Birdie have just raised $30 million in Series B

‍Birdie CEO Max Parmentier and Alina Homecare CEO James Deeley discuss the importance of homecare with an Alina Homecare client and care professional

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Let's discuss what that means.

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When we founded Birdie in 2017, we wanted to create ‘a world in which we all age vibrantly, and with confidence’.

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Five years later, Birdie technology is now bringing that confidence to 35,000 care recipients and 8,000 family members. We’ve partnered with over 700 care businesses, including Alina Homecare, Medacs Healthcare and Care at Home Group, helping them to deliver millions of personalised homecare visits every month. Our team is now well over 100 strong, and is built up of some of the most talented and driven people I’ve ever had the honour to work with. It’s been a remarkable journey to get here - and now we’re looking to fly even higher.

We have two new investors, Sofina and OMERS Ventures, and follow-on investment from Index Ventures. This all comes at a good time not just for Birdie, but for the entire care industry. There are currently half a million waiting for help in England and carers leaving en masse due to loss of pay. There are 1.4m older adults unable to access the care and support they need, and an increase of 91% in the number of people waiting to receive care across the UK.

Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen demand for Birdie technology increase by 3 fold. Our care partners are able to deliver excellent personalised care, build on their CQC inspection results, keep their care team supported and grow their businesses. In the face of spiralling numbers and potential chaos, the little island of calm and confidence that Birdie provides our partners is something we’re all incredibly proud of.

So - our latest round takes the total investment in Birdie’s mission to $52 million.

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Where is that money going?

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“The home healthcare tech sector seems ripe for an innovative leader like Birdie to catalyse the necessary social change. Aligned with our strategy to back growing and sustainable businesses, we’re excited to join them on their mission to enrich the lives of millions of older adults through preventive and personalised care at home.”

Harold Boël, CEO of Sofina

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To add more value for our homecare partners

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• Onboarding and customer success is something we’re very proud of at Birdie, but we’ve set a lofty goal to deliver even more. Onboarding onto Birdie technology is only going to get faster, easier and simpler, with migration assistance, handy how-to guides and online courses in addition to the friendly onboarding managers our partners love. Our support team is already available 7 days a week, but we’re looking to improve with a greater range of support articles and helpful in-app tips. We’re also helping our partners grow their businesses through smart analytics tools that provide insights around performance gaps and suggest opportunities for business optimisation.

• Industry thought leadership and quality resources are a key way we’re looking to further support our partners. We’ll continue to help our partners stay on top of changing trends, collaborate with industry experts to deliver workshops on important topics such as CQC inspections, create useful guidance on key challenges such as recruitment and retention and so much more. Investment will be going towards creating a one-stop resource hub that will become the go-to for homecare industry knowledge.

• Community is a cornerstone of Birdie. It takes a village to transform the way we age! Therefore, we plan to curate a number of opportunities for care providers, care professionals, family members and government bodies to host important discussions and drive change across the whole care industry. Our hope is that through networking opportunities and events we will provide spaces for learning from the experts, sharing knowledge, celebrating unsung heroes and allow us to champion those who champion others.

• International expansion is next on our roadmap. Because through my conversations in many countries in Europe with care leaders, I hear the same context: growing needs, an underfunded industry, lacking coordination and adamant for innovation. We want to step in and help.

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"What really sets Birdie apart is the combination of an intuitive product experience coupled with a true partnership approach to digital transformation. We continue to be impressed by the team's passion, calibre and commitment to social change and are proud to accompany them on their quest to reinvent care for the better."

Stéphane Kurgan, Venture Partner of Index Ventures

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To power up our product roadmap

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• Best in class technology. Our first priority is to grow our technology so it can support any care provider delivering any type of care at home - from complex care to live-in care. We want all older adults to be properly supported. Birdie are fast becoming the ‘go-to’ for care businesses looking for a technology partner who supports them as they manage and grow their care business, and we are constantly expanding our platform’s breadth and capabilities. For example we have started to work with our close partners on an experimental update to our rostering tool that allows the optimisation of fulfilment rates, meaning less commuter time and more face-to-face interactions for carers and their care recipients. We are excited to keep learning and adapting our technology to help accelerate necessary social change.

• Innovation for better care is key. Birdie technology is already helping care communities identify early points of intervention. We will continue to build on this and develop our open ecosystem by partnering with even more health and care providers. We will be investing heavily in building a clinical engine and enhancing our data analytics capabilities, NLP and AI to offer even greater predictive insights. We believe we will be able to proactively predict a wide number of age-related concerns, alert care professionals to potential diseases or accidents and prevent incidents before they happen. To get there we will support our team of world-class engineers and designers as they work alongside our partners.

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“Our vision has always been to create a world where everyone can age with confidence at home. In five years, we have become the operating system for care providers, building the largest home healthcare dataset for the elderly in Europe. With millions of clinical data points collected each month, we plan on deriving personalised and predictive insights to enable a value-based healthcare delivery model. This latest investment, just over one year from the last round, is not only a validation of Birdie’s growth trajectory, but also an endorsement for the potential of our social impact.”

Max Parmentier, co-founder and CEO of Birdie

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To build the best culture for our growing team

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• Our people are our greatest asset. I’m incredible grateful for all the brilliant individuals that have come together and made Birdie the company it is today. We couldn’t have got to where we are without each and every single one of them putting their heart and soul into their work, and we will continue to invest in growing a team that aligns with those values of caring, excellence and compassion. All of us are committed to make our vision a reality: a different healthcare model for our elders. But we’re also firmly determined to do it the right way, faithful to our strong moral compass of caring for our peers, our community and our environment. All of us are shaping this new kind of company. It’s the reflection of the best we can be.

• A culture of appreciation means recognising when people are delivering their best work - whether that’s helping a large homecare partner get set up on the system, building a whole new feature or even just making a fellow team member laugh. I find the greatest strength in  seeing the score of Birdies (the name we call ourselves) who have been with us for many years - sometimes since day one. We find meaning in this thrilling human adventure, in creating a sports team where each of us contributes to their best ability. To achieve that, we support our people as they evolve and grow within the company, and must ensure we hold onto outstanding people by providing quality opportunities for recognition, promotion and education during their time with us.

• Benchmarking and benefits are just two areas where Birdie strive to stand out. We’ve worked, and still are working, very hard to develop a culture of transparency, fairness and equity. We deliver world-class benefits and compensation to employees (including learning and personal development budgets and fully distributed working) but are always looking to beat global standards at every step. It’s so crucial to not just Birdie but to the mission itself that our people feel valued, supported and trusted to succeed. We will continue to invest in this area, to demonstrate to the world what happens when you put your full support behind your team.

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Here’s to growing older vibrantly - together

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Confident care partners, innovative product and a strong team driven by our mission. It would take a heart of stone to not feel optimistic as we look at Birdie today. Now, with the latest round of funding completed, we are set to provide even more support to our growing community of care providers and further investment in our product and our team.

Each passing year that Birdie grows, I feel a little more confident about growing older myself. Despite the current challenges facing us in the care industry, I am deeply excited for the future. I truly believe that we’re on the right path, and we can achieve amazing things - together. Never have I felt so energised and committed to help this industry change for better.

Thank you - to our investors new and old, to the Birdie team and to our care partners. You’re all doing something extraordinary.

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Max Parmentier

CEO and Co-founder

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