Letter from the Founder

In 2018, I became obsessed with trying to find a solution to help families find senior living options.  About two decades ago, I found myself in the middle of the senior living industry through a private equity firm called Apollo.  At that time, Apollo owned one of the largest private assisted living companies in the U.S. called Summerville.  Since then, my friends continually asked me to help them find senior living options, and I didn’t understand why they couldn’t find options using the Internet.

For the first few years after my obsession started, I tried to learn as much as possible about the tech startup world.  I talked to venture capitalists, tech founders, and senior housing operators.  Everyone from the tech side of the world advised me not to do a consumer-facing directory to help find senior living options.  They all said the same thing, “Bennett, starting a two-sided marketplace is really hard!  You have relationships in the industry, but you have no idea how hard it is to get consumers to even know you exist.”

All the smart people advised me to focus on a business-to-business (B2B) software-as-a-service (SaaS).  In other words, I decided to create software for senior housing operators to make them more efficient.  In 2022, I launched ZNest and played around with a lot of different ideas including digital paperwork, eSignatures, and payment processing.  One side of the website was going to be B2B SaaS, but it would be connected to a consumer-facing directory to help families find options.  It didn’t really take off as operators had to deal with switching costs and a moderate learning curve.

Then Calvin Chen and Dennis Ma joined the team, and everything changed.  Calvin was head of product and Dennis was the VP of engineering at one of the leading senior living referral platforms.  They both taught me to do things in a more traditional startup way.  We went deep into a discovery process by interviewing dozens of senior living operators.  I had taken a class on new product development in business school and had read the book, “Lean Startup,” but it felt different when we had to do things first-hand.  I kept thinking, “Oh yeah!  I read about this before.”

We were able to identify really narrow slices of extreme pain through the interviews.  Most operators communicate with job applicants through email, or they have to remember to text the candidates manually.  There were studies done that hourly-wage candidates don’t really read or respond to email and strongly prefer texts.  Finally, we had figured out a service that wasn’t just a vitamin; it’s a painkiller.  

As we worked closely with senior living operators who were design partners during the pilot process, many companies from other industries approached us to explain that they were experiencing the same frustrations.  We felt like we could help several industries, so we decided to launch a sister brand, Autocomplete, to help all HR teams.  Now both ZNest.ai and Autocomplete provide similar services, but the technology behind ZNest.ai will eventually expand to automate other workflows for senior living operators.  As we strengthen our relationships within the senior living world, we plan to provide families with the information needed to match them with options for their aging loved ones.  That is my commitment to you.

Sincerely,
Bennett Kim
Founder & CEO of ZNest & Autocomplete