HelpAroundTown.com

In Asia, Europe and North America, the population is aging. To age in place, millions of seniors need reliable access to occasional help at affordable prices. HelpAroundTown connects seniors with neighbors looking to supplement their income through flexible local small jobs. We generate income opportunities for people of all ages by connecting neighbors and monetizing people's To Do lists. We provide a reputation-based, personalized, hyperlocal marketplace for help where people know who they are dealing with and feel comfortable seeking jobs and asking for help.We generate supplemental income for students, caregivers and retirees – the millions of people who cannot commit to a regular schedule but needs extra income.

There are 60M aging Baby Boomers in the United States: the biggest demographic trend today. In Japan, China and Western Europe, the population is also aging. There will be more older people than young people by 2050. People are also living longer. These two trends are raising huge challenges: how will people afford to live all these years in retirement? Where will they be living? 

Typically the most affordable solution and the number one preference is for seniors to keep living in their homes. Apart from subsidized housing, other options (retirement communities, assisted living communities, and nursing homes) can easily cost $7,000 and more per month in the US. People can blow through their retirement savings while still in a retirement community, finding themselves destitute when they start to need supplemental out of pocket medical care.

At the same time, young retirees, empty nesters, long-term unemployed middle-aged people, stay at home parents and students are looking for flexible work. They might not be able to find or commit to a regular job, but they want to supplement their income. Extra jobs would enable them to save for college, make a repair on a home, or afford a vacation.

When I founded HelpAroundTown in 2010, my goal was to solve the problem of youth unemployment. After the Great Recession and 25% of youth couldn’t find work. My goal was to monetize  neighbors’ To-do lists, to create jobs, income, work experience and give new entrants to the labor force a chance to establish their professional character. This has worked beautifully. Over 2,000 people under the age of 25 have registered on HelpAroundTown and gone on to earn hundreds and thousands of dollars, save for college and launch their professional life.

Today, the US is in a period of record-breaking employment. Youth have a wide array of jobs available. The market has surprised us. As a community platform, jobs are increasingly posted by seniors. Most of our referrals are from Senior Centers and Councils on Aging. When a Senior calls these community resources asking for help with yardwork, or snow removal, or errands, or heavy lifting, they refer the Seniors to us. 

An increasing number of jobs are taken by middle-aged people. They are still the largest under-employed and unemployed demographic. Whether by choice or necessity, they seek to supplement their income with jobs on HelpAroundTown.com .

HelpAroundTown.com is a community marketplace for help. It is a two sided marketplace, with buyers of services and providers of services (helpers). It also features advertisers, community organizations and local non-profits.

HelpAroundTown.com is a hyperlocal, personalized, reputation-based online marketplace. It is a peer-to-peer platform offering on demand work in the sharing economy.

There are competitors and substitutes, but we have grown through recommendations and word of mouth because our features are designed to support earning income, obtaining work experience, building reputation, connecting neighbors within a mile of each other, building community and preserving privacy. From the get-go, HelpAroundTown was designed to promote a need but protect privacy; make it easy to connect, but only show the necessary info.

Unlike Craigslist, you know who you are dealing with and both parties are encouraged to rate & recommend each other after a transaction.

Unlike TaskRabbit and others, helpers keep 100% of the income they earn. Other platforms typically take 25%. Agencies take about 40%.

Because we're designed to create jobs for youth, HelpAroundTown also stands out 

• in the extent to which we protect our users' privacy. We only show the minimum personal information required only when and where required. 
• HelpAroundTown is specifically designed to protect minors. Parents are asked to approve a minor's registration and to advise their teen every time he or she applies to a job. Minor's addresses are never shown. Helpers are 'hidden': they are visible only when they apply to a job and only to the job poster - or if they pro-actively post a listing. 
• HelpAroundTown offers free job alerts customized to the helper's interests and location. 

Anyone who wants to pro-actively promote his or her services must pay a small fee ($9.95/month) to do so, so that we only promote people who are actively looking for work.

