Silver Sharers

I'm passionate about supporting people over 50 to lead happier, healthier lives and to resist being categorised in such a way that impacts on their mental health and wellbeing. My aim is to create practical solutions to some of the world's biggest problems, namely the housing crisis and employability.

My role is as the founder of tech-for-good startup Silver Sharers. We make finding a home-mate easy, matching homeowners aged 50+ with home-mates of any age. In doing so, we enable older people in London to age in place, retain their most valuable asset and alleviate loneliness through connecting them with long term home-mates of any age, providing them with a safe, secure and stable place in which to live.

I also co-founded not-for-profit Advantages of Age, challenging the media narrative around ageing. We host social activities and courses to help those 50+ to discover new pathways to employment.

We are aiming to solve the problem of the housing crisis, one room at a time. Currently in the UK there are over 6m homes occupied by those aged 50+ with at least two empty bedrooms. In the US there are another 33m. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Meanwhile we are living through a 'loneliness epidemic' with 1 in 10 older people self identifying as being lonely. 

The project we are proposing is Silver Sharers, which helps match homeowners over 50 with compatible home-mates of any age, allowing them to age in place, while creating safe, secure and stable affordable accommodation for those of any age who are looking for somewhere to live.

We believe that our project elevates humanity by giving millions of people currently living in unsuitable housing a place to live, while creating valuable social connections and alleviating loneliness.

We are aiming to help solve the housing crisis.

We live in an ageing society. 

· The number of people aged 65 and over will increase by more than 40% within 20 years,and the number of households where the oldest person is 85 and over is increasing faster than any other age group. (The State of Ageing 2019, Centre for Ageing Better)
· There are 6m UK homeowners over 50 with 1 or more empty room, of which 1.2m are based in London
· One in three older people are now living alone.
· Homeowners aged 55+ account for 55% of all UK homeowners. For most of them, the major part of their wealth is locked into their homes but they could have cash flow problems.
· There is a large proportion of seniors living on low incomes who live alone, or who are disabled or without retirement savings who have housing affordability problems. Single women are more likely to live in poverty in later life.

There has been a declining interest in collective dwellings such as care homes and retirement homes.

A proportion of the population have difficulty finding affordable housing.

Our product is Silver Sharers, a marketplace that matches older homeowners with compatible home-mates of any age for term renting. Our goal is to reinvent home sharing for an ageing society. 

Those with a spare room or those that have a spare room fill in a form on our website, answering questions regarding their lifestyle, habits, preferences for location and any other information that would help us to create good matches. 

Once the homeowner has been verified and we have confirmed that the rooms are genuinely available, they are listed on our newsletter which is distributed once a week to anyone to those who have signed up to receive it. Currently we have 800 subscribers to our weekly newsletter.

All inquiries for the rooms come via our service, where we access whether they would be a good match for each other based on the answers they have provided. If they are, the prospective home-mate and homeowner are put in touch with each other via email to see if they’re a good fit.

Currently much of this is done manually. In our next iteration, it will be automated.

The community whose lives we are working to directly and meaningfully improve are those aged 50+ seeking to age in place, living in London. Prior to starting the business, I spent 6 months working alongside an anthropologist interviewing a dozen people over 50 who were living in shared accommodation with someone outside of a family member to understand what had motivated them to live in these particular circumstance, the positives and negatives in doing so. I conducted extensive research into the problem, seeking to further my understanding of the housing needs of those over 50 and, more broadly, the private rental sector. 

Since partnering with Steve, we have taken a people centred design approach, refining the proposition based on user feedback. We speak to all our customers personally to understand their challenges and how our solution meets their needs. 

What they tell us is that there is no service currently available that serves their needs, the only sites available to find rooms being marketed towards a much younger demographic, typically a student or a young professional.The  testimonials we have received from our customers and the matches that we are making have demonstrated that we are addressing their needs.

The Silver Sharers project relates to two dimensions -

Elevating issues and their projects by building awareness and driving action to solve the most difficult problems of our world by coming up with a solution that can help to solve the housing crisis and help to alleviate loneliness for an ageing society.

Elevating understand of and between people through changing people's attitudes, beliefs and behaviors by creating a solution which appeals to an older generation for whom the idea of home sharing has been portrayed as outside of the typical behaviour or needs of the demographic in which we serve.

I have lived experience of being a ‘Silver Sharer.’

The inspiration for Silver Sharers first came about while I was helping my long-distance partner find a place to live in London. The idea for the scheme grew in my mind when I needed to find a home-mate to help with my own finances. Seeing the big demand for older home-mates but surprisingly little choice I decided to create the resource myself.

