Psychologically, how do people take this? Is it real enough for the payment not to contaminate the experience?
Also, SilverDial appears to take over half the money for themselves. You pay $100 for 4 30 minute calls but SilverDial pays $12 for each call. Seems steep.
Feedback taken for sure - I'll ask you the same question I asked the other comment. Is $100/month what feels high? Or is $12 for 30 minutes of conversation low?
No, $100 a month seems fine and whatever you can get qualified callers for would be the going rate. My first thought was more that with such a high margin, I might hunt around for cheaper options first. My immediate thought was "is this good value for money?"
I suppose it also depends on what I am getting for the extra margin. Are these people vetted in any way? Background checks to make sure the callers aren't sleazy salespeople from World Financial Group? As people are always trying to steal the money of the elderly. What is it that my $13 dollars a call that goes to you gets me other than just finding someone who talks?
Anything about vetting and security will make me fine with paying extra.
One thing that could help a lot would be disclosure of financials of the company. Not necessarily up to the standard of accounting of non-profits but enough to give people an idea whether you "pocket" $6 per call or $0.60 per call.
The first would make me look around for another alternative, the second not.
If you call on every Monday except some months where there a 5 Mondays that might cause undue stress and frustration with the elder making the service seem unreliable.
My immediate thought on seeing the margin was that I would not be getting good value for my money with this service, as the site doesn't really indicate to me that they provide additional value other than finding a person, which I could plausibly do on Craiglist.
Anything about added value the site provides, such as interviews, background checks, etc would make me want to pay the premium and make the Craigslist option seem less safe.
Probably the most productive comment of the thread! Plan is to screen every candidate before they ever talk to an elderly person. Based on feedback in this thread I’ll plan to personally listen in to all the first calls that callers have to make sure they deliver a quality experience. Will adjust the site to show this as part of the package. Appreciate a lot of your comments here tonight Matt!
It might be standard for a situation where the company is charging a contract rate, but paying their staff a salary (so need to make sure they are fully billable).
It might also be a standard rate for digital products.
But for what is essentially a freelance platform, nah. People have a sense of fairness. They also have a sense of "if they are just paying someone, I'll pay 'em directly".
Took a quick look at pricing, looks to be about 100/mo for a weekly call (so about $25/call).
Yet the person making the call gets paid $12. That seems like quite a markup (and is easily seen by users).
A portion of this is probably taken up by the humans doing the matching. Folks will probably tell you to better hide this cost, but maybe you could just be transparent and tell the users?
Yo! Founder here - I am definitely still playing around with the pricing and this is really great feedback. I don't want the profit margin to be jarring - I want to keep the lights on for the business. Do you think the service itself should be cheaper or should I pay callers a larger amount?
Cool idea. HN might not like the margin, but I think it's pretty reasonable. $24 per hour to talk on the phone is solid pay. Seems the more important question is just whether you can get the quality of people you want for whatever price you choose. The leftover margin is irrelevent.
Sup…nice company. Definitely filling a need that is very beneficial to an ignored group :) I run a digital recruiter and can tell you for what you are offering - work from home at $24 per hour, that is a very excellent and competitive wage across numerous markets in the US. One thing to note is that, in one example, people who were in heavy labor don’t want to go back and want to try something new because of the pandemic. Something less hard on their bodies per se. so what I’m trying to say is that you should also have a good sized talent pool at the moment. If you are willing to hire younger people and give them a chance - low skilled and young labor is asking around $15-$20 hour which is really high for their level, but for the type of talent you’re looking (I’m assuming) you’d be a standout match and be able to accommodate. There’s also lots of justice involved individuals (those that were formally incarcerated) that need jobs and you get tax discounts for hiring them as full time employees. Not sure if you have security issues with them but this segment would very much appreciate a job such as this. Best of luck - if you can market your positions well, you will not have an issue getting talent unlike everyone else right now…
Tl:dr - you’re paying a very good and fair wage for what you’re offering and should probably have many interested candidates when recruiting.
