Eldera.ai, Intergenerational Platform

Dana Griffin is the Co-founder and CEO of Eldera.ai, the global intergenerational platform that connects vetted elders with kids for storytime, activities, and conversations. Dana envisions Eldera as a virtual village with a real soul where elders are an asset to society, and their wisdom a service to humanity.

Dana was raised by her grandparents in Transylvania and has been guided by elders throughout her life.  A former data and advertising executive turned age-tech entrepreneur, AI for Good advocate and author of multiple trademarks and patents focused on aging and wisdom, she wants to give back.

Dana has a C-suite background in global expansion, strategy and data and is the NY Director of AI Commons. She has been advising, consulting, and speaking internationally about principled uses of AI for innovation, policy, and social impact and was recognized by AdAge as a “40 under 40 changing the advertising industry". 

1. In my culture and in many others community elders with accrued wisdom used to be respected and called upon to guide, soothe and problem solve. Today elders are increasingly disconnected from youth and this is detrimental to the health and well being of both generations and to humanity overall. 

2. Eldera stands for the Era of the Elders.  We believe that elders can and need to care for the younger generation both for societal and personal benefits. Our free platform pairs children with vetted elders for virtual story time, activities or a friendly conversation. 

3. One billion elders hold two of the world’s important resources, time and wisdom. Our mission is to turn the aging crisis into a solution for humanity with a platform that reconnects generations and lets elders give freely of their resources to the youth who need it most.

Eldera.ai addresses two vital societal needs, the care of our elders and the readiness of youth to lead the future. 

Never before have elders been more isolated (WHO, UK Ministry of Loneliness) or bereft of purpose with a  resultant increased risk of cognitive and physical decline.  With 1 billion elders worldwide - their isolation is a crisis - one that can be solved by giving them an opportunity to engage and share their most precious resources - time and wisdom.  

On the other end of the age spectrum are today’s youth.   An unbalanced use of technology and a lack of human connection has caused social dislocation leading to more loneliness, anxiety and developmental issues (Sherry Turkle, MIT) than in any generation prior.  For youth to lead they need human connection and an awareness of what has gone before...something that elders are uniquely poised to give.

An 80-year- Harvard study on longevity proved that embracing community helps us live longer, and be happier. Close relationships protect people of all ages from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes.

Eldera is a platform that matches kids with vetted elders for virtual story time, activities or conversation.  It is the first intergenerational community, across 11 countries and 37 states, where 91% of each pairing ends up transitioning into a weekly conversation, and where strangers become friends.

We have done this by creating a safe virtual space for generations to connect regardless of geography. We vet the elders, prep and match the parties, and create the environment for connection.  Eldera is unique in the speed, ease, and light commitment that it requires. Conversations can start within 48 hours of registration. No long term commitment is required, but over 90% opt to invest in long term relationships with each other. And, Eldera does the hard work on the backend so the experience is natural, seamless and above all safe. We employ matching algorithms, NLP and human judgment to facilitate relationship development and ensure the safety and happiness of our community.

Eldera also hosts Fireside Chats, virtual cultural community events, where physicists, writers, actors, and artists join to share their stories and answer questions live.

Finally, through bi-weekly Mentor Council meetings elders connect, share ideas and give us feedback.

Everything we build is either directly requested by or modeled after our community’s behavior, from Fireside Chats, to Mentor Council, mentor certification and gratitude emails. That is why Eldera is:

Good for kids (5-15): Kids develop soft skills and a new perspective on the world by getting the undivided attention of a wise mentor. Regardless of socio-economic background and geography, adult attention / 1:1 mentoring is one of the highest indicators of success later in life. (Bloom Two Sigma Effect)

Good for elders (60+): Elders get a renewed purpose, impact a generation, share their stories and build legacy. Having continuous engagement with young minds, activity and technology keeps them happier and healthier. (Harvard Study on Adult Development)

Good for parents: Parents get help raising their kids through an additional voice to help shape their  children's view of the world. Parents learn from the elders as well. 

Advances in technology enable us to help people far beyond our geography and be accessible even when we can’t leave our home. For example, thanks to Eldera, a retired art professor in CA seamlessly connects to a mentee in rural Texas who has no access to such mentors locally.

According to WHO, by 2030 we will have more people over 60 than under 10 in the world. Unless we change how we perceive elders and how they productively engage in society for longer, we will not have the infrastructure to sustain this increased longevity and will experience a global population collapse. 

Our mission, to make elders assets to society and their wisdom a service to humanity, is designed to change that outcome by decreasing loneliness and catalyzing a new industry that promotes human wisdom and values.

The birth of Eldera begins with the passing of my beloved mother figure Linda, when I shifted from being a data and advertising executive to focusing on the aging crisis and the promise of AI.  

