Startup founded by Chattanooga native creates online community for seniors

Boyington's business vies for national honor

Priya Boyington, left, and Jay Lanners are co-founders of Wiser. Boyington is from Chattanooga, and Lanners is from Covington, Ga. The startup is based in San Fransisco.
Priya Boyington, left, and Jay Lanners are co-founders of Wiser. Boyington is from Chattanooga, and Lanners is from Covington, Ga. The startup is based in San Fransisco.

Online voting

Wiser, cofounded by Chattanooga native Priya Boyington, is a semifinalist in an international competition. It's trying to advance for a chance to present at Aging2.0 OPTIMIZE conference. Voting ends Aug. 19.You may vote here.

A San Francisco-based startup that a Chattanooga native cofounded is nearing the final stage of a worldwide competition focused on making life better for older adults.

Wiser won Aging2.0's preliminary competition in New York in May. Now it's one of 33 companies vying to take center stage at the Aging2.0 OPTIMIZE conference in October.

The public has half the say on which companies will make it. Online voting lasts through Friday.

Priya Boyington founded Wiser in February with a fellow student from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Jay Lanners, of Covington, Ga. The two had become friends before business school, when they worked for Bain & Co. in Atlanta, Boyington said.

Wiser is a members-only online community that includes live discussion-based classes, seminars and special-interest groups, with a focus on "learning for the sake of learning."

Boyington, 26, and Lanners, 27, noticed that their grandparents were mentally sharp but craved more mental stimulation and couldn't necessarily get to courses geared toward their demographic, such as those offered at colleges and universities through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Also, like many older folks, they were looking for social connection.

"It's hard at that age to make new friends and meet new people, especially people who have the mental capacity that match them," Boyington said. "With Wiser, we started with more of a social concept, but added the lifelong-learning aspect."

Wiser meets older adults' needs for mental and social engagement, but they can stay home to get it, a boon for those with physical or geographic limitations, she said.

To be sure, other companies offer online learning that older adults can use - Coursera, for example, which Wiser considers a competitor. But, "most online learning today is done in an individual capacity. It's less about class discussion," Boyington said.

Wiser, on the other hand, "offers that community discussion based on class experience, but virtually."

Subjects will range from academic (history and literature, for example) to current events and the practical (managing finances, for example). Wiser members can organize special-interest meetings.

Wiser plans to go through a pilot phase this fall, offering 10 to 15 webinars. Next spring, it hopes to offer five courses, along with webinars. Webinars are short, "like brown-bag lunches," Boyington said. Courses will be longer, running four to eight weeks, meeting online at the same time every week.

Members pay a $20 annual fee, though the startup is waiving it for the first 500 people who join. Instructors charge additional fees for their courses. For example, a hypothetical Wiser course is "Manifest Destiny in U.S. History (1830-1855)," running for eight weeks with a fee of $30. Boyington and Lanners plan to look to Ph.D. students to teach the courses and webinars.

It cost the founders a few thousand dollars to get the startup going, Boyington said. "We wanted to test it as cheap as possible."

They built the website themselves and will use existing video-chat technology, she said.

"We hope in the future to build out our own technology," Boyington said.

At this point, they aren't looking for outside funding.

Aging2.0 had 400 applicants for its contest, which held 34 events, as far as Singapore and Barcelona, according to Grace Andruszkiewicz, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco-based company. Only 150 made it. Aging2.0 describes itself as a group working to improve the lives of older adults through innovation.

Thirty-three semifinalists advanced to the current stage. Five to eight of them will be selected to compete in the final event on Oct. 13 in San Francisco, Andruszkiewicz said.

The cash prize is relatively small, $2,500. But presenting at the event would be significant, Boyington said.

"In the aging space, it's the biggest conference."

Contact Mitra Malek at mmalek@timesfreepress.com or mitramalek.com.

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