Neither actually. I suspect you already have some vetting process for callers or have at least thought of this. Just lay it out on the signup page and you have sold me on paying extra.
Charge less and take a smaller cut. My partner was immediately excited when I mentioned she could talk to older folks, but told me "I'd never work for someone taking that large of a cut".
Screening volunteers to deal with the elderly is a fairly standard process for hospitals and care homes. Maybe interview a few of them on how they do it?
I think they do it by running background checks and meeting the job applicant in person. That wouldn't work very well for remote-only work that recruits people from anywhere. I don't see how you could vet people with anything approaching due diligence without eating up most of your first few months worth of fees up front.
I am actually doing this. For free, to provide some company to my mother.
It started during the first lockdown (I am an expat, so I am already living far away from home but when she was actually locked up at home I wanted to make an extra effort).
The way it worked best for me was to use Skype(1) so that I could share the screen with her and show pictures - initially from my own trips and vacations, later from Instagram(2) - and provide audio commentary.
1) Yes, I know, there are 4 billions alternatives: Skype was for me the best because I could configure it on a spare tablet and make it automatically answer my calls with basically no effort required on her part. She is not really good with technology.
2) I am writing this because I hope it helps other people to do the same, no matter if it is for relatives or for this company: almost by definition older people will mostly talk about their own past and this can become repetitive quite fast, while also make somehow difficult to engage for the person talking with them.
For me the trick to show and comment pictures together worked very well. YMMV, of course, but I am quite proud of my "discovery".
I’m totally not getting this. You pay money to make sure someone talks to your family members? Or lonely elderly people pay to talk to stranger that they have no connection with?
I find the “old people” in the link title quote condescending.
I used to do this when younger (in person volunteering in a hospital). There were many older people who were alone, often getting a visitor maybe every few days if they're lucky. They had some amazing stories and it seemed like I gained more than they did from the conversation.
Yea, I kind of agree. It's great the entrepreneur found this little niche, but at the same time I feel horrible that there is a sufficient market for this! People willing to pay $100 so their loved ones can talk to someone for 30 minutes, presumably instead of spending that time with them.
Imagine having that conversation: "So, mom, you're going to get a call every week or so from this new friend I found--he's very nice, and he's going to ask how your day went and listen to you. What, ma? Why don't I just call more myself? Well..."
Indeed.. While it could be seen as "sad", I see it as refreshing.. Someone saw someone else struggling and had an idea to try to help.
What will you do about that sadness?
Yikes, the sign up page asks for the phone number of the recipient. Basically amassing a database of emails, phones, names, and a loved one's name for people who never used the site. That is really valuable information for a social engineering attack, particularly against someone who may have a caring, affluent relative in a tech field.
This almost seems like some kind of parody or phishing attempt or something. This does not seem reputable.
I agree, the stated goal is to build a database with the names and contact information of lonely, isolated seniors. I don't think the designer is actually malicious, but if he were...
I'd feel like there are easier ways to get large databases of vulnerable victims. I know there are dark web stores where you can get fake sign-in pages for around US$50 a pop; surely the same exists for lists of phone numbers.
It reminds me of the ISIS puzzle orb, an expensive 3D puzzle that seemed to exist just to collect the personal information of people willing to spend lots of money on luxury goods.
That would be awesome! The plan is to survey callers and elderly folks on just general interests, etc. and then do some simple matchmaking. I.e. Jane loves sailing, baking and the red sox - Tom was a former collegiate sailor who owns a bakery and loves baseball: boom, match. Open to any input here
General interests are probably one of the best ways to start! There might be some potential in stylometry and other profiling tools, too. Email & Twitter are in my profile, feel free to reach out if you want to talk more.
If you've got old people who want to talk, can't you connect them with each other and not have to pay people to talk to them? Then you can charge a lower price since it's merely a matchmaking service.
Or is the payment an incentive for someone to be a willing audience to be talked at? I think that paying people is an implicit admission that the benefit of the conversation is pretty one-sided.
