She's building a company to solve America's caregiving crisis

Summary

• Lindsay Jurist-Rosner founded Wellthy, a caregiving concierge service, based on her personal 30-year experience caring for her mother with MS.
• The initial business model was direct-to-consumer (B2C) but pivoted to business-to-employer (B2B) after an early customer, an HR professional, advocated for it as an employee benefit.
• The core thesis is that the caregiving crisis is a major, bipartisan workforce and economic issue, impacting retention, productivity, and labor participation, especially for women.
• Key data points: BCG quantified the care economy; child care is now more expensive than rent in almost every US market; the average caregiving journey is under 10 years.
• The crisis is exacerbated by extreme supply-side shortages of professional caregivers (in both child and senior care), worsened by COVID-19 departures.
• COVID-19 was a massive accelerant for Wellthy's B2B model, as employers urgently sought solutions for employees struggling to manage care while working.
• The company's largest growth area is now "backup care" (short-term care solutions), a space where they saw an opportunity to innovate post-COVID as legacy providers stagnated.
• The push for return-to-office policies creates a new demand driver, as extra office days add logistical and cost complexity for employees' care arrangements.
• The business model aligns purpose and profit: high employee utilization of the benefit drives client retention and expansion, which in turn fuels financial growth.
• Early fundraising faced significant pushback from VCs who dismissed the problem as niche or a "lifestyle business," requiring a shift from emotional storytelling to data-driven pitching about TAM and scalability.