The HelpAroundTown platform is built on Ruby on Rails and hosted in the cloud. It is instantly scaleable and accessible from everywhere in the world.The platform is designed to be easy to access and easy to use. Older people find our design "comforting". With funding, we would introduce a voice interface for seniors so they don't even need to use a device.

As a two sided-marketplace, HelpAroundTown is useful where we have attained critical mass. In the MetroBoston area, seven thousand users have registered in 175 towns (half the cities and towns in MA), posting over 8,000 jobs.

HelpAroundTown won the 2018 Optimal Aging Challenge, a global competition designed to identify breakthrough solutions to social isolation and loneliness among older adults. The competition was sponsored by MA Governor Charlie Baker’s Council to Address Aging in MA, along with MIT AgeLab, GE HealthCare and Benchmark Senior Living. Each sponsor picked one winner. HelpAroundTown was selected by the Governor’s Council on Aging in MA.

HelpAroundTown is designed to protect users' privacy. By default, we only show First name and initial of last name.(First L.) We only show full names and street addresses when people are discussing a job, so they can do their research. Otherwise, we show the town and state. 

We're designed for minors: we only activate accounts after the parents have approved. We email parents every time a minor has applied to a job and ask them to advise their teen.

We connect people within a mile of each other, so those who don't have transportation can still find work, so neighbourhood ties are facilitated, and so neighborhood pressure is reinforced.

HelpAroundTown is usable everywhere, right now. It is useful once there is critical mass. People have signed up in 40 states in 6 countries, without any advertising.

Customized job alerts tell people when a new job posts that fits their interests and location.

We offer free job alerts, free job postings, free job taking, free profiles, and free advertising to non-profits to help generate income and jobs.

Small businesses post jobs free and advertise for just $35/month.

Small offices and home offices can list their services for $9.95/month. HelpAroundTown is designed to enable these small businesses to promote their services simply and cost-effectively, near them.

All ads, jobs and listings are DIY and changeable 24/7.

No other platform that we know of has this flexibility, affordability, something for everyone on the community, and immediate convenience.

HelpAroundTown is designed to protect users' privacy. By default, we only show First name and initial of last name. (First L.) We only show full names and street addresses when people are discussing a job, so they can do their research. Otherwise, we show the town and state. 

We're designed for minors: we only activate accounts after the parents have approved. We email parents every time a minor has applied to a job and ask them to advise their teen.

We connect people within a mile of each other, so those who don't have transportation can still find work, so neighbourhood ties are facilitated, and so neighborhood pressure is reinforced.

HelpAroundTown is usable everywhere, right now. It is useful once there is critical mass. People have signed up in 40 states in 6 countries, without any advertising.

Customized job alerts tell people when a new job posts that fits their interests and location.

We offer free job alerts, free job postings, free job taking, free profiles, and free advertising to non-profits to help generate income and jobs.

Small businesses post jobs free and advertise for just $35/month.

Small offices and home offices can list their services for $9.95/month. HelpAroundTown is designed to enable these small businesses to promote their services simply and cost-effectively, near them.

All ads, jobs and listings are DIY and changeable 24/7.

No other platform that we know of has this flexibility, affordability, something for everyone on the community, and immediate convenience.

Now we are at > 7,000 current registered users

Reach 10,000 in one year

Figure out how to go viral

Reach 2.5M in 5 years

Goals:

Make HelpAroundTown even easier to use. Keep simplifying the user interface (UI).

Add a voice interface for the elderly who are computer averse

Integrate with social networks for endorsements from one's contacts

Develop partnerships with key organisations and local governments to spread faster.

We need to raise funding for the technical improvements outlined above.

We also need funding for marketing and PR.

Funding would enable us to add a dedicated Director of Partnerships.

Money from awards goes straight to development.

We're introducing new revenue streams to make the site financially profitable. This will enable us to license HelpAroundTown as a platform and spread it that way. instead of rising hundreds of millions for a national (or global) marketing campaign, we'll license to local champions who will spread the platform.

