional and financial impacts were very trauma, and Vittayarkskuru urged her to involve her research in hereditary and data science.
In December 2021, she established Waterlily, a startup of San Francisco aimed at supporting individuals and advisors to navigate long -term care options through cost and funding strategy. According to Vittayarukskul, the goal is to make it easier for financial advisors and insurance agencies to “recommend appropriate financial products based on the predicted long -term care needs.”
Vittayarukskul explained: But in many cases it can be too late.
Waterly uses artificial intelligence to predict the needs and costs of the future long -term care of the family, and leads to “planning and knowing the right way to pay.” “It may mean that you buy life insurance with a long -term care rider, buy a dedicated LTC policy, use a pension, or just raise your own money.”
Waterlily prediction AI can be used for individuals over 40 years old.
The company withdraws more than 500 million data points and machine learning algorithms using AI modeling software to “predict highly personalized care and cost”, “when”, “how”, “how”, “how”. What are you predicting someone's “how much”? Potential long -term care needs.
“We have long -term care providers, government databases, academic research, and formal data sharing contracts with individual users.” Included. Vittayarukskul states that it will complete a similar contract with the insurance company to safely consume anonymized data.
Vittayarukskul initially began Watelily as a solo founder until the small angel investor Evan Ehrenberg arrived. Ermberg, who had previously established Clara Health and sold it, helped early research and was impressed with the industry. Curious, he tested the platform himself and was shocked by long -term care prediction.
That experience attracted him deeply. He saw the similarities between long -term care and problems encountered in clinical trials. Clara Health helped tens of thousands of patients find the exam, but he is not the most advanced treatment, but does not cover the name brand drugs that require insurance, so it is common to existing drugs. I saw how many people spent them for imitation products. Long -term care has also realized the same. Vittayarukskul says that health insurance does not cover it, and many are not ready for financial burden.
“After working together for six months, we knew it was very fit, and made him a co -founder,” she said.
EHRENBERG's own back story is interesting. After graduating from UC BERKELEY at the age of 16, he became the youngest Neurology of MIT. Today, he is also in charge of Waterlie's highest execution.
Stands out in a complex space
There are other tools that are useful for long -term plans, but Vittayarukskul believes that they are different from Waterlilly's more personalized products. For example, the GenWORTH care cost calculator indicates the average of the ZIP code. NaviPlan, Emoney, MoneyGuidePro, and RightCapital are a widespread financial planning platform, including basic long -term care modules or cost computers.
According to her, “These tools help advisors to model the scenario of retirement and insurance, but their ltcs usually have a financial plan by introducing noise to the basic default simulation. In contrast to the national average or Monte -Cal Rocsimulation, Waterly is “blended with a deep predictive platform.”
Water Lee only released the platform in March 2024, so there is no metric compared to the previous year, but Vittayarukskul is TechCrunch, for today's monthly repetition revenue (MRR), the first month of today. I told Techniccrunch that it exceeded 22 times. market. She had a 58 % MRR growth rate for that month because her release was 58 %.
The company currently has eight “major” enterprise customers, including Prudential and “some other Fortune 100 Insurance Company”. According to Vittayarukskul, there are hundreds of independent financial advisors and insurance agencies using Waterly. The profit model is based on SaaS, and the company claims $ 250 or agent seats per month per month.
And now, the startup has raised a 7 million dollar seeded fund led by John Kim, the founding partner of Brewer Lane Ventures, with a strategic investment from Genwork, Nationwide, and Edward Jones. The startup was previously raised a $ 2.2 million seaward from investors, including Scott Barclay, a health care manager of Insight Partners.
Waterly is planning to build an engineering data science and an enterprise management team to build a new capital, which has been proposed through safe things, and continue to strengthen the AI model and data partnership. We will also increase sales and marketing initiatives.
Currently, there are nine full -time employees in the startups in addition to contractors.
Looking at the future, Waterly is considering obstacles, serious illness, hospital compensation, Medicare plan, or “all fields that can make advanced prediction modeling useful for families to make a better life and health insurance.” “Masu,” said Vittayarukskul.
The company states that it has received interest from insurance companies who want to use data on underwriting. It can also expand internationally to Canada, the UK and Asia.
Kim, an investor who is also a former President of New York Life, thinks he has paid money in Waterly because he thinks it is the “first AI native guidance tool that supports the biggest needs of Americans.” I talked.
He added as follows: “LTC insurance is a large -scale growing need, and today's reliable advisors have almost insufficient services. There is no equivalent product in Waterlilly's guidance tools. Customized to the needs of LTC. I think it will be a game changer in the LTC insurance market.
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