An Interview with Dave Jacobs, Co-Founder & CEO of Homethrive

Homethrive covers the full spectrum of caregiving challenges with a single, integrated platform that proactively recommends next steps and provides hands-on assistance to help your employees get ahead of the curve. Homethrive provides navigation, concierge assistance, and personal coaching built to meet the real needs of working caregivers. Combining predictive analytics with our Care Team’s deep expertise, the intelligent solution offers proactive support and powerful recommendations that reduce time, cost, and stress for employees. When the full suite of support is offered, Homethrive achieves an impressive 13.8% utilization and delivers measurable impact.

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Kelly McEldrew: Tell us about the founding story behind Homethrive. 

Dave Jacobs: There were a couple of things that led to the founding of Homethrive. 

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I had a personal experience with my family that was the inspiration for Homethrive. My dad got very sick very quickly and he wanted to be home with my mom in Connecticut, while my brother and I live in Chicago. We became caregivers overnight and it was really overwhelming. He had very good medical care, but a lot of the things that we needed, we as caregivers, we didn't have. We didn't know what to do, where to go. I wasn't taking care of myself. I gained 25 pounds in six weeks. My wife suggested a leave of absence because I was so stressed - I was moving, trying to do my job, flying back to Connecticut, and felt like there had to be a better way.

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Then I met the folks from 7Wire Ventures who had a similar vision around this broad topic. I felt that they were great people to be partners with and start this with. Not to mention that I had been wanting to get back to my entrepreneurial roots. As much as I liked the company I was working for, I would have been cheating myself had I not gotten back and tried one more entrepreneurial venture. 

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Kelly: How are you approaching this challenge today? And where do you see the company expanding in the future?

Dave: Our goal is to be able to reduce the work, worry, and stress for caregivers. We are serving people who are caregivers across a wide spectrum - from the high chair to the rocking chair and beyond. Our service is in providing an expert coach, navigator and concierge to help caregivers understand what's needed, what comes next, what questions to ask, and then get them connected with the right resources that they need. We really personalize our resources and services based on the needs of that individual and the entire family. We don't cure diseases, we can't turn back the clock, but we can help people navigate those challenges.

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We began by supporting employees caring for aging loved ones. Today, Homethrive delivers comprehensive caregiving support across every stage of life from childcare and backup care to neurodiversity support, chronic conditions, and complex medical needs. We also provide hands-on Loss Support, guiding families through the overwhelming logistical and emotional work that follows the death of a loved one. Wherever care is needed, we step in with expertise and action.

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Kelly: When people hear “caregiving,” they immediately think of aging parents. Homethrive is trying to go beyond the aging demographic and address the wider definition of caregiving. What portion of the business is focused outside of the traditional aging segment?

Dave: It started off almost exclusively focused on parents. Now 50% is focused on other family members and loved ones. And that percentage is rising, as we recently launched a child care and backup care program. We’re now able to help people with younger children and adolescents who may have issues around ADD or autism. We also help caregivers make decisions that typically require a lot of research, like what accommodations are available and what's required to be able to qualify for them. These are very localized in those areas. For example, the area you're in - Philadelphia - could have very different requirements than mine in Chicago. 

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Even my own kids had very different journeys. They shared similar diagnoses, but their schools required entirely different plans and accommodations. And just when you think you’ve figured it out, everything changes — high school brings new expectations, turning eighteen changes legal rights, college introduces new systems. It’s not just challenging. It’s overwhelming.

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We also support families caring for aging parents through end-of-life. After a loss, grief is only part of it as families inherit a second job. Executing an estate can require 570+ hours of work, from Social Security and the DMV to closing financial accounts, managing vehicles, and selling property.  We provide structured guidance and hands-on task completion, assuming a meaningful portion of that workload and helping families shorten what is typically a prolonged, fragmented process.

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Kelly: Homethrive closed a Series B in the summer of 2024. It was a dead zone for venture then. What do you think attributed to your ability to close successfully?

Dave: It was challenging. We raised some money three years prior in a very different

environment. This environment was very difficult, so a big part was our investors who were very supportive and introduced us to other high quality investors. They also prepared us for the long journey it was going to be. We have a great investor group who brings credibility and has helped guide us through the process. We feel good about the business, the category, and the traction, and the shift to being a digital-first organization. Of course, there were times when doubt crept in. But we were steeled for the length of that journey. 

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Kelly: What do you think stood out about the business at the time?

