Bootstrapping in AgeTech: Dov Sugarman on What Investors Really Want (and Why He Didn’t Start in Senior Living)
Who: Dov Sugarman, longevity entrepreneur, co-founder of AgeMyWay, longtime ecosystem builder, former fund manager investing in AgeTech.
Where he’s focused now: A longevity coaching AI agent sold B2B to financial planners to help them build more holistic, human relationships with 50+ clients as they plan long, healthy lives.
🔑 Key Takeaways
Funding is later and tougher: Even seed wants revenue and pipeline; plan to bootstrap longer.
Proof beats pitch: Investors read customer discovery + de-risking as maturity.
Adoption > idea: If it can’t be installed, trained, reimbursed, and used, it won’t scale.
Senior living ≠ only path: Consider adjacent buyers (e.g., financial planners) with cleaner distribution and positive-sum adoption.
Segment smartly: The 50–early-60s demographic is receptive to longevity coaching.
AgeTech Journal's Jane Nam with Dov Sugarman, Founder & CEO of AgeMyWay, a longevity coaching AI agent for financial planners to use in their work.
🎓 From Long-Term Care Ops to Early AgeTech Investing
Sugarman trained in policy & management (MPH) with a focus on long-term care, worked across nursing homes and senior living, then pushed into technology and ecosystem roles (Aging2.0, consulting, service development). He later launched an investment fund with a major retirement chain in Israel, reviewing “probably…150 companies… and we invested in three.”
On what that taught him:
“Investors are pretty risk averse.”
He says even early, “first professional/strategic money” looks for team, market, product, plus defensibility (“what stops a giant from doing this tomorrow?”). And even pre-revenue teams must show de-risking behavior: sharp market understanding, real customer discovery, and awareness of competition.
“If you ask, ‘Who’s the competition?’ and they say ‘nobody,’ we’d spend three minutes on the phone and name three. If they had a good answer, we could go on. A lot hadn’t done the homework.”
💸 The Funding Climate: Seed Now Wants Proof
Sugarman’s blunt read on today’s market:
“Investors have moved further downstream… Seed investors are expecting revenue at this point.”
“Seed investors are saying, ‘I want to see deal flow, I want to see revenue.’ It’s hard.”
Translation for founders: bootstrap longer, validate more rigorously, and expect to show real signals (paying pilots, repeatable sales motions, contracted pipeline) before serious seed checks.
🧪 What Bootstrappers Must Have Ready
Sugarman is still largely bootstrapping AgeMyWay and modeling the same discipline he expects from others:
Customer discovery at scale.
He’s held ~25 in-depth discovery calls with U.S. financial advisors “not trying to sell… just getting a sense of: is this a serious enough problem that they’ll engage and pay?”Validation before building.
“Validate as much as possible…before you build anything ideally, so you build it right the first time.”De-risk the chain from idea → deployment.
He recalls working with radar fall-detection: great in theory, but real-world frictions (ceiling power, Wi-Fi, installation, workflows) killed adoption.
The lesson: map every step—procurement, install, training, reimbursement, and ongoing use—not just the demo.Know the buyer reality.
The “price of a cup of coffee a day” pitch doesn’t move institutional buyers. “People don’t pay for stuff just because it’s cheap.”
🏢 Why He Didn’t Start in Senior Living (This Time)
Despite his operational background, Sugarman chose not to build his new venture for senior living or home-care agencies:
Operational headwinds: Post-COVID stress, staffing churn, regulatory and reimbursement pressures dominate leaders’ attention. “It’s a really, really hard dynamic business.”
Fragmentation + scale: Local service delivery and fragmented ownership make fast, scalable tech plays difficult (“not technology-scale numbers”).
Practical adoption hurdles: Facilities often lack the infra and time to take on new tools—especially hardware or anything requiring complex install/training.
🎯 Why He Chose Financial Planners and the 50–early-60s Segment
AgeMyWay targets U.S. financial planners serving clients 50+ (pre-retirees/early retirees). Why?
Alignment & distribution:
Planners want to become more holistic—“especially as they’re under threat from AI and robo-advisors”—and need efficient ways to stay close to clients’ life events (e.g., caregiver role onset).Positive moment of aging:
It’s a “much more optimistic” entry point—people are energized about the next stage and receptive to coaching that supports vitality, resilience, and long life.Clear value story:
A longevity coach that helps advisors deepen relationships and stay relevant is timely and monetizable.
🧭 Dov’s Playbook for Founders
Validate deeply, then build. Talk to dozens of your actual buyers/users.
Show your homework. Know competitors and substitutes cold—don’t claim there are none.
Map real-world adoption. From power/Wi-Fi to training to billing—every friction matters.
Design for the buyer’s day. Your value must survive staffing churn, compliance, and budget cycles.
De-risk visibly. Collect signals (LOIs, paid pilots, advisor letters, contracted pipeline) that investors read as execution.
Expect seed investors to want traction. “Seed investors are expecting revenue…deal flow.”
Choose your entry point wisely. Senior living can work—but today it’s slow, complex, and crowded. Pick channels with clearer scale and readiness.
About the Founder
Dov Sugarman has worked across senior living operations, ecosystem building (Aging2.0), consulting, and early-stage investing. He helped launch an AgeTech fund with a major senior living chain in Israel, reviewed ~150–160 startups, and ended up investing in a mere three. He is now building AgeMyWay, a longevity coaching AI agent offered through financial planners to support clients’ long, healthy lives.
