Lambent Data™: OurVisit™ collaborative software app/platform

Low-income young children, who face significant educational and health obstacles, could benefit much more from home visiting and other social services if their families were more empowered and if interactions with practitioners were easier. 

Lambent Data™ is building the OurVisit™ collaboration software platform/app to equip and align social service agency heads, practitioners, and families. OurVisit™ offers shared communication, goal setting and tracking in a "two-generation" approach, community-building, resources, data analytics, and other features.  This research-based tool will empower parents, improve child and family outcomes, and reduce costs ( missed visits and turnover) -- leading to serving more families.

Over 8.1 million U.S. low-income families have pre-natal to age 5 children. Beyond 333,000 families now in home visiting, 373,000 children are in IDEA Section C and over 673,000 in foster care during a year -- together representing over 4-5 million people. 

Problem: Low-income babies, toddlers and parents can greatly benefit from home visiting programs, but technology for practitioners doesn't engage families, resulting in pain points of inefficiencies, lagging outcomes, stresses, families not staying with programs, and practitioner turnover. 

Example: Mary and John are 18 and dropped out of high school when Ben was born 16 months ago. Usually Mary and Ben live with Mary’s mom but sometimes they stay with John. They all struggle daily to make ends meet from gig jobs. Ben has language delays and health problems. Statistically, his educational and health challenges will multiply unless addressed.

Sometimes they miss visits with home visiting social worker Nancy due to their changing job schedules -- and when Nancy takes notes in her database, they don’t receive the notes. They want more job training but it’s tough to coordinate with the other agency providing it. Mary and John feel dis-empowered, and they, Nancy, and Ben all feel stressed.

Scaling: Home visiting is one example of social services impacting young children; others include special needs therapists, foster care, etc. (More broadly, 20% of people in the US receive social services.) The pain points above are widely relevant. 

As noted in the example above, we are working to help low-income families with pre-natal to age 5 children, initially focusing on the home visiting arena because of its potential for high impact. Early in the design stage, we held focus groups with home visiting practitioners and family members.

Our CEO has devoted much of her career to management of non-profits. She also participated in the National Home Visiting Summit in January 2019 and talked with practitioners and researchers there. 

We’ve received very encouraging feedback from practitioners, as we finalize our prototype design. We’re signing a Memo of Understanding with a home visiting organization to iterate with us.  This will involve focus groups with practitioners in the field, supervisors, and teen parents. 

Also, we're excited that Lambent's CEO was invited to participate in a panel during a national Early Childhood Innovation Summit in July 2019, which will be attended by early childhood development practitioners across the U.S., who will provide additional helpful feedback. 

Lambent Data™ is building a collaborative software platform/app OurVisit™ to empower both social service agencies and families: to communicate smoothly; set and track shared goals, visit notes, and family feedback; access resources; collaborate across agencies; analyze data; and more. This will reduce inefficiencies and save costs for agencies (public and non-profit), while boosting families' outcomes. Both results would be attractive for agencies' funders, to fund more families to be served. 

OurVisit™ includes many software features grounded in research, e.g., “Three Principles” ECD science via Harvard's Center on the Developing Child, “two-generation approaches” via AECasey Foundation, Omidyar's digital trends, and value of father involvement. The "Three Principles" framework includes: Build Responsive Relationships (parent-child, parent-parent, staff-parent, staff-child); Strengthen Core Life Skills (parents', children's, practitioners'); Reduce External Sources of Stress (family members', practitioners'). Through specific user benefits targeted for these principles, OurVisit™ promotes improved kindergarten readiness, parenting skills, and financial standing for families; greater efficiencies and effectiveness for practitioners; more families served; and system-wide software paradigm shift. 

OurVisit™ will be a Software as a Service sold to agencies, including an initial set-up fee and an ongoing subscription plan. Several pricing levels will be offered. OurVisit™ will be accessed securely via mobile app and website, and includes built-in data analytics and reporting.

Target customers are social service agencies (public and non-profit) looking to improve client outcomes and staff practices. Core beneficiaries are practitioners (front-line staff and administrators) and family members (parents, other caregivers, children). Other beneficiaries are funders, researchers, and third-party content providers. We're first focusing on home visiting, with over 24 curricular models (some national) and over 3,500 agencies visiting ~333,000 families. A customer agency would have log-ins for each administrator and home visitor, plus log-ins for each parent/caregiver in a family (even if parents do not live together). However agencies won't charged per family member, in order to promote usage by more than one parent/caregiver per family.  Also data could be shared across agencies and with funders and researchers.

As noted earlier, we are building our prototype, while iterating with home visiting practitioners and family members to refine and finalize the software platform and app, along with the related data analytics. 

More details will be provided during July 1-22. Thanks so much. 

Collaborative platform and app, with related data analytics

Lambent Data™ is building a collaborative software platform and app OurVisit™ to empower both social service agencies and families: to communicate smoothly; set and track shared goals, visit notes, and family feedback; access resources; collaborate across agencies; provide data analytics; and more.

More details will be provided during July 1-22. Many thanks. 

We have built a comprehensive Theory of Change, which we will describe here during the July 1-22 editing timeframe, as it is currently in a detailed chart format. 

As noted, we also have done initial focus groups including practitioners and family members.  More recently, we have received very encouraging feedback from practitioners and are planning a series of focus groups with practitioners and family members. 

Currently, we are building our prototype and iterating with practitioners and family members, intending to launch in Spring 2020.  

By July 2020, we plan to be serving at least 5,000 family members and at least 100 practitioners in the home visiting arena. 

By July 2024, we plan to be serving at least 10 million family members and at least 200,000 practitioners in the arenas of home visiting, special needs, foster families, addiction recovery, other behavioral health, and other home healthcare. 

