Osvaldo Montelongo's father was 57 when he was born. That meant that by the time Montelongo was in his early 20s, his dad started getting dementia and was moved to a nursing home.
As a former farmer in Mexico for 50 years, his father was more isolated than ever.
"I noticed that his mental and social health declined rapidly in the first month or two," Montelongo told Chicago Inno. "Instead of doing health and fitness classes and bingo, he really needed things like mariachi music, tamale cooking classes and things that were relevant for him."
The experience showed Montelongo that it was time to give nursing homes and senior living communities the tools they need to care for patients like his father.
In 2017, he launched ConnectCareHero, a Chicago startup designed to provide a "Netflix-like" experience for residents in skilled nursing, assisted living and memory care facilities. The health-focused platform provides senior living residents with culturally diverse programming that Montelongo's father never had in the hopes of keeping them busy, happy and socially active at a time when Covid kept older adults isolated.
The startup announced an oversubscribed seed round of $1.8 million on Tuesday, bringing its total funding to $2.7 million.
Poor social relationships can increase the risk of coronary heart disease by 29% and can increase risk of stroke by 32%, according to health experts.
Founded by a first-generation Mexican, ConnectCareHero is coming off investments from The American Heart Association Social Impact Funds and Google for Startups. The Chicago startup was also one of the first 50 recipients of Google for Startups' Latino Founders Fund, participated in the Techstars Future of Longevity Accelerator and was in the sixth cohort of the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and 1871's Latinx Incubator.
"Being a Latino founder, I think being tapped into the 1871 ecosystem [and] the Techstars ecosystem really gave us our first funding we needed to get it off the ground," Montelongo said. "They've been crucial for our success and where we are today."
The startup recently moved its office from coworking space to a location in Uptown to help further grow the team.
"At the end of the day, we do have a lot of customers here in the Illinois area, and if we want to do a demo, we have a demo room here where we can showcase our product and the offerings that we have," Montelongo said.
With a team of six full-time and part-time employees, ConnectCareHero plans to essentially double the size of its workforce by adding another five to six full-time hires.
