Andrew Parker (Papa): Turning Companionship into a $240M Healthtech Platform Across 7,000 Cities
Zero to One · Jonathan Yana, Matteo David, Gary Rouch
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Show Notes
Started Papa to care for my grandfather. Today: 7,000 cities, $240M raised.
🎧 On this week’s Zero to One, we sit down with Andrew Parker, Founder & CEO of Papa. It started with a Facebook post and grew into a national care-tech platform trusted by the largest health plans in America, built on grit, scrappiness, and a healthy disregard for startup orthodoxy.
👉 A must-listen for anyone building in healthcare, tech-enabled services, or marketplaces.
🔥 How Papa works and how it got here:
→ A tech-enabled human touch delivering real health outcomes
→ 300k+ trained companions (“Pals”) supporting seniors nationwide
→ An outcome engine tracking impact beyond visits
→ Took the opposite of YC advice, built a “fake” product first
→ Scaled a unicorn from Miami
🎙️ In this episode:
* Why you should start with service before building tech
* How Andrew landed national partnerships before product-market fit
* The surprising TikTok virality that crashed their hiring system
* Why AI is a tool and not a strategy for solving real problems
💡 Plus: The “resolution ladder” framework for internal decision-making, and the one underrated tactic that helped Papa scale.