Dave: I think there's two factors. First, I think the category is interesting to a lot of people. They see all the macro trends that are available in the popular press. But I think the biggest thing was our shift to be a digital-first solution. The other solutions that are out there and categories like ours have historically been service businesses which are difficult to scale, difficult to get strong margins on, and difficult to be able to get broader adoption. Instead, we started the process of investing in digital and taking the magic of our social workers and putting it in the palm of somebody's hands. 

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Then there was strategic alignment with the round that was co-led by a new fund from 7wire Ventures, which was one of our original investors, and Telus Ventures, which is a telecom company that also has a large global healthcare business. This fit well with their idea of consumer healthcare and empowering and supporting proactive healthcare around the world. And the digital component fit well with everything from their consumer health business to their EAP business. 

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Kelly: How does Homethrive differentiate itself from its competitors?

Dave: There's a number of very good companies that have been at this for as long as we have been that are very committed to the mission. The biggest difference we see is that a lot of those companies are focused on how they use technology to make their people more efficient. And while we absolutely believe that people are a critical component, we think that technology makes it easier for people to interact with us, use us more often, and use us earlier in the process. What we discovered when we started as a full service business, is that people only really came to us in a crisis - that's when they were willing to invest the time to talk to somebody. And what we want to do is deliver value for people earlier - to get them the things they need as caregivers. Many of those components don’t require you to speak with someone.So the technology that we've got really allows us to blend both of those components, and as a result we get much higher utilization than the industry norm. 

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This also allows us to be much more proactive. As we start to incorporate more data, we can really make more personalized recommendations and provide options for people that they never would have thought of or engaged with. We also get data for the performance and ROI of the whole program at scale.

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Kelly: The company captures so many markets successfully - payers, employers, long term care. What is the biggest growth opportunity? 

Dave: There's no doubt you have to be focused. Our vision is to be an indispensable partner for millions of caregivers. 

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We do think about it in terms of markets. You've got the employer market broadly the insurer market, which is the ancillary insurance products like life insurance and disability, and Medicare Advantage. The opportunity is to offer it to organizations that want to sponsor it for hundreds of thousands of people. This can be embedding Homethrive in platforms like wellbeing platforms, benefits administration platforms, EAPs, commercial insurance platforms, voluntary life insurance products, or even on the Medicare Advantage. The goal is to build something that is very effective and gets a lot of utilization, while being affordable for sponsoring organizations. 

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Kelly: I can see the audience collectively rolling our eyes as I ask this question, but we have to:  What is the best use case for AI with Homethrive in the future?

Dave: The ironic thing is we are starting to incorporate a lot more because it does make a lot of sense. If you think of conversational AI, it allows you to take the mindset of an individual and have a conversation, gather information, and give solutions and recommendations. That's what social workers do in many cases. And so what we're doing is taking the expertise and the knowledge that they have collectively across a wide range of situations, and using AI to make that conversational support accessible at scale, without requiring a person on the other end every time. Then we layer in data at a scale and depth that no individual person could process making each recommendation more precise and personalized. 

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There are moments when AI or digital tools aren’t enough  and a real human conversation matters which is why every family at Homethrive is paired with a dedicated Care Guide who supports them throughout their entire journey. When a situation calls for deeper guidance, we proactively recommend a live conversation and make that connection seamless.

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Kelly: So you brought on a VP of People last year. I think there's a growing recognition for the need of a strategic talent leader early or during periods of growth. What's the impact you're seeing today and how that is shaping your culture?

Dave: It was a question we had - “Are we ready?” You know, we're a growth stage company. Would it make sense to make the investment in a strong people leader? And we thought it would and frankly it exceeded our expectations. Some of it is the individual - Reshni has done a fantastic job. But what she has brought is really a focus: on the culture, on the talent, the skill development, and overall making sure that we have the right people in the right roles at the right level.

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Reshni has been able to make an impact, and raise the organization's bar overall in terms of expectations around talent and best practices from a cultural standpoint. She's also a very savvy business person and has very quickly become a trusted advisor for me and others. She’s had a really profound impact - even more than expected.

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Kelly: We're happy to be a part of that! When you think about the future of the company, what are you most excited about?

Dave: What excites me most is the opportunity to bring meaningful caregiver support to millions of people. There are more than 60 million unpaid family caregivers in this country and a population that is often misunderstood, overlooked, and sometimes doesn’t even recognize themselves as caregivers. The challenge is scale: reaching them in a way that’s sustainable and viable as a business. We believe we’re building a model that can do exactly that. The more caregivers we meaningfully support, the stronger our business becomes.