The What’s Next Boomer Business Summit, is the nation’s leading event for companies, experts, and thought leaders in the aging market to network and learn from Fortune 100 companies, leading startups, and established nonprofit organizations who are successfully targeting the largest and most lucrative consumer demographic in the world. This summit brings together the country’s top businesses and organizations focused on the longevity market while also examining the perspectives of the millennials and their role in shaping boomer priorities. Reserve your spot today and join SHN and others at the What’s Next Boomer Summit and get 20% off using our code: wn18shn20
Senior living and care is attracting a higher caliber of entrepreneur and more investment dollars than ever before, but it’s still early innings for a longevity economy that is set to grow massively in the coming years.
That’s according to Mary Furlong, who for 15 years has been behind the What’s Next Boomer Business Summit. This year’s event in San Francisco is taking place March 28, and promises to offer data, insights, and thought leadership to help C-suite leaders map strategy, while also providing the networking and education opportunities to help newcomers orient themselves to a dynamic and rapidly evolving market.
Senior Housing News recently spoke with Furlong about her take on the Boomer business opportunity and what’s in store at this year’s event.
This is the 15th year the conference is taking place?
Yes! It’s a curated, small conference of about 350 people. Last year, we sold out. We expect to sell out again. We provide top data analysis about the longevity market, in health care and aging in place and senior housing.
People from all those parts of the care continuum attend?
We have home care players and senior housing, as well as top leaders in technology innovation. We’ve got health care companies looking at this space, like United HealthCare, and investors in the is space like Generator Ventures and Ziegler Link*Age. I would say we have the leading entrepreneurs in [areas such as] transportation, robotics, in virtual reality, in food innovation, in services innovation. We’ve got a great, deep set of talent talking about user interface design, search marketing, content marketing and sales development, so that’s part of the conference, marketing and business development.
We also have people from Washington coming, including people from the regulatory side of the new administration.
It’s a recruiting opportunity for people in senior housing and it’s also a place for them to find corporate partnerships, and also deal flow, if they have an investing arm.
It sounds like a good cross-section.
You could call it a mini-MBA in the longevity market. You’re going to hear the top-line trends that will help you chart the course of where things are going in the next two years to 10 years.
But also, you could have the CEO or the chief marketing officer of a senior living company attending, but also someone younger on the team who’s new to the space but an up-and-comer. They could come to the boot camps and to learn best practices and go-to-market strategies.
How has the event changed over the years? What are you especially excited about this year?
I would say over half the people coming having attended previously and gotten value out of it, so that’s why a 90% sponsor renewal rate is affirming to us. But what I’ve seen with surprise and delight is the number of private equity companies that have made acquisitions into the market and are now taking stakes in companies. So, the pace of innovation and the quality of talent and the sourcing of talent is moving much faster than it’s ever moved before.
We’ve always thought that you have to have to the data and the knowledge of the market … what we’re seeing now is that the deal flow is coming from Singapore to Israel to New York to Chicago, and the intellectual candle power of the entrepreneurs coming to the conference, I’ve never seen anything like it. The quality of the gene pool of the entrepreneurs is just so much stronger because they all see it as a huge market opportunity.
The event is taking place in San Francisco this year, so I imagine it’ll draw many of these entrepreneurs and innovators on the tech side?
Given that we’re in San Francisco, we’re going to have top-tier innovators. We have great people from Google, for example, speaking at this conference.
A lot of innovation happens in San Francisco, and our challenge is to define who are the top 70 or so thinkers? The top people who understand the space? From the cars we drive to the devices we use, whether it’s our watch, our phone, you’ve got companies large and small who are moving into the space. What can we bring to the table that’s fresh and new and market-leading?
Big-picture, do you think people are getting a better read on what the longevity market opportunity is, and on who that Boomer consumer is, or is there still a way to go?
I think we’re in the early innings. I think it’s in the second inning. I think there’s a real uptick in the revenue streams that can come into companies because of the new partnerships ahead us.
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