Lily Vittayarukskul was studying aerospace engineering when the terminal colon cancer was diagnosed with her aunt. His aunt lived under the same roof as Vittayarukskul as he grew and helped to lift it. “We all went to his care,” he remembered.
Post-Chemotherapy, Vittayarukskul’s aunt “has become very fragile”, therefore her family-horiginary family-navigated for about two and a half years of her long-term daily assistance needs. “He swept us away financially,” he told Techcrunch.
The emotional and financial impact was so traumatic that he pushed Vittayarukskul to rotate his studies on genetic science and data.
In the end, he founded Waterlily, a four -year -old San Francisco startup aimed at helping people and consultants to navigate in long -term assistance options by modeling the costs and financing strategies. Its goal, according to Vittayarukskul, is to make easier for financial consultants and insurance agents “Recommend the right financial products based on the needs of long -term assistance provided for by a family”.
Vittayarukskul explained: “Usually people start thinking about long -term care when they age between 65 and 70 years, or only when they need it”. But in many cases, it can be too late.
Waterlily uses artificial intelligence to predict future needs and long -term assistance costs of a family and then guides them “in the construction of an assistance plan and to understand the right way to pay it,” said Vittayarukskul in Techcrunch. “This could mean buying life insurance with a long -term assistance pilot, the purchase of a dedicated LTC policy, using income or simply self -financing.”
Waterlily predictive artificial intelligence can be used for each individual greater than 40.
The company extracts from over 500 million databases and automatic learning algorithms using its modeling software in an effort “to make highly customized treatments and cost forecasts” and predict “when”, “as” and “how” how “and” of the potential of someone long -term care needs.
“We have formal data sharing agreements with long-term care suppliers, government databases, academic research studies and individual users”-these include the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services and the federal insurance program for long assistance term-and we are finalizing similar contracts with insurance carriers to secure their anonymous data safely, “said Vittayarukskul.
Vittayarukskul initially started in Waterlily as a solo founder until Evan Ehrenberg, a small angel investor, arrived. Ehrenberg – who had previously founded and sold Clara Health – helped with the first research and was affected by the response of the sector. Curious, he tested the platform alone and was shocked by his long -term assistance predictions, to the point that he changed his diet, took on a personal trainer and updated his financial plans.
That experience pulled him deeper. He saw parallelisms between long -term care and problems he had encountered in clinical studies. Clara Health had helped tens of thousands of patients to find studies, but also saw those who have turned to them not for cutting -edge treatments, but for generic copies of existing drugs because insurance did not cover brand drugs of they needed. Long -term assistance has brought a similar realization: health insurance does not cover it and many are not prepared for the financial burden, observed Vittayarukskul.
“After six months of work together, we knew it was perfect and made it co-founder,” he said.
The background of Ehrenberg is interesting: after graduating from the UC Berkeley at the age of 16, he became the youngest Ph.D. today is also Chief Operating Officer of Waterlily.
Stand out in a complicated space
There are other tools that help with long -term planning, but Vittayarukskul believes to differ from the most personalized offer of Waterlily. The calculator of the cost of Genworth care, for example, shows the averages of the zip code. Naviplan, Emoney, MoneyGuidePro and Rightcapital are wider platforms of financial planning that include basic long -term assistance modules or costs as one of their multiple functions.
According to her, “while these tools help consultants to model retirement and insurance scenarios, their LTC conditions are generally guided by national averages or Monte Carlo simulations in order to test stress financial planning by introducing noise in a simulation predefined base “. On the contrary, Waterlily “merges the deep predictive modeling with an easy -to -use platform”.
Waterlily launched her public platform only in March 2024, so she still doesn’t have metrics from year to year, but Vittayarukskul told Techcrunch The Startup Monthly Revenue (MRR) today is greater than 22x. market. And, he said, his average MRR growth of month on month since his launch was 58%.
The company currently has eight “main” corporate customers, including Prudential and “many other Fortune 100 insurance carriers”. There are also hundreds of independent financial consultants and insurance agents who use Waterlily, according to Vittayarukskul. Its revenue model is based in Saas, with the company that charged $ 250 for consultant or seating of the agent per month.
And now the startup has collected $ 7 million in Seed funding led by John Kim, founder of Brewer Lane Ventures, with strategic investments of Genworth, Nationwide and Edward Jones. The startup has previously collected a pre-seed round of $ 2.2 million from investors including Scott Barclay, CEO of Healthcare at Insight Partners.
Waterlily plans to use her new capital, which has been collected through a safe, to build its data engineering teams and business management, as well as to continue to strengthen its artificial intelligence and data intelligence models. It also provides for increasing sales and marketing efforts.
Currently, the startup has 9 full -time employees in addition to contractors.
Looking to the future, Waterlily is examining disability, critical disease, hospital allowance and planning to medicate or “really any area in which the advanced predictive modeling would help families to make coverage decisions for life and health better” , said Vittayarukskul.
The company states that it is also receiving interest from insurance carriers who wish to use its data in the subscription. It could potentially expand internationally also in Canada, the United Kingdom and parts of Asia.
The investor Kim, who is also former president of New York Life, told Techcrunch that he had put the money in Waterlily because he believes it is “the first native orientation tool of AI to help in the greatest need for age.”
He added: “Ltc insurance is a large and growing need and today largely undergoing trusted consultants. Waterlily orientation tool has no comparable offers. It provides a personalized and personalized recommendation for LTC needs. I think it will be a turning point for the LTC insurance market. “
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