More details will be provided during July 1-22. Thanks so much. 

More details will be provided during July 1-22. Thanks so much. 

More details will be provided during July 1-22. Thanks so much. 

Co-founder and CEO who is a full-time staff member

Two other co-founders volunteering time

Four other advisors / team members volunteering time

Three undergraduate interns

Our team has decades of relevant experience

● Entrepreneurial success

● Management and consulting in business and not-for-profit sectors

● Software design on multiple platforms

● Data analytics and depiction

● Hands-on engagement with practitioners in: 

○ Child well-being services

○ Education

○ Healthcare

We include: 

● Joseph Studholme, Princeton ‘84, Co-founder and Board Chair

● Kirsten Hund Blair, Princeton ‘84, Harvard MBA ‘89 and Kennedy School MPA ‘89, Co-founder and CEO

● Tom Amato, Princeton ‘67, Wharton MBA ‘70, Co-founder and Board Secy./Treasurer

● Bob Lem, Princeton ‘67, Harvard Law School ‘71, Kennedy School ‘71, pending Board member

● Philip Baldwin, Princeton ‘82, Univ. of Illinois Ph.D. ‘87, Chief Data Scientist

● Ted Nadeau, Princeton ‘87,Chief Technology Officer

Our Princeton, NJ location enables us to engage readily with Princeton professors, students, and local alumni, and easily meet with practitioners, family members, and potential investors locally or via travel in Trenton, Newark, NYC, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. 

More details will be provided during July 1-22. Thanks. 

OurVisit™ will be a Software as a Service sold to agencies, including an initial set-up fee and an ongoing subscription plan. Several pricing levels will be offered. However agencies won't charged per family member, in order to promote usage by more than one parent/caregiver per family. OurVisit™ will be accessed securely via mobile app and website, and includes built-in data analytics and reporting. We’ll first launch OurVisit™ Dashboards ("front-end" collaborative software integrating with existing agencies’ databases), to promote wide adoption. The later, expanded version (OurVisit™Database Dashboards) will combine our collaborative software with an optimized database, to replace existing databases.

As earlier noted, target customers are social service agencies (public and non-profit) looking to improve client outcomes and staff practices. Core beneficiaries are practitioners (front-line staff and administrators) and family members (parents, other caregivers, children). Other beneficiaries are funders, researchers, and third-party content providers. We're first focusing on home visiting, with over 24 curricular models (some national) and over 3500 agencies visiting ~333,000 families. A customer agency would have log-ins for each administrator and home visitor, plus log-ins for each parent/caregiver in a family (even if parents do not live together). Also data could be shared across agencies and with funders and researchers.

We've built a detailed SaaS financial model, including ramp-up of Sales/Marketing and On-Boarding/Support staff, pricing scenarios for set-up and monthly subscriptions, growth rates, "churn", etc. -- for the initial OurVisit™ Dashboards and expanded OurVisit™ Database Dashboards (including upgrades).

In next 3-6 months, we'll:
*continue to test this model by interviewing 15+ potential customers re. what they'd pay for OurVisit™, pricing influences, sales processes/ cycles, expectations for Marketing/Sales/Tech Support
*secure future customer commitments reaching 2-3 national/regional models
*engage insurance providers and foundations re. potentially funding broad launch to critical mass of customers (100+ agencies) 
*with this traction, engage impact investors for further growth

We also are working to raise $350,000 in investment "Seed" capital to fund our initial launch. 

Becoming a Solver team, for which we'd be very grateful, would help us in the following ways over the course of the next 12 months, during which we anticipate finishing our prototype, launching in Spring 2020, and ramping up in the next few months: 

We'd look forward to: 

1) setting up for launch regarding: 

A) re. OurVisit™: validating our prototype/ user benefits and finalizing OurVisit™ for launch

B) for our financial model: accelerate validating, revising, and building traction on our financial model; vetting scalability financing options; building a customer pipeline; and potentially securing funding for upcoming launch through this traction

and 

2) navigating the ramp-up of the first few months of the launch. 

We would be honored and excited to participate, discuss and provide feedback to other Solver teams -- while also receiving feedback. 

This would include:  

*active engagement with and expert feedback from the Solver community

*"warm introductions" or other connections with leaders, local practitioners, and families in various models of home visiting, plus other arenas (special needs, foster children, addiction recovery) to make prototype flexible although we’ll launch with focus; insurers and foundations; other SaaS B2B companies re unit economics

*building interactive community with other Early Childhood Development and cross-sector entrepreneurs, including providing and receiving feedback re. impact goals, business models, launch and growth strategies, etc.

*other connections/ intros to impact investors 

Also, this process of posting our Draft and receiving feedback is also quite helpful. 

As noted above, the following types of interactions would be helpful -- and we would enjoy engaging with and providing feedback as relevant to others too: 

*"warm introductions" or other connections with leaders, local practitioners, and families in various models of home visiting, plus other arenas (special needs, foster children, addiction recovery) to make prototype flexible although we’ll launch with focus; insurers and foundations; other SaaS B2B companies re unit economics

*building interactive community with other Early Childhood Development and cross-sector entrepreneurs, including providing and receiving feedback re. impact goals, business models, launch and growth strategies, etc.

*other connections/ intros to impact investors 

Thanks so much for your consideration!

OurVisit™ will empower and otherwise help several generations of women and girls within families: pregnant women, moms, grandmas, daughters. 

It addresses "two-generation" goals -- those re. interactions with the children and those re. education and other goals of the parents / other caregivers. 

Also, OurVisit™ equips social service practitioners (including home visitors and other field staff, as well as supervisors). Most of these are women, who will become equipped to be more effective and increase their job satisfaction. 

Thanks very much for your consideration!