A good news story. In 2016 Simon Lockyer and Nathan Betteridge decided they could bring their tech skills to innovate home care delivery with purpose. This month they achieved 1 million home visits from scratch, with multiple innovations along the way. 

They both acknowledge youthful enthusiasm and naïveté along this path. Simon Lockyer opens every discussion on the journey with the statement: “home care is hard”. 

Just to prove this, we fished out a photo of Simon in 2016 and compared it to today.

For purpose driven, this is Simon and Nathan’s second venture together. The first was Everyday Hero, one of the world’s first charity fundraising portals. It was purchased by NASDAQ listed Blackbaud, now the world’s largest not-for-profit fundraising support platform, in 2011. 

The brand Five.Good.Friends was created out of the Blue Zone study that identified that strong local connections equated to quality of life as you age. 

Simon and Nathan committed to being technology driven from the outset, investing heavily in engineers from day one. Their products and services have evolved, and include: 

• Five Good Friends home care and disability support – making 22,000 home visits a month with a 60+ NPS score; 

• Lookout Connect – a care worker recruitment and management platform for both individual workers and utilised by around 100 home care providers nationally; and  

• Move.Nourish.Connect. - A wellness and lifestyle concierge service tailored for retirement villages, also with close to 100 villages now receiving on-site nurse concierge services 

Around 200 retirement villages now utilise five good friends for home care support. 

Along the seven year journey, they have collected data at every customer interaction which they are applying predictive AI that they have developed, with really significant positive care plan management outcomes, allowing them to be proactive in their interventions. 

And it’s all working. KPMG now ranks Five Good Friends as the 25th largest home care provider nationally, up from 41 last year. 

Given that it has just been seven years and the fact that they have successfully launched in effect three innovation services at scale, is pretty remarkable. 

With tech and AI as their cornerstone and a for purpose ethos, they are a group to watch (or join) on their journey. 

They have given it a good crack.