Others have noted that the pay/hour is actually pretty reasonable, but unless it's a video call I can see the "volunteers" just going "mm hmm, wow, that's interesting" at every break in the conversation and not actually engaging in the conversation. The more sophisticated volunteers might even set up a soundboard to do this. I have a hard time believing that you'll get a lot of quality conversationalists to sign up.
There's something special about conversations between old people and young people. I don't know how well that holds up when one side is being paid, but it's not the same thing as old people talking to each other.
On the other hand, it says something about our society that you have to pay the younger people to want to talk to them. Arguably it ought to be the other way around, but that's not ho our culture works.
Well, yeah, I wasn't seriously suggesting a matchmaking service for old people to chat with each other. I don't think that would work because I imagine this service is less about starting a conversation and more about ensuring a captive audience.
My suggestion was meant to illustrate that the payment is a self-admitted necessary component of the conversation, and raise the question of how "engaging" such a conversation could possibly be given that.
You can also possibly have the reverse market where old people get paid to talk to young people, if they are speaking a language that the young person is learning and is at the level where they look for conversation practice.
Question: it seems you help find a caller, then the same caller calls every week, and instead of a one time commission, you keep charging 60% afterwards for no obvious value-add. So what stops people from cutting you out of the loop after a successful match?
That's your business. Helping elderly people find friends, not just paying for calls.
I once worked as a beverage technician when I was younger. My heart would break when I worked retirement communities. The rich ones lived the life with activities and friends, the poor ones lived solitary existences and the despair and lonliness was palpable.
So maybe you connect people until they have found a friend. Personally, I'd charge a bit less though, as many are on fixed incomes. Also maybe consider taking less off the top?
I think of a gentleman I met once who loved being in the kitchen just to see something different and have an 'outside conversation'. He meant with someone who didn't work or live there. The workers there don't really treat the elderly like people sometimes.
Presumably nothing, except for maybe a contract that would rarely be enforced in practice. Tutoring sites like Wyzant are also like this. They make money on the first session and the portion of people who go on through the service. Wyzant does things to try and make the marginal cost of each lesson more attractive, such as the fact that you can make a payment at the push of a button with the amount filled in, instead of working out a separate agreement by PayPal or similar. Another thing Wyzant does is to give you a higher cut the more you teach on the site, which incentivizes you to use the site even with your longer-term students, to rack up. Doesn't look like there's anything similar going on here.
At any rate, it's kinda a weird business model, but it's been tried in parallel situations and led to successful sites.
$100\mo NOT to talk with your family? Not a bad deal financially. Also... Not good ethically. I HATE this idea with every single fiber of my being. "Dial a friend" will never ever replace connections born of shared experiences. I will get downvoted to hell: but fuck you. Full stop.
Imagine being in your 80s or 90s and being called by someone your daughter paid $100\mo to call you because they couldn't be bothered to spend 10 minutes of their precious time to do it themselves.
Imagine knowing no one on the planet, and the crushing loneliness of dying slowly and alone and being able to pay for a chance to meet someone to form a friendship with.
I don't think it's fair to say "fuck you" to the OP.
They didn't create the situation where millions of old people have been basically cast out by their families. Yes, they're profiting from a shitty situation, and perhaps their proposed solution is ineffective, but that's more than most people are going about it.
Then please explain why they ask for your elderly loved one's phone and email before payment. This is a scam (or RIPE for scamming), and I truly hope you and yours don't get duped (and feel loved!)
Let me be clear: this company is asking for your elderly loved one's name, email, and phone#. before you have paid a single cent. This is a very clear phishing operation and all of the supportive comments on HN are either in on this scam or crazy naive.
Founder here - this is really good feedback. Not at all a scam but it’s good to know that the initial data collection is jarring. I built this page in 1 hour. I’m trying to create a funnel for quickly connecting elderly folks to engaged callers. I figure if I get the contact info up front, it saves time post customer acquisition to getting this person onto a call. It would also be a weird UX to take money before we know who is being called IMO but I’m open to that not being true.