In December 2018, I was introduced to Adrian Otto (Google AI for Good, and now my mentor and Eldera parent) and pitched him on the idea of utilizing AI to tap into the most underutilized resource in the world, our elders, to solve society’s biggest challenges, starting with the education of our youth. 

Adrian convinced me to build this concept and started advising me. 

In 2019 / 2020 I focused on pursuing the concept from a theoretical perspective (Provisional patent on “Codifying Wisdom with the help of AI”, Trademark on the “Wisdom Clock”) and attracting advisors: Ashwin Ram (Inventor of Amazon Alexa), Chip Conley (Founder of the Modern Elder Academy), Amir Banifatemi (Founder of UN’s AI for Good Global Summit), Paul Irving (Head of Milken’s Institute on Aging).

It was the pandemic that gave me the opportunity to bring the concept to life, attract co-founders Kate Burson (COO) and Jules Olleon (CTO), and kick off the first 1:1 Eldera conversation on March 30th.

I was born in Transylvania, Romania and raised by my grandparents. My grandfather only spoke Romanian to me, and read to me greek mythology and Jules Verne. My grandmother only spoke Hungarian and German to me, and read to me the old testament along with Grimm and Andersen stories. They sent me to German kindergarten and school and by the time I was 12 years old, I also spoke French, English and Spanish. Our evenings would entail asking me to say the same word in 3 different languages and find parallels between mythology and religion, animals and vegetation... all before I could even write.

After my grandparents passed away, I moved to the US in 2001 on a full scholarship and I continued to seek out wise elders to help guide my life decisions. I thought this was how everyone navigated life, until one of my beloved elders and a true mother figure to me, passed away of brain cancer in late 2017. This is when I fully understood the gift I received and the symbiotic relationship between generations; I became obsessed with making this bond easily available for both young and old and ultimately benefit the future of humanity. 

Transforming the aging crisis into an opportunity for humanity is an ambitious mission, but I have not thought of or worked on anything else over the past two years. 

The ability to look at our global aging population, imagine and build a future where they are not seen as needing care but as having the most to give requires a unique combination of passion, background, experience and personality. 

Being raised by my grandparents and guided by elders my entire life, I am the result of what a dyslexic child raised in communism can accomplish with the right attention. 

After getting a scholarship at the University of Akron, I went on over 100 interviews to get my first job and H1B that allowed me to stay in the US. I was promoted 11 times in 11 years, becoming one of the youngest CMOs in NY advertising and named “40 under 40” by AdAge. As CMO I launched the first global social media practice and  developed a deep expertise in building cross cultural teams and global communities. 

I started my career in performance marketing and later co-led a data startup that set me up to understand how to use data to find and engage the right audiences and, more importantly, how to protect their privacy. 

My background and expertise coupled with my personality (95% in compassion, 98% in assertiveness and 99% in extraversion) allowed me to attract the people and resources necessary to launch Eldera and see this mission through.

When I set off to take on the mission of changing the aging crisis into an opportunity for humanity, I had no direct expertise in either aging or AI. But I knew that the problem lies in the modern definition of retirement that leads to loss of purpose, loneliness and the associated physical and cognitive side effects. 

My first attempt at launching this initiative came in January 2019 when I unsuccessfully applied for Google’s AI for Good Grant. As a result, one of my advisors stated that I know nothing about kids and I should just stick to aging. 

This was a big disappointment but I took the advice and focused on aging and AI by fully committing my time and resources and spending the next year teaching myself everything I need to know, creating IP and building a network of experts and supporters. 

This focus allowed me to launch Eldera during the pandemic this March at warp speed with two co-founders, $250,000 in free resources and support from Encore and BGCA and build the first global intergenerational community spanning 12 countries. As it turned out, I didn’t need to know about kids, because elders do!

Throughout my career, I approached every challenge as an opportunity to be solved by finding and empowering the best people. 

I had my first leadership role at the age of 23 when I led a team of four responsible for generating $6.5 million in revenues. 

From there I built the first global social media practice, by finding, recruiting and supporting the brightest talent regardless of education and geography. This led to a team of ten, all from different countries, none on a US passport (including myself at that time) who ended up writing the rules, building and becoming the bridges between US headquarters and local offices for top Fortune 500s. My team ended up being responsible for bringing in 40% of the agency’s revenues and transforming the way we operated globally.

I then joined an early stage data startup and built the team from 8 to 28 people, raising a successful Series A and establishing the company as a leader in the measurement space. 

However, I measure the effectiveness of my leadership in the future achievement of my teams, the longevity of what we have built together, and our enduring friendship and support of each other. 

What makes Eldera different is that we approach our elders as assets to society and as a result we deliver on building true deep relationships. 