I met Steven Glasper, Head of Product, who had developed a flat sharing platform for students and young professionals called Roomio and, with a background in proptech, branding and product strategy, was interested in the problem I had identified. We joined up during YCombinator’s
Startup School in July 2019 and Silver Sharers was launched while on the programme.

We have just finished the Bethnal Green Ventures S20 programme, Europe's leading VC fund for tech-for-good business. With my lived experience and from a PR background and Steven having worked in proptech and understanding how to build digital products and services, we have a unique mix of skill sets.

As someone who suddenly found myself two years ago sharing my flat with a man of a similar age to myself (I’m 59), it’s a living arrangement I’ve familiar with when financial necessity dictated that I rent out a spare room. Since then, I’ve come across dozens of others that are doing the same, both to keep the roof over their heads and because living with someone you like, whatever their age, is preferable to living with someone with whom you don’t get along. And the rent can fill the gap left by having an inadequate pension pot while providing affordable accommodation to someone looking for a comfortable, clean place to live. 

Companionship is at the heart of communal living and, in my experience, it’s more than who does the washing up, but about shared values, understanding and respecting boundaries and on a core set of house rules that are mutually agreed. All that put aside, in the endless search for housing solutions it’s one I believe can happen now.

I believe that Silver Sharers can serve as a blueprint for how many of us will be living in the future.

My background is in PR and Marketing, with over 20 years spent in the sector, 10 of which were running a Top 150 PR agency. My colleague Steve has a background in Property Technology, Product Design and Branding. 

We believe that with my PR background and lived experience of the problem we are aiming to solve and Steve having a background in the property sector, we are ideally suited and well positioned to make Silver Sharers the de facto marketplace worldwide for over 50s homeowners to list long term rooms to rent and for those seeking affordable accommodation.

Here are two articles that have been written about Silver Sharers that demonstrate our expertise and our unique proposition which positions us to be able to capably deliver the project and solve the problem.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/londoner-flat-sharing-flate-mate-renting-london-living-bedroom-to-rent-a4318036.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/18/silver-sharers-the-site-helping-older-renters-meet-their-match

Starting a technology business without the help of external investment was always going to be a challenge. Even more so when the technology is a marketplace that needs to be filled from both the supply and demand side. It's typically described as a 'chicken and egg' problem.

With Steve's background in product development, we decided to go down the 'no code' route, using open source software such as Google Sheets, Mailchimp and Wix, to create our MVP (minimum viable product). This has meant having to 'hand crank' each stage of the process, from on-boarding customers to matching suitable home-mates with homeowners, arranging viewings and follow-up calls. 

The positives of this approach, although very time consuming, is that we are able to determine at each step of the process what works and what doesn't. We learn something new each step of the way. Whether it's a sign-up form ending up in junk mail and having to follow up personally with each homeowner to complete the form, to teaching someone how to upload images to send to us. 

We are now better positioned, having recently acquired early stage funding from Bethnal Green Ventures to build a product that meets our customer's needs.

When it became apparent the negative media stereotyping of older people was having on their wellbeing, I spotted the opportunity and created the social enterprise Advantages of Age in 2016. This was well ahead of its time as people are only now jumping on that particular bandwagon and AofA are getting more publicity than ever.

Through my leadership, I have inspired the Advantages of Age volunteers and our members to use their own initiative to develop social activities, assist with bid writing, lead programmes. Encouraging them to reach for help and support and then to take first steps – often when people thought they were done with firsts.

Most recently I co-created and delivered a programme in London called Reset Mindset & Get Ready to Earn to support over 50s to discover new pathways to employment funded by The Big Lottery in the UK.

The results show positive outcomes for many participants. Some participants found volunteering opportunities, and others pursued their passions. Other participants found jobs, and others pursued entirely new careers through further education and training. Some participants also found new opportunities within their careers. Some said they wanted to start their own businesses.

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Silver Sharers is a possible solutions to one of the world’s most stubborn problems, the housing crisis. To date, most solutions aimed at solving the housing crisis have focussed on building new homes - whether that be in the form of co-living, co-housing, residential care, social housing. 

But with the economy at an all time low, as a result of Covid-19, the reality is that building new homes are very low down the government's list of priorities. That's where Silver Sharers comes in and can make a difference. 

Much like when Airbnb first entered the market a decade ago, when people found it inconceivable that people would open their homes to complete strangers who wanted to travel like a local, we believe that a behaviour change needs to take place for our business to be successful. 

Many of our beneficiaries recognise the financial benefits of living with others but often require evidence and lived experience to recognise the other benefits such as companionship, relieving feelings of loneliness and enhanced security.

