Once a week, as a part of Startup Reactor, Mark Hager will provide us with a working journal of what life has been like working on his startup, Age In Place. All feedback is greatly appreciated.

Wow! What a week it has been. Staying on course with our goals for 2009, we spent the first part of the year courting the involvement of professionals who are knowledgeable and believe in the aging in place concept.

Many of them are also entrepreneurs.

Currently, we are in talks with an Elder Law attorney, a Certified Financial Planner and Retirement Coach, an Occupational Therapist, an M.D. and several Seniors Real Estate Specialists. These individuals will be working with us as collaborators, contributors and advisers. Also, we have re-negotiated our agreement with the Seniors Real Estate Specialists. Our new agreement gives us a greater ability to promote their members to consumers and we have begun talks that will (hopefully) lead to near-future collaborative ventures with them.
Twitter is rocking for us! Most of the people mentioned above are contacts from Twitter. Our efforts to educate and assist Twitterers are really beginning to pay off. Although we have a presence on Facebook and FriendFeed, neither have panned out as well for us. Part of that may be our level of effort on the platforms; Twitter is just so darn easy.

We’re also putting the finishing touches on a brand new module for our Home Modifications section. Being the section that is frequented most made it the prime candidate for us to start our 2009 revamp. What is it, you ask? The largest repository of home modification ideas for aging in place available anywhere online. (O.K., maybe I can’t prove that, but it is really big!)

As crazy as it sounds, we started this venture with little thought of profitability; we wanted to effect change more than receive income. However, I see now the folly of such thinking; effecting change is going to require funding of some kind, even if that means being able to pay someone to work the plan. I’ve participated in several conversations over the last week or so about monetizing our efforts. No details to share yet, but we’re already in talks with a partner organization about a collaborative effort that could net enough to support our effort, even for just a little while.

Well, I guess that’s it for this week. We’re really shaking things up in our space. Stay tuned for more soon.

Until next week.

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