Eldera stands for the Era of the Elders. Rather than facilitating caregiving, or worst “adopting” a grandparent, we background check, onboard, and give elders the tools, platform and matches that can most benefit from their time and wisdom.  Every elder fundamentally has wisdom to share and we developed a way to find it and make it accessible to the ones who need it. That is why our elders are called mentors, because they share their wisdom and time to help the next generation develop the skills needed to succeed in life. 

But Eldera is not a tutoring or a homeschooling platform. Once on the platform, mentors help children develop their soft skills seamlessly through conversation and storytelling, which are the vehicles that humans have used to share their heritage since the beginning of spoken word. As a result, through Eldera, the two most disconnected generations are coming together virtually, utilizing the most ancient forms of communication to rediscover the benefits of deep one-on-one human relationships. 

This leads us to our second point of differentiation. While delivering deep human relationships was the failed promise of the social platforms of the last decade, Eldera has actually proven the ability to form long term one-on-one deep relationships based on trust that benefit elders, kids, and society as a whole.

The impact of our work on humanity is three-fold:

• Elders / mentors find a new sense of purpose in helping a child grow by sharing their wisdom and life experiences with them. This comes at a time when they are looking for ways to remain engaged socially in the world, build legacy and be relevant. The positive effects of purposeful work, social connections and helping others on mental health have been widely documented.

• The youngest generation is significantly more anxious and disconnected socially than the older ones, in part due to the intermediation of existing social platforms in most of their social experiences, but also to the unavailability of adults to engage deeply with them. We have witnessed and been informed by parents of incredible improvements in their children’s openness, stress levels and general wellbeing from getting the regular, focused attention of one of our elders. Studies also show a strong link between children receiving adult attention and later success in life.

• By connecting humans and fostering long term, meaningful relationships across the traditional boundaries often enforced (purposefully or not) by existing social platforms, we help recreate social links that had eroded over the past couple of decades, heal the fractures in our society, and re-ignite the desire across these groups to build a future together. We believe rebuilding trust, a common ground of understanding, and a space for constructive disagreement and discussion is essential not only for individual growth, but also the basis for a healthy society and functioning democracy.

We launched Eldera on March 30th, 2020 as a free platform that pairs kids with vetted elders for virtual story time, activities or a friendly conversation. In just three months, It has become the first intergenerational community, with over 500 members across 12 countries and 37 states, where 91% of each pairing ends up transitioning into a weekly conversation, and where strangers become trusted friends.

Our research shows that around 15,000,000 US elders have used video conferencing in the last three months, and our goal for the first year is to capture a fraction of them for a total community of 50,000 active elders and parents / kids on the platform engaging in weekly conversations and community events such as fireside chats and elder mentor meetings. 

Five years from now, we plan to expand our reach to global elders (currently 1 Billion people over 60 years old) and increase the age of our youth to encompass 5 to 25 year olds. Our technology and platform will be able to sustain 10,000,000 to 15,000,000 members globally and positively impact the lives of elders and youth around the world through deep relationships facilitated by Eldera. 

In the next year, we hope to change the lives of 50,000 elders and kids on the Eldera platform by connecting them with someone who will benefit and enjoy their time the most. 

• The impact on the elders will be measured in increased happiness, decreased loneliness markers, and a better understanding of the young generation’s lifestyle and potential. 

• The impact on the kids will be measured in increased social skills, listening, conversation, empathy and overall confidence and decreased anxiety. 

In five years, we plan to replicate these outcomes in 10,000,000 to 15,000,000 members globally. 

The increased volume will help us change the perspective and behavior towards elders, redefining their role and value in the global village. 

Additionally, we want to prove the long-term success caused by one-on-one soft skills mentoring in kids and contribute to a generation better prepared to create the future of humanity by having access to information, technology, wisdom and soft skills. 

Holistically, we aim to turn the aging crisis into an opportunity for humanity by catalyzing a new society that relies on our elders as valued assets and their wisdom as the operating system for the future. 

1. 70% of our costs go towards safety, so we need the capital to grow our engineering and community teams and support the technology we use before, during and after the Eldera interaction to ensure the safety of everyone involved. 

2. We are looking to find a way to reliably background check elders and young adults outside of the US. 

3. Our community sustained a double digit growth rate purely through word of mouth, but we are looking to increase our exposure to diverse elders and parents outside of our current reach that can most benefit from Eldera and will be additive to our growing community.

1. We have been able to build and grow Eldera due to a few key partnerships that covered our technology needs, background checks and privacy and COPPA compliance.

2. While we are accepting kids 5-15 from around the world into our community, we are currently only onboarding elders from the US that we can reliably background check. In the future, we are considering accounting for different geography and age matching through our algorithm if we can not extend our safety standards globally. 

