For seniors, a hotline to Uber with GoGoGrandparent

After her family and doctor insisted that she stop driving, Ursula Moore began racking up big bills. Taxis or other paid rides to her job, where she sees psychotherapy clients, to doctors’ appointments and to stores added up. Then a friend told her about GoGoGrandparent, a hotline that allows people who don’t have smartphones to summon an Uber ride.

Now she uses the hotline at least daily, pressing 1 if she wants a pickup at her Palo Alto home, 2 to be picked up at the last place she was dropped or 0 to speak to an operator. Then Moore, who declined to give her age, makes her way down her driveway with her walker to wait for her driver.

“It’s wonderful service,” she said of both Uber and GoGoGrandparent. “They come when they say they will, usually within just a few minutes. And one of the beauties is that money never changes hands.” They also cost less than other rides, she said.

Even in an age of soaring smartphone use, a huge number of people lack a way to access on-demand services like Uber that can be hailed only through an app. A third of U.S. adults don’t have a smartphone, according to the Pew Research Center. Among people 65 or older, a full 70 percent don’t have smartphones. Even some who have smartphones struggle to understand the nuances of their apps.

“We’re seeing all these great on-demand services become available, but older folks are having trouble,” said Tim Brady, a partner at the Y Combinator accelerator, which accepted Mountain View’s GoGoGrandparent into its current cohort. “The interfaces can be complex and even a little overwhelming to folks of a certain age. Providing easier access, we think, is a huge opportunity.”

GoGoGrandparent’s origin is simple. Justin Boogaard, 25, got the idea after his 84-year-old grandmother broke her leg but didn’t want to leave the Torrance home she’d owned for 64 years. Cabs were too expensive and many drivers didn’t like doing short hops.

So he and a friend, David Lung (whose family had lived with his 93-year-old grandma for 10 years), started the hotline late last year, relying largely on word of mouth from their own grandmothers and low-tech marketing such as mailing postcards and placing signs at bus stops.

“Both of us are grandma’s boys and making it work for us,” said Boogaard, whose email signature line identifies him as “professional grandson.”

Now they’ve served almost 5,000 callers, largely with Uber rides, although they’ve also done pilot projectss with other on-demand services, such as Instacart for groceries and Munchery for chef-prepared meals. For now, they’re offering rides only from Uber, but Lyft might be a future option.

GoGoGrandparent charges 19 cents per minute on top of Uber’s regular costs, and works wherever Uber operates. Uber rewards third-party users of its application programming interface with $5 for each new user they generate; Boogaard declined to say whether they’re collecting that commission, too.

Boogaard declined to give revenue figures for the company, but said it could reach a break-even point in three months. “We’re as viral as you can get with this demographic,” he said, noting that the number of new users has grown 10 percent a week.

Of course, opening on-demand services to non-smartphone users is an opportunity that plenty of others could leap on as well. GoGoGrandparent developed its call line and uses an interface to hook into Uber, but it doesn’t really have a formula that would allow it to dominate rivals.

And there are several other ways that seniors and others who lack smartphones can summon Uber or Lyft rides, and more are on the way.

Uber itself recently added a feature called UberCentral that allows a business to request rides for clients, who don’t need to have smartphones. It’s found a ready audience at some senior centers. It also has a partnership with Lotsa Helping Hands, a website for arranging care for sick and elderly people, that allows friends and family to order an Uber ride on behalf of someone else.

A tablet designed for seniors called GrandPad comes with a button that lets users easily summon an Uber ride. It includes special features such as letting a caregiver preset favorite travel destinations, or sending travel updates to a family member.

Then there are myriad companies already serving seniors that could easily add a hotline for Uber and Lyft. GreatCall, a San Diego company that offers simple cell phones and other mobile devices for seniors, is often cited as a potential entrant into this market. While the 10-year-old company won’t say how many devices it has sold, it has a lot of infrastructure in place with 700 call center representatives. It also wrote a recent blog post about how Lyft and Uber rides could help seniors.

GoGoGrandparent’s two founders still answer all calls themselves, although they’re now hiring another operator, since they’ve landed $120,000 in backing from Y Combinator. Their number is (855) 464-6872.

“I’ve been wearing a telemarketing headset around my neck for the past three months; I’m looking forward to hanging it up,” Boogaard said. He wakes up between 4 and 6 a.m. to start handling East Coast calls — Florida is a big market.

Laurie Orlov, founder and principal analyst of Aging in Place Technology Watch, said that GoGoGrandparent seems like a stretch, even though there’s a huge population of seniors who could use assistance.

“I think they’re putting a square peg in a round hole,” she said. “For this age range, there’s no reason to think people are Uber-centric. They can use taxis, car services, subsidized rides.”

But Moore, who previously had no particular leaning toward Uber, belies that view.

“I have no wish to push myself to learn anything new and complicated,” Moore said. “I’m very happy with my cell phone” — a basic flip phone. “The drivers have all been delightful people. I always sit in front next to them so we can get acquainted.”