Abby Levy, Primetime Partners Co-founder and Managing Partner joins the Yahoo Finance On The Move panel to discuss her new VC venture that seeks out startups focused on issues impacting older Americans.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Welcome back to On the Move. Our next guest is looking to change the narrative around aging with a new fund, Primetime Partner, targeting the trillion dollar global sector of aging. Let's bring in Abby Levy. She is a co-founder and managing partner at-- co-founder and managing partner at Primetime Partners. And Abby, it's great to have you on. Let's talk first about that potential [INAUDIBLE]. We talk about this trillion dollar market that you're looking to address, why specifically look into that market?

ABBY LEVY: Well thank you, Akiko. Great to be here. So, you know, the founding story behind Primetime Partners was really the acknowledgment that there are very few private sector startups that address the needs of older adults. Older adults are soon to be 25% of our population here in the US, up to 30% in countries like Japan and China. Controls 60% or more of the net worth and household wealth in these countries.

And yet when you talk to startup founders, they're typically very focused on solving the needs of millennials, of new moms, of pets, of all of these users. And very few have historically focused on older adults. And so for us at Primetime, my partner Alan Patricof and I started this to both encourage the entrepreneurs to enter the space, as well as, where possible, encourage older adults as founders themselves.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah I think it's interesting that you are also looking to fund some the older founders, which is something that really gets overlooked. Abby, let's talk about the sectors you're looking into. I think we talk about aging. Health care is the natural one we look to, but what are some other opportunities for growth that you see?

ABBY LEVY: Absolutely. So, you know, we're aligning the fund with what older adults care about most. They care about their health, they care about financial security, and they care about having meaningful experiences. So within health, that means, you know, broadly defined, all the things you would normally think about but also aging in place. 90% of older adults-- or all adults-- would like to age in place and not end up in senior living.

And so most of the innovation to date has been focused on medical care, hospital systems, senior living. And so we're seeing increasingly within the health care, bringing health care into the home. So we're seeing certainly some innovation there.

In terms of the second area of interest, financial security, you know, to date, most of our financial system has been focused on wealth accumulation, not decumulation. And the fact that there are 70% of Americans do not have a financial plan, and that if you're retiring today as a couple at age 65, your projected health care spend is going to be up to 240k, or 340k if you suffer from dementia.

And Americans just aren't prepared for that. And so we're looking for companies that are developing innovative new financial products, financial services, fintech, any way to help older Americans bridge the gap between what they have today and what they're going to need to spend over their increasingly long lifespan.

And the third motive--

RICK NEWMAN: So Abby--

ABBY LEVY: Yeah?

RICK NEWMAN: Rick Newman here. I just want to ask. I don't think of older Americans as an underserved market. Even if they don't have as much financial planning as they need, it certainly doesn't seem that it's from lack of trying. I mean, there are so many financial products targeted at baby boomers, retiring boomers for example. Because they have the money. What's the-- what's the evidence that this is an underserved market?

ABBY LEVY: Well I think, taking a step back, it is certainly underserved from the startup ecosystem. And what we do is, we're focused on seed to Series A venture investing. So it's definitely underserved by entrepreneurs. In terms of the finance [AUDIO OUT] while there are several financial products exist, their penetration's quite low.

And so you raise a good point, which is it's an issue of lack of engagement. And we believe that these products are, first of all-- take long term care insurance or reverse mortgages. Both of those products have been around for a while speaking to older adult consumers. But at very usurious rates. And so they're not actually attractive to older adult consumers.

And so we're interested in develop-- in finding new companies that are developing financial products that serve the best interests of the consumers and really treat them as a valuable audience. As opposed to what has happened to date, which is, you know, more engineered products by larger financial services firms that may or may not take into account the specific needs of the older audience.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Hey, it's Brian Cheung here. So give us an example of a company that you've made an investment in, whether it's in the financial space or in the healthcare space, or any of those other kind of areas that you've laid out, for what they're trying to do here. And maybe the success of those and what the returns have been to your investments.

ABBY LEVY: Absolutely. Well just to ground you, so we are about four months old now, so, you know, we do not have return performance yet. But we are certainly looking forward to the growth of our portfolio companies. Specific to financial services, there is a business we've invested in called Retirable. Retirable serves the 50 million pre-retirees who do not have a financial plan yet with a combination of live human financial planning plus also digital tools.

And so that's a business where we invested earlier this spring. We've already had an investment step up since doing that, and it is very well poised for continuing to grow. Another area that I would say has really-- I hate to say it-- in some ways benefited from COVID, is the fact that older adults are shopping online moreso post-COVID than they were pre-COVID. And there's, you know, research to support that. But there's also the necessity that they weren't going to the store in the same ways during this time period.

One of our investments called Carewell. Carewell is a service e-commerce platform for home health supplies. And so, you know, obviously, not surprisingly, during this timeframe they really saw their demand increase as people were looking for e-commerce alternatives to physical shopping.

And so those are some examples of the portfolio that we've invested in to date. We've made six investments and are closing in on our seventh.

AKIKO FUJITA: Abby Levy, Primetime Partners co-founder and managing partner. Great to have you on today.

ABBY LEVY: Thank you for having me.