3. In order to grow Eldera’s community outside of our current reach of first movers, we are establishing partnership and pilots with the Boys and Girls Club of America and Encore. While we have been featured by a kid reporter in TIME for Kids, by Marc Freedman (Founder of Encore.org) in Chronicles of Philanthropy and by Chip Conley (Founder of the Modern Elder Academy) in the Wisdom Well,  we are also looking to expand our reach with additional marketing and PR efforts.

Eldera has been fortunate to benefit from several incredibly lucrative partnerships across technology, compliance and community, since launching in March 2020, namely:

1. AWS - We have been selected into the AWD EdStars program and given the credits and resources to cover most of our cloud infrastructure costs.

2. Turning.io - The company that subsidized complimentary background checks for our elders.

3. DWT LLP - The law firm handles all of Eldera’s privacy and COPPA compliance pro bono.

4. Encore.org - We are partnering to make Eldera available to specialized communities within the US baby boomer population.

5. Boys and Girls Club of America - Pilot with local chapters where kids will benefit the most from the attention of Eldera mentors.

Eldera functions as a two-sided marketplace fueled by a global network effect, one where everyone is in demand, and everyone wins. 

This means Eldera mentors contribute their time and wisdom and gain satisfaction and decreased loneliness indicators while kids contribute time and attention and gain soft skills and mentorship. The marketplace not only facilitates the most relevant match between two strangers born 50 or 70 years apart sometimes on different continents, but gives both sides the tools and safety required to turn them into mentors and friends. And because we are fostering a global community, our growth and the health of our community is independent of geography. 

And while we are not planning to monetize our solution in 2020, early indicators from both elders and parents signed up lead us towards building a freemium model that will allow us to continue serving the kids and elders who need us most, while both sides can opt into monthly subscriptions. 

We are funding the first 18 months of Eldera through a combination of bootstrapping, in-kind donations (technology, compliance, etc), capital investment, grants and light monetization under a freemium model.

After 18 months, we are planning to become profitable through monetizing a percentage of our audience and continue to fuel exponential growth to reach more underserved populations around the world with the help of additional grants and capital investment. 

Eldera has not raised any funds as of yet, and we do not plan to monetize our solution until Q1 2021. 

We are seeking to raise $2.5 million as a combination of grants and safes to support our current growth rate for the next 18 months. 

Our estimated expenses for the second half of 2020 encompassing salaries, technology and operational costs add up to $600,000. 

Every child should have access to an elder mentor to listen to them, give them new perspectives, and answer their questions - such as “Can you touch time?” or “Do trees feel love?” - either one-on-one or in community events. 

At the same time, no elder should feel like growing old makes them less relevant or valuable to society. On the contrary, being over 60 makes them perfect candidates to use their wisdom and time to positively impact someone else’s life and leave behind even more of a legacy and better world.

Our society is mesmerized by youth and technological solutions to human problems. We must shine an important light on the reality that technology is but a tool; it is humans young and old, with experience, heart, and time who are the answer to solving global challenges and building our future. Bringing attention to this reality is essential to empowering elder mentors to reach, care for, and lift up the next generation.

Patient capital, mentorship, and the right network can connect us to communities across class, race, and cultural divides, and help us ensure that we reach those who Eldera can help the most. 

That is why, our team and our entire Eldera community would be honored to receive the Elevate Prize in 2020 and get access to the priceless resources available through the Elevate Foundation and MIT Solve. 

Thank you for reviewing our application. 

My co-founders Kate Burson (COO), Jules Olleon (CTO) and I come from different backgrounds but are joined by one purpose, to make life better for everyone and rediscover the essence of the villages we once inhabited physically and now we must re-inhabit virtually and emotionally. 

While our mission is clear, there is much that we each need to learn to ensure that we build Eldera the right way with the right funding and access to a diverse community. This will allow us to stay committed to building deep relationships in an environment of trust and safety. 

We are seeking partners that will join us on our mission to make Eldera available to millions of elders and youth and drive lasting societal change. Whether our partners commit their own wisdom, time, network or capital, we will put all of those resources towards accelerating and amplifying our impact.

As we make a list of our dream partners, here are a few that we believe will help us accelerate Eldera’s impact on the world, namely:

• AARP - Access to the 35 million elder members in their database.

• Alumni associations and retired professors of top 100 universities in the US, The Association of Retired Teachers - all well equipped to engage with youth of all ages.

• Retired artist communities - Eldera kids are now learning to express themselves through art, and teaching our elders how to leverage ZOOM’s features in the process. 

• State Level Education Boards - to bring Eldera to parents’ attention as a resource that is complementary to the standard education system.

• 60 Minutes - so our Eldera mentors can tell the story of how their time with kids is changing the perspective of aging one family at a time.

• TODAY show - to feature our community and inspire intergenerational connection above and beyond Eldera.