In an effort to address the pressing issue of caregiving for ill loved ones, Family First, a Boston-based employee benefits company, recently raised $11M in a Series A funding round. The company’s mission is to assist families with caregiving needs and alleviate the staggering financial toll it takes on families, amounting to a staggering $522 billion in lost annual income in the United States.
The Series A funding round was led by RPM Ventures and Eos Venture Partners, with additional participation from Wormhole Capital and Stephen Fromm. The raised funds will be go towards expanding Family First’s sales and marketing team, as well as fueling further product development, as CEO Evan Falchuk revealed to Axios.
At the core of Family First’s innovative approach lies the integration of machine-learning capabilities. The company collaborates with employers and insurers to create a support network for caregivers who often struggle to balance work commitments and caring for their loved ones. This expert care team comprises nurses, social workers, mental health professionals, and physicians, who draw insights from extensive clinical data and social determinants of health to identify gaps in care and design tailored care plans.
The need for caregiver services is evident, given the rapidly aging population in the United States. Currently, the cost of informal caregiving contributes to over a quarter of the total healthcare expenditure in the U.S., as per estimates by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid. Family First aims to address this issue head-on, providing a solution that not only benefits families but also aligns with the trend of bringing medical care into the home. By doing so, the burden on family members serving as makeshift medical practitioners can be significantly eased.
Evan Falchuk founded Family First after personally experiencing the challenges of caregiving for his father: “I realized that there was no insurance benefit for this situation and that it needed to exist”, she explains. The former president of Best Doctors, acquired by Teladoc for $440 million in 2017, now has ambitious plans for the company and comments: “Maybe we could go IPO one day once the market is open again, but the most important thing for me is for us to define the caregiving market.”
