Elderella was founded by two people who saw the same thing: millions of families piecing together elder care with sticky notes, group texts, and sheer willpower.
Elderella is the support system those families deserve.
Family elder care is one of the largest, most overlooked challenges in the world.
We've set out to change that.
The people behind Elderella
Jacqui Murphy
Co-founderJacqui has spent more than 20 years building technology companies. She helped grow PixStream, acquired by Cisco in one of the largest tech acquisitions in Canadian history. Over the next decade, she worked as a venture capital investor, identifying innovative entrepreneurs tackling significant problems and rolling up her sleeves to help bring their ideas to market. She went on to serve as Chief Marketing Officer at Auvik Networks, named one of North America's fastest-growing technology companies three years running.
Along the way, the elders in her family started needing more help. In working alongside them, she saw the magnitude of the challenge and recognized more families need support. “I took my operationally focused brain and looked at the problem — there's got to be a better way.” Caring for the people who cared for us is deeply personal, but the weight of managing it all can be overwhelming. “We listen to the stories, frustrations, workarounds, and wishes of the families we're serving and measure everything we do at Elderella against one question: Does this actually help, or does it add to the load?”
Mike Kirkup
Co-founder
Mike is a serial founder and technical leader with degrees in computer science and management science from the University of Waterloo. Over more than two decades, he's built products used by millions of people. At Elderella, he develops the technology that lets families talk to Ella in plain language, have care details caught automatically, and search their care history instantly. All with privacy at the core from day one. He coaches startups at Communitech and is a member of the Amii CTO Coaching Program.
Caring for the older people in our lives is one of the defining challenges of our time, affecting families, businesses, and entire economies. Many families are managing this care on their own with little to no support, and any tools that do exist fall short of what elder care actually demands. “I saw a problem that desperately needed a real solution and accepted the challenge.”
Jacqui and Mike sat down with Communitech's Tech About Town podcast to talk about why they're building Elderella, what they've learned from family caregivers, and how a chance meeting turned into a mission.
Built alongside the people we serve
Everything we build starts with a conversation. Caregivers shape what we build by suggesting features, testing them in their real lives, and telling us what actually helps.
Share your story. We'd love to hear from you.
“It's like there's this whole new world you've got to navigate, and nobody teaches you how or helps you figure out where to start.”
Family caregiver
“My wife's parents go to these appointments all the time. They get home and they're like, well, I think she said I should do this. And my wife, who is a nurse, says, well, that doesn't make any sense.”
Family caregiver
“It's a gong show. And to try to understand how to navigate that... I think I eventually figured it out, but it's not a reasonable thing to ask a normal person to do.”
Family caregiver
The numbers behind the crisis
Every statistic represents a real family. We've gathered verified data from the WHO, AARP, Statistics Canada, and other leading sources to show the full scope of what's happening.
See the elder care crisis by the numbers →
Keep on top of elder care
Elderella is for families supporting elders. Built to help you organize care, share information, and ease the mental load of caregiving.
