Chuck Isgar (MBA ’25) speaks with Grayce Co-Founder Kassidee Kipp (MBA ’10) to discuss how the company has embraced a B2B2C model and leaned into human care partners.
When Kassidee Kipp (MBA ’10) and her co-founder Julia Cohen Sebastien started Grayce five years ago, very few employers knew that a benefits category focused on “caregiving” existed. Covid, however, spurred a focus on employee retention and satisfaction, and Grayce plays an important role in that mission: ensuring that caretakers are provided with the support they need. Caretakers refer to people who spend time helping take care of the physical, emotional, and logistical needs of a family member or other close relationship. While not a part of an employee’s “day job,” caretaking responsibilities outside of work can be all consuming, hence the incentive for employers to help their employees manage.
Through a “tech-enabled services” approach, Grayce creates a care plan to support each member, wherever they are on the care journey. Grayce helps with topics ranging from educating about healthcare options after a diagnosis, to understanding how to handle insurance claims, to putting together a list of homes for an upcoming move. Each of these can represent daunting tasks embedded in “complex systems,” according to Kipp.
Grayce’s mission is to provide a “concierge”-like strategic partner that supports the caretaker in traversing these different challenges. They do this by providing access to licensed clinical social workers, called “care partners.” In a space that has an increasing number of competitors, Grayce differentiates themselves by taking an approach that embodies both technology and human services, whereas many competitors have leaned harder into the technology aspect.
This model seems to be working, with the company achieving Net Promoter Scores in the 80’s and high member loyalty. However, building this company is not as simple as having happy end users. The company is B2B2C in that they sell to employers, often a Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO), but the end users are the employees who utilize the service. There is an inherent challenge embedded in this model: an employee’s role as a caretaker is not always easily identifiable. Even though there is usually a sizable portion of any employee population that is playing the role of a caretaker, a CHRO cannot necessarily quantify this as well as they might be able to quantify metrics like the number of visits to a doctor that employees take over any given time period.
Despite the difficulty of finding caretakers, there is a perhaps unexpected boost for the business: the scope of caretakers is significantly larger than what one might initially imagine. Kipp initially thought they would target caretakers focused on supporting aging parents. However, they quickly learned that there is a large population of caretakers tending to the needs of kids, spouses, and beyond. They decided to broaden the platform, including with respect to geography: just because an employee is based in a foreign country does not mean you can “geofence your users” as the people they are taking care of are often located across the globe.
Grayce works under a model wherein most employers pay a platform fee to get going, after which the employer is charged per employee who uses Grayce’s platform. In this way, Grayce has an incentive to find the caretakers in the population, but the company must strike a balance as it relates to usage. Kipp shared that the company is “not seeking to maximize [daily active users].” Rather, the company’s goal is to be top of mind when someone has a crisis, while simultaneously providing ongoing support to those who are actively in caretaking roles.
Initially the company sold personal coaching time with its care partners on an hourly basis. That coaching is now unlimited, but the company tries to allocate human support where it is most valuable. Relatedly, the company has a robust online community which can help provide insights on caretaking topics such as supporting loved ones through loneliness, where 1-1 coaching may be less helpful than a community-based approach.
Kipp shared that the company receives “so many applications for care partners” and attributes this to a variety of factors: social workers who work with big, bureaucratic hospital organizations experience burnout themselves and they appreciate that Grayce allows them to use their skillset in a more modern form. Further, Grayce allows them to work from home and gain flexibility. Kipp hinted that over time, the company will likely be able to “more sophisticatedly” match caretakers to care partners.
Grayce has gradually moved upmarket: while they used to focus on law firms and tech companies, they find themselves now targeting larger workforces such as manufacturers and big sporting goods stores. A key question going forward will be activation, especially given the company’s incentive to identify and onboard the caretakers in a customer’s employee population..
The company of over 30 employees recently raised a $10.4 million Series A round of financing led by Maveron. Kipp shared that they will use the proceeds to hire key functional leaders, build out their development team, and make significant investments into their sales efforts. With “margins upwards of 70%,” it seems as if the company has found a business model that works and solves the needs of several groups: employers are able to decrease employee churn, care partners are finding themselves with more flexible and engaging work, and most importantly, caretakers are receiving the support for which they desperately yearn.
Chuck Isgar (MBA ’25) loves all things startups. He created and runs Above Board, a weekly newsletter which features Q&A's about startup investment, board management, and corporate governance. Most recently, he served as the Chief of Staff at Scenery, a Series A-stage startup. Chuck previously co-founded and was the CEO of Intern From Home, a recruiting technology company that served students from over 600 colleges. Chuck was a Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University and earned his bachelor’s from Brown University.
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