This New Year 2018 morning I rambled, or more like stumbled, into the new world of techie Silicon Valley. I don’t even know how I got there, I just got there out of the clouds. In the dim not so distant past of last year I subscribed to a Flipboard magazine called TechCrunch. I must have been imagining I could become another overnight Silicone Valley success. I would certainly stand out amongst all the 35-year-old billionaires.
Sadly I missed my nanosecond moment to invest in the next big unicorn. In this time of a silver tsunami one can’t afford to miss out on a unicorn opportunity. Maybe I am losing you a bit in all this techie speak. Perhaps I should explain the back ground to this new dawn.
Here are a few key drivers :-
- Baby boomers are the largest and fastest growing cohort of the US population – 4 million people extra every year, all approaching or already retired.
- Baby boomers have 47 times more disposable income than households headed by 35-40 year olds.
And here is the link to technology :-
- 55 million American seniors are estimated to be on Facebook.
- 4 million are thought to play video games on-line.
- Over sixties are the fastest growing group of on-line daters.
Silicon Valley has not really woken up to this new demographic:-
- Apps for older people have focussed on pill reminders; automatic will generation; health insurance and home aides.
- Most Silicon Valley company founders are under 35, as are most of their staff.
- They are unintentionally ageist and think only of a stereotypical older generation of frail people with limited or no computer skills.
Put all these thoughts together and it illustrates a huge technological blind spot. Maybe the baby boomers will once again be the generation that changes things. This time in later life.
In my next blog I will look at devising some more interesting “unicorn opportunities”.
Hi John – It is good to see that you too, like Silicon Valley, have also begun to realise that older people can handle the latest technology. I seem to remember not so long ago when you thought we could not even manage an Oyster card on London Transport!
Happy New Year Alex, you are quite right I would like to be a geek,but I still don’t like the taste of Oysters.