That's where innovation and refining the 'matching' algorithm come in, to help facilitate the best outcome for both the homeowner and the renter to create harmonious households.

Currently, we have 800 subscribers on our database, either seeking rooms to rent or with rooms to rent. 

By Year 3 our aim is to have over 6,500 rooms available on our platform and to have scaled outside the UK.

By Year 5, our aim would be to have over 50,000 rooms available on our platform helping tens of thousands of older people to age in place and live in affordable accommodation, feel more socially connected and resilient. 

Beyond the benefit Silver Silver Sharer brings to those living with each other, we benefit the lives of their friends and family through the creation of new social connection and overall wellness. It's scientifically proven that living with someone promotes self-growth and happiness and that having a home-mate can even have a positive effect on the way a person operates.

Our goal over the next year is to create a fully automated version of our platform, integrating matching capabilities, ID verification and more to be able to create more successful matches and to scale our business throughout the UK.

We are currently in discussions with the Director of the International Longevity Centre, based in Newcastle, UK to partner with one designated city on a pilot programme to help more older people find suitable home-mates.

Beyond that, our goal is to scale internationally, particularly to Canada and Australia, where there is no comparable service to Silver Sharers.

Our barriers currently are primarily financial. We have received a small amount of investment that will enable us to create the next iteration of our platform. Beyond that, we will need further funding to scale up, refine the matching process in an innovative way and market the product to reach a wider audience. 

We are currently fundraising and speaking to early stage tech-for-good investors, who have an interest in the problem we are aiming to solve. The Elevate Prize would help by supporting us financially and giving us the financial means to be able to market our solution to a wider audience.

Age UK have supported us by featuring us in their magazine and on their website:

http://www.ageuklondonblog.org.uk/2019/10/11/silversharers-older-private-renters/

We are currently in conversation with the International Longevity Centre in Newcastle, UK about working with them on a pilot programme that has not been fully defined.

We currently provide our service in the form of a website/newsletter that enables homeowners to list their home and prospective home-mates via the site and to view the listing via our weekly newsletter. From there, they are able to make an inquiry and the matching process commences. For this service, we charge a small listing fee.

Over the past year, we have been refining the process of matching, adding modifications to the website to ease the on-boarding of both the homeowner and the renter. We have been conducting extensive customer research to discover how the process can be further improved and the unit economics to make the business sustainable.

From our research, we uncovered that our beneficiaries value the matching process above all and so in our next iteration we will be improving this with the use of technology, while also removing the listing fee, replacing it with a commission based model. This commission will be based on matching a homeowner with a  compatible home-mate, which is the definition of what constitutes success for Silver Sharers.

We are currently equity fund raising to help us scale our business, following a recent investment of $37,000 by Bethnal Green Ventures. In the longer term our ambition is to be self-sustaining via charging a commission fee representing a percentage of the first month's rent to our homeowners, along with partnership programmes with cities that will support the cost of matching homeowners on low-incomes with spare rooms with those needing affordable accommodation. 

Being awarded the Elevate prize would benefit us through helping us reach more potential beneficiaries through the media generated from winning a prize and the prize itself, some of which we would allocate to enhancing our technological capabilities such as the matching algorithm and our digital presence through advertising and SEO.

Bethnal Green Ventures - $37,000 Equity - June 2020

Currently we are fundraising via equity investment circa $750k seeking to raise the money from a mix of Angel & VC investors.

Beyond the recognition that winning the Elevate programme would give us, the money would be used towards the costs of recruiting a technologist with a background in data science and behavioural psychology to help us scope and build the software around improving the matching process.

The Elevate prize would give us the ability to promote ourselves to a fantastic network of influencers and industry leaders, connecting us with potential partners and investors. The prize itself is prestigious and the prize money would provide us with the potential to reach a far bigger audience of potential homeowners and renters through through testing different forms of digital advertising, which we currently can't afford. 

The Elevate prize provides us with a way of generating publicity for what we do beyond the UK and attracting more attention to our solution, helping to solve one of the world's greatest problems, the housing crisis.

We are currently seeking early stage investors interested in funding Silver Sharers.

We are also seeking advisors and board members, particularly with an interest in and experience of our ageing society, housing and development, marketplaces.

Media exposure has been the way we have managed to generate most of our awareness to date so we know that it is effective. The opportunity to generate further media exposure would contribute to our future growth.

We would like to run a pilot programme that supports us to help more older people that own or rent their homes to share with suitable guests/lodgers seeking affordable accommodation, primarily in the UK but in future, in other territories too.

Ideal partners we have in mind are local government departments aimed at delivering service to their ageing population, housing departments, social services. Other organisations are charitable foundations whose primary beneficiaries are older people.