I know this is veering into Black Mirror territory, but we're not too far off from being able to automate this with a chatbot. Particularly with dementia patients, it would be a kindness to have a patient, listening voice that plays along with their delusions and never gets tired of hearing the same stories or answering the same questions.
At least on mobile there is no information on timezones on the elder side form.
The form for the getting paid side doesn't seem to ask for international telephone prefix. This makes me wonder whether Germans (or Indians where $12 per hour would go far) who speak English fluently would be welcome through the website.
Does silver dial serve as a middle man for the calls, so it can record them for quality control purposes or with an automatic transcript that is screened for keywords that indicate abuse of the elders such as scams?
Interesting idea. What about a system where the callers are volunteers? And as far as vetting the volunteers, you could utilize the vast and willing pool of high school students involved in community outreach organizations like National Honor Society, etc.
My experience with the NHS is that it's a way for a community to get free labor out of already overworked students in exchange for an extra line item on their college application. I don't think most of the students involved were genuinely interested in volunteering; we understood that it was a transactional relationship. You would still have to offer something to get students to participate.
I would gladly do that for free, I wonder if a matchmaking service as such exists.
You could provide your languages,interests, education, expectations (like blablacar: bla means you are a listener, blabla intermediate, and blablabla a talker)
Hmmm, maybe I could write something like this if it does not exist...
Interesting concept. If I was in the market, I'd be looking for a way to find people based on specific topics that were relevant, or even just shared cultural background. And maybe more than just "conversation" but maybe someone who had stories to tell (or a listening ear for stories), or could teach something etc
Clubhouse has already solved this for free.
But it does require some initial effort for the older user to find an appropriate room to speak in.. and use the hand-wave + mic button.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 162 ms ] threadAlso, SilverDial appears to take over half the money for themselves. You pay $100 for 4 30 minute calls but SilverDial pays $12 for each call. Seems steep.
I suppose it also depends on what I am getting for the extra margin. Are these people vetted in any way? Background checks to make sure the callers aren't sleazy salespeople from World Financial Group? As people are always trying to steal the money of the elderly. What is it that my $13 dollars a call that goes to you gets me other than just finding someone who talks?
Anything about vetting and security will make me fine with paying extra.
The first would make me look around for another alternative, the second not.
If you call on every Monday except some months where there a 5 Mondays that might cause undue stress and frustration with the elder making the service seem unreliable.
How much is the cost base and double it, triple it or quadruple it is a common approach in many industries.
In reality the amount you charge should have little to do with how much it costs you.
Are they providing $100/month in value should be the question irrelevant of the cost to them.
Anything about added value the site provides, such as interviews, background checks, etc would make me want to pay the premium and make the Craigslist option seem less safe.
It might be standard for a situation where the company is charging a contract rate, but paying their staff a salary (so need to make sure they are fully billable).
It might also be a standard rate for digital products.
But for what is essentially a freelance platform, nah. People have a sense of fairness. They also have a sense of "if they are just paying someone, I'll pay 'em directly".
Took a quick look at pricing, looks to be about 100/mo for a weekly call (so about $25/call).
Yet the person making the call gets paid $12. That seems like quite a markup (and is easily seen by users).
A portion of this is probably taken up by the humans doing the matching. Folks will probably tell you to better hide this cost, but maybe you could just be transparent and tell the users?
Tl:dr - you’re paying a very good and fair wage for what you’re offering and should probably have many interested candidates when recruiting.
It started during the first lockdown (I am an expat, so I am already living far away from home but when she was actually locked up at home I wanted to make an extra effort).
The way it worked best for me was to use Skype(1) so that I could share the screen with her and show pictures - initially from my own trips and vacations, later from Instagram(2) - and provide audio commentary.
