This Company Got Rich on the Elderly… And Now Google Wants In

Technology has a tendency of leaving the elderly behind. Not on purpose. But progress just doesn’t wait for anyone. Especially not anyone who can’t get through an entire day without taking a nap or two. It also doesn’t help that most of us won’t spend 10 minutes teaching our parents or grandparents something new about tech.

The least we could do, though, is send our grandparents (or parents) a few of those 95 million photos we post to Instagram every day.

That’s the idea behind Nanagram. It’s a subscription photo-printing service where every month you text a few photos to Nanagram, they print them up, and send them to your grandparents.

It’s a company I’ve been watching (and using) for three years.

And apparently Google has been watching them as well since they recently launched a similar subscription photo printing feature for Google Photos.

The reality, though, is that this is not a one-off idea. Nanagrams will come and go. They’ll adapt, evolve, or die.

But the idea that won’t fade away, is the idea of building technology that caters to Seniors. They’re vastly under-marketed to and tech products are rarely designed with them in mind.

That’s why the 2020s will usher in Senior-led technology companies. This is not only a trend based in some case studies, but senior entrepreneurs are 3 times more successful at founding profitable companies than 30-year-olds.

My prediction is that we’ll see the first majorly successful Senior Gig Platform emerge that gives idle, elderly hands a way of easily earning side income.

If I were 65+ years old, I’d band together with a few of my senior friends to create a consultancy that specializes in marketing to seniors. Senior Citizen Consultancies will be vital to companies looking to expand their technology to that cohort.

Do you think seniors will create tech companies in the 2020s? What companies could you see them creating?