The Entrepreneurs
Bianca Padilla, 31
CEO and co-founder
Jonathan Magolnick, 35
COO and co-founder
Carewell, Miami
Born and raised in a Cuban-American household in Miami, the always entrepreneurial Bianca Padilla studied economics at New York University. While there, she worked in finance internships and ended up starting a side business — an app to teach kids how to save money — but it failed; a lack of knowledge about how to manage engineers and understand the development life cycle did her in. She decided if she was going to be an entrepreneur, she needed tech skills.
After she graduated, Padilla moved back home with her mom and grandmother and enrolled in a coding boot-camp while helping her mother care for her grandmother, who was left with limited mobility after a major surgery. “Watching my mom take on such a heavy burden and wanting to help, I saw very quickly what limited options there were for caregivers to find products.”
After graduating from the bootcamp, she landed a software engineering job at a Miami startup in 2015 and around the same time found herself on a date talking about adult diapers. That’s not your typical first-date talk, but Jonathan Magolnick, whom she would later marry, explained he had won a business competition in his University of Miami MBA program for an adult diaper subscription service. Because of her recent caregiving experience, Padilla told him she would love to be involved if he ever pursued the idea.
Back then, Chewy, based in South Florida, was starting to take off. “I remember thinking how is there not a Chewy.com for this industry that is enormous? The vast majority of Americans are going to be aging in place, and there is a massive opportunity to build a company for the benefit of people who really, really need help, while also making the potential to build a billion-dollar company.”
Padilla and Magolnick began working on a startup together, and in 2017, they launched Carewell, an online retailer of high-quality home health products serving the burgeoning caregiver population. Their inventory includes incontinence products, diabetic products, nutritional shakes, feeding tubes, walkers, wheelchairs and wound care supplies.
“Caregiving can be really daunting, it can be emotionally draining, and the vast majority of people, whether they’re caring for themselves or they’re caring for someone else, have no idea what they’re doing, what products exist, etc. We offer excellent pricing first and foremost against major retailers, and super-fast and free one- to two-day shipping,” says Padilla, the CEO. While the Carewell website features educational posts, printable resource guides, how-to videos and expansive product descriptions, “what really sets us apart is our 24/7 customer care team.”
About 20% of Carewell’s revenue comes in over the phones. “Customers who call in are better-quality customers for us, and it’s because people are looking for recommendations. It’s something that I wish I had when I was a caregiver. I always kept saying, ‘Why isn't there someone I can just ask a simple question?’”
Carewell placed on the Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies lists in 2021 and 2022, ranking 74th and 248th respectively. The startup has raised over $55 million in venture capital, including $24.7 million this year. Padilla reports Carewell made 1.5 million shipments in the last year.
Today, Carewell employs about 120 people globally, with about 45 team members based in Florida. To build the team, Padilla and Magolnick sought people who have been there and done that, including at the company that helped inspire their venture. “The directors and VPs at our company are all former Chewy,” says Padilla, and that includes Carewell’s VP of customer experience who scaled the Chewy customer service team from zero to over 1,000 agents.
As e-commerce businesses in massive markets, the business models are similar — as are some of the processes. When somebody passes away, for example, Carewell sends the family a candle or flowers or a handwritten note card. Carewell also has a happiness policy just as Chewy has a "wow team" that aims to take customer service to a higher level.
This year, Carewell launched its own private-label brand, with pull-up underwear being the first product, and more on the way. Padilla says innovation is sorely needed in the home health care market because too many products have been designed for institutional care facilities or to meet certain price points for insurance — without a focus on comfort and dignity. “There’s so much innovation in this market that’s yet to come.”
Family Caregiving
- More than 53 million family caregivers are caring for 80 million Americans, including the elderly and people with disabilities.
- 9 out of 10 seniors are cared for by informal, family caregivers.
- 90% of Americans want to age in place.
- 10,000 Baby Boomers turn 65 each day.
- By 2030, when 60 million of America’s Baby Boomers will be 65-plus, there will be more people over 65 than under the age of 18.
- The U.S. home health care product market is expected to grow to $140 billion by 2028. A majority of that is out-of-pocket spending.
Sources: U.S. Census; CMS; AARP; Caregiver.org; Statista