We will develop a guide and roadmap for these local champions to launch and spread HelpAroundTown.

We will also develop a full marketing branding toolkit for licensees.

Monte Brown is our part-time CTO. he has been advising HelpAroundTown since the concept stage.

June Hsiao has been our SEO contractor for 4 years.

We rely on many advisors.

Founder Reem Yared, Harvard BA, Wharton MBA, helped build two online marketplaces for skills and expertise before creating HelpAroundTown.

As a consultant, she helped develop;op strategy for online information services owned by Dow Jones, business plan financials for other start-ups, and worth technical specs, all the content and the user guide for two-sided marketplaces. She also devised the non-profit strategy for an email recruiting tool.

She knew how to build a two-sided marketplace. She also knew how hard it would be to launch it and how expensive it would be to market it nationwide.

That's why form the start, HelpAroundTown has followed a very deliberate strategy of starting small and local, testing, proving and growing as we go.

Monte Brown is an accomplished full stack developer.

HelpAroundTown is currently partnering with the Lexington Senior centre and a team of students at Lexington high school. These students want to volunteer =with local seniors. HelpAroundTown is the platform that matches and makes these volunteer connections, while keeping students' parents in the loop, and providing the necessary oversight and flexibility.

Previously, HelpAroundTown partnered with the City of Somerville when it received a grant from the Federal reserve Bank of Boston to put opportunity youth back on a career track. The City promoted jobs on the site form local businesses, the local Career Stop provided guidance and advice to youth, and HelpAroundTown was the connecting platform to help yoptyh find jobs and start to build their professional reputation.

If we receive $10,000 from Solve, we will implement basic changes that make the site generate revenue and at the very least, break-even.

If we receive more funds, we will improve our UI and increase our site's viral coefficient.

AARP, YMCA, the Village Network, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts

in general, partners that bring both sides of the marketplace, such as the YMCA, are ideal. They have buyers (people in need of help) and helpers. membership organisations are also good because we leverage the power of membership: know you will run into the other party at some time, you have to be on your best behaviour all the time.

National organisations will enable us to seed our presence nationally while developing a single relationship. The local relationship will then be handed over to our local licensee.

if we could use AI we would parse the emails and postings on local groups, whether listerves or Facebook groups or NextDoor, to bring out recommendations and requests as they emerge and respond to them and categorize them.

The problem with all of the above is that the info gets lost. It's hard to find the math tutor someone recommended on an email or Facebook list 3 years ago. We would sort, store and highlight this info, with the recommendation, to make it useful to everyone later on.

The founder, Reem Yared is a woman. Most of the job posters are women. Many of the helpers are women. Most of the SOHO business owners are women.

Moms have told us they returned to work after raising children through HelpAroundTown. One mom took a job gift wrapping during the holidays in a company (founded by a woman) making gourmet cooking salts. Today, she has parlayed this short-term job into a director of HR position for that company.

HelpAroundTown is dedicated to working in the community, supporting micro businesses and homeowners in their community and providing a flexible income compatible with caregiving schedules.

Women are th major beneficiaries of these features and focus.

HelpAroundTown would be most useful to refugees if they have internet access on their phones and are trusted enough to provide small jobs in their surrounding community. 

Where this is the case, it is am immediately available tool for micro-entrepreneurship.

HelpAroundTown is entirely, in spirit, goal and execution, dedicated to promoting community, building and strengthening community ties, forging inter-generational bonds, and introducing neighbors to each other.

HelpAroundTown won the 2018 Optimal Aging Challenge, a global competition designed to identify breakthrough solutions to social isolation and loneliness among older adults. The competition was sponsored by MA Governor Charlie Baker’s Council to Address Aging in MA, along with MIT AgeLab, GE HealthCare and Benchmark Senior Living. Each sponsor picked one winner. HelpAroundTown was selected by the Governor’s Council on Aging in MA.