Startup QA Seth Sternberg, Co-Founder CEO, Honor

Startup QA Seth Sternberg, Co-Founder CEO, Honor Startup QA: Seth Sternberg, Co-Founder CEO, Honor Image Source: HonorUS  entrepreneur  Seth Sternberg is no newcomer to business, famously having sold his messaging service, Meebo,  to Google for a reported $100m, but his latest venture is based around helping senior citizens to live safely and comfortably at home.Honor is an ambitious service for seniors, their families and in-home caregivers, providing tailored, flexible non-medical home-care for seniors’ specific needs, as well as maintaining a focus on caregivers and care professionals.The company, based in San Francisco, is pitched as “the most complete redo of home care you can imagine”, and uses a combination of rigorously screened care professionals and proprietary app technology that makes it easy to manage non-medical home care for parents and grandparents.Launched in mid-2015, Honor has retained a vital core of care professionals through such measures as employing them either full-time or part-time; benefits, higher rates of pay and equity incentives; and opportunit ies for training and career advancement.The future looks bright and Honor recently announced a new partnership with the US National Parkinson Foundation (NPF), securing special training programmes to ensure Honor care professionals can deliver the highest level of in-home care for people with Parkinson’s disease.Seth Sternberg  recently agreed to sit  in the  AGENT Startup Hotseat to answer questions about his career to date. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); 1. Very simply, what does your company do?Honor  is the home-care solution that helps older adults continue to live and age in their own homes with greater joy, comfort, and grace. We combine the best care professionals in the industry with proprietary app technology that modernizes the entire home-care experience making it easier to schedule and manage personalised non-medical home care for our parents and grandparents.2. What was the ‘Eureka!’ moment?I was visiting my mother who lives across the count ry and noticed she wasn’t driving like she normally does. It got me thinking about how I’d care for her as she ages at home. I did some research and found the senior care industry is broken. Technology can help streamline processes for coordinating care and improving communication and transparency between caregivers and families. But a new model that empowers care professionals to thrive in their jobs is as important as providing access to technology tools.   At Honor we have ‘Eureka!’ moments all the time. There’s a lot we can do to innovate and improve the lives of caregivers and of people like my Mom who deserve personalized care in the home. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); 3. What were you doing before starting?I was the co-founder and CEO of Meebo, a web communications platform that reached $50M in revenue and close to half the US internet population before being acquired by Google. At Google, I became product director working on the Google+ platf orm and GoogleX.4. How are you funded?Honor is backed by an A-list group of private investors including former elected leaders, celebrities and iconic entrepreneurs, such as Honor board member Marc Andreessen of Andreessen/Horowitz; Senator Bob Kerrey; Jessica Alba; Cash Warren; Jeremy Stoppelman (CEO of Yelp); Ron Johnson (creator of Apple Stores), and Max Levchin (co-founder of PayPal). (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); 5. What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs starting their own company?Technology cant solve everything. You have to make sure you stay focused on creating technology that ultimately improves lives. For example, our technology not only helps our parents and grandparents age in their homes, it also helps care professionals become better at what they do,  so they can grow, thrive and take great care of their own families.6. What item do you never leave the house without?I cant leave home without my phone and my bike pump.IMAGE SOURCE: Honor