1) Yes, I know, there are 4 billions alternatives: Skype was for me the best because I could configure it on a spare tablet and make it automatically answer my calls with basically no effort required on her part. She is not really good with technology. 2) I am writing this because I hope it helps other people to do the same, no matter if it is for relatives or for this company: almost by definition older people will mostly talk about their own past and this can become repetitive quite fast, while also make somehow difficult to engage for the person talking with them. For me the trick to show and comment pictures together worked very well. YMMV, of course, but I am quite proud of my "discovery".
I find the “old people” in the link title quote condescending.
Good luck with this, I wish you the best
Imagine having that conversation: "So, mom, you're going to get a call every week or so from this new friend I found--he's very nice, and he's going to ask how your day went and listen to you. What, ma? Why don't I just call more myself? Well..."
This almost seems like some kind of parody or phishing attempt or something. This does not seem reputable.
http://blog.rongarret.info/2009/12/worst-puzzle-ever.html
Are you doing anything systematic to try and improve probabilities of a good match?
(And if not, do you want help trying on some ideas?)
Or is the payment an incentive for someone to be a willing audience to be talked at? I think that paying people is an implicit admission that the benefit of the conversation is pretty one-sided.
Others have noted that the pay/hour is actually pretty reasonable, but unless it's a video call I can see the "volunteers" just going "mm hmm, wow, that's interesting" at every break in the conversation and not actually engaging in the conversation. The more sophisticated volunteers might even set up a soundboard to do this. I have a hard time believing that you'll get a lot of quality conversationalists to sign up.
On the other hand, it says something about our society that you have to pay the younger people to want to talk to them. Arguably it ought to be the other way around, but that's not ho our culture works.
My suggestion was meant to illustrate that the payment is a self-admitted necessary component of the conversation, and raise the question of how "engaging" such a conversation could possibly be given that.
I have great elderly neighbors, with whom we've shared many life experiences via conversation. I consider it a privilege.
But if you're willing to pay me money for it retroactively, I can DM you my Venmo account.
I once worked as a beverage technician when I was younger. My heart would break when I worked retirement communities. The rich ones lived the life with activities and friends, the poor ones lived solitary existences and the despair and lonliness was palpable.
So maybe you connect people until they have found a friend. Personally, I'd charge a bit less though, as many are on fixed incomes. Also maybe consider taking less off the top?
I think of a gentleman I met once who loved being in the kitchen just to see something different and have an 'outside conversation'. He meant with someone who didn't work or live there. The workers there don't really treat the elderly like people sometimes.
Good luck with the venture!
At any rate, it's kinda a weird business model, but it's been tried in parallel situations and led to successful sites.
They didn't create the situation where millions of old people have been basically cast out by their families. Yes, they're profiting from a shitty situation, and perhaps their proposed solution is ineffective, but that's more than most people are going about it.
Then you can talk them the rest of the process and make sure they're comfortable the whole way.
The form for the getting paid side doesn't seem to ask for international telephone prefix. This makes me wonder whether Germans (or Indians where $12 per hour would go far) who speak English fluently would be welcome through the website.
Does silver dial serve as a middle man for the calls, so it can record them for quality control purposes or with an automatic transcript that is screened for keywords that indicate abuse of the elders such as scams?
You could provide your languages,interests, education, expectations (like blablacar: bla means you are a listener, blabla intermediate, and blablabla a talker)
Hmmm, maybe I could write something like this if it does not exist...
I also want to plug https://www.truelinkfinancial.com/card/
I arranged a live-in helper for my parent, during their final years because it was the only possible solution.
The card cut down the obvious petty theft of cash and helped track spending by the helper.
If your parents are mostly fit, then the debit card can instead be used to create an allowance.
Lots of regrets in what I couldn’t do (like actually have them live with me) but at least there are tools to help.
That's a nice profit.
Do you use a system to make the calls? Do you use your own phone? Is there some sort of admin to manage calls? What about privacy? Are calls recorded?
This landing page has so little information, I would never consider signing up for nor would I ever give a loved one's number to them.
There are ways to mitigate this. You could use twilio to route numbers into a multi way conversation that is recorded.
There's probably a feature such that the numbers stay private on both sides.