112. Why Kyle Rand Believes Love is Greater Than Dementia

In this heartfelt and visionary episode of Raising Tech, Matt Reiners welcomes his longtime friend and VR trailblazer, Kyle Rand, CEO and Co-founder of Rendever. From ice cream-fueled volunteer days to industry-shaping innovations, Kyle shares his deeply personal journey into senior living and how Rendever is redefining aging with virtual reality.

They dive into:

• How immersive VR can combat social isolation and cognitive decline
• The powerful research backing VR’s impact in senior care
• A touching story that changed Kyle’s perspective forever
• Why dementia empathy training is reshaping how we train care teams
• Rendever’s new AI-powered companion, Nova, and the future of personalized engagement

Whether you're a technologist, operator, or just someone who cares about aging with dignity, this conversation will leave you inspired.

Links & Resources:

• Learn more about Rendever
• Connect with Kyle Rand on LinkedIn
• Explore Dementia Empathy Training & RendeverFit

Find us online:
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LinkedIn

Transcript

Matt Reiners: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of Raising Tech. I am joined here by Kyle Rand, the CEO of Rendever, and he only had one ask for this episode, and I have to make it official. But Kyle is my best friend in the industry, so, uh, I've spent quality time with Kyle. I'm both coasts of the country from hiking in San Fran to, uh, Boston birthday parties.

So, uh, it's just been, I've known Kyle, gosh, for very long time now, and I'm just super excited to kinda jump into some of the cool things around VR and Endeavor and kind of the future of technology, age, tech, whatever buzzwords people are using today. So, uh. Kyle, excited to, uh, spend some time [00:01:00] here together with you today, 

Kyle Rand: Matt.

I'm so excited to finally be on here. We've been friends for so long. How come it's taken so long to get me on this podcast? 

Matt Reiners: I was just making sure you're in it for the long game. Mm-hmm. And being a friend first versus just kind of using me for this platform, you know? Mm-hmm. And, uh. And I, I would say one of the other quality time spent, we have to shout 'em out of our time spent in Pullman, Washington and Washington state together.

So that was a fun, you know, escaping the blizzard in Boston and going out there together. But, 

Kyle Rand: uh, yeah, I truly think some of my best memories in this industry surround Pullman, Washington. 

Matt Reiners: Yeah. Especially the cheese just, uh, always kind of lives up to the cougar Gold, so, 

Kyle Rand: yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Sorry, 

Matt Reiners: Wisconsin Friends.

Yeah, there you go. Oh man. I don't know if we, ah, I don't know if we can get this out there or not. Um, so Kyle, you know, a place I always like to start, like, what is your story and how did you end up in senior living? 

Kyle Rand: So for those of you who don't know, Matt, and I's story actually is [00:02:00] very similar, which I think is why we're such good friends.

At least it's part of it. So originally from upstate New York. Spent a lot of time as a kid volunteering in a senior living community and in that senior living community. I still have yet to go into a community that had one of these, they had an in-house ice cream parlor, and so I used to go with my friends and we would scoop ice cream for residents, which is like, I think the best way to launch a volunteer program is to just give unlimited ice cream or cheese, uh, to kids in the summer.

It really, it worked. I then went and I studied, um, cognitive decline in the aging population. Um, while also pursuing a degree in engineering. I honestly thought that I was gonna do a PhD in neuroengineering. Love research, love impact, but the speed of research can be a bit slow. Um, and the speed of product development, as you know, can be quite fast.

And just like startup life cycles, I think are just. Phenomenal to work with it. And so a few things happened that led me down the startup path, got me to Boston, which is where you and I became friends. [00:03:00] Um, and then we started building Endeavor back in 2016. I think for me, the thing that always stuck with me is, you know, as I was graduating college, my grandma was diagnosed with dementia.

She was moved, she started the process, right? She was living alone at the lake in one of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. From there, she moved in with my aunt who was also navigating a cancer diagnosis. Um, both of them were kind of navigating diagnoses at the same time. Grandma ended up going into an adult day program, eventually moved full-time into a community, and every single transition was tough.

Everything was tough, not just for her, but also for my family. I really watched my family start to kind of get torn apart at the seams, navigating what is ultimately how best to love someone, how best to care for someone, give them the support that they need. And I think once you see how tough the process can be, you just want to change it.

Um, and. So fast forward a few other experiences. We started Endeavor [00:04:00] back in 2016, and really our goal was to tackle one of the largest problems facing older adults, really across the world, which is this problem of social isolation. And we took a step back and we asked like, how do we actually help people build friendships and build relationships as they enter this stage of life?

And VR was coming onto the scene in Boston. At the same time we started experimenting and testing. We found that. There's a lot that you can do with this new technology that trigger the kind of emotions that actually open up friendships, and that's how RRendever was started. 

Matt Reiners: No, I love that. And to your, you know, first point there of starting a volunteer program with unlimited ice cream.

I mean, you said kids, but I feel like adults of any age, I mean, that'd probably get me moving and grooving anywhere too, but, uh, you know, and it's, it's, it's so cool to kind of hear that story. And it's been fun, you know, I know there's been times over the last decade that we've had. Booths and tables next to each other.

So to kind of seeing how you guys have evolved over time has been, you know, I've been a [00:05:00] firsthand witness to that. And you know, I know you mentioned you started in 2016. You've almost been leading Endeavor for almost a decade now, which is just crazy. And you know, I know you mentioned when you moved to Boston, VR was relatively new and really VR and senior living was almost unheard of.

And I'm wondering like, how has that vision evolved over the last decade for what you guys are trying to do? 

Kyle Rand: Yeah. Right. Like we were starting at the same time, you guys were kind of starting ever sound. And I think that there was this overall influx of young, excited kids looking at this industry with good purpose, good passion.

Good, good, uh, why that connected all of us, right? And we were like, how do we use technology to change what is possible within senior living? And. I don't know if you, you ever experienced this because I think headphones are a little bit more commonplace, or at least I think they still are today. In V in 2016, nobody had even known what VR was like.

Very few people had a personal experience with vr and so we had to spend [00:06:00] years going and just committing to market education, like speaking wherever we could, doing operator meetings, wherever we could. And I think like one of the weird unlocks for people was I would always compare VR. To not just this new technology that like these tech guys started bringing up into the world, but, um, the origins of VR really go back to the Viewmaster in the 1930s.

And we've seen enterprise VR grown and develop, right? Military made its first large multimillion dollar at the time investment in vr back in I think the era of World War II to use it as training for, um, people in the military. And so VR has been growing. And I think it was really important to help the under help the industry understand that this technology had been growing alongside the industry and it was just time for these two things to really come together with the right reason.

Matt Reiners: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Um, and it's kind of cool to see how vr, you [00:07:00] know. I'll say in the beginning too. 'cause yeah, we started around the same time. Like I definitely from my perspective was like, oh, that seems like it's cool, right? Like it seems cool of like what people can do, but you know, I'd always was concerned like how like residents would respond to it.

But I know like research has been really heavy and a big focus of what you guys are doing with it. Um, 'cause we hear about like. The immersive power of VR and what that can do. But I know you guys have been hitting the research perspective super hard, and I'm wondering like what are some of the most compelling findings you've seen around its impact on cognitive health, especially for older adults?

Kyle Rand: Yeah. One of the benefits of people pushing so hard against this technology in the early days was that our answer had to be researched. We were kind of put in a situation where we had no choice but to take an evidence-based approach to building this platform. And I think today, I think we're the only evidence-based social wellness platform in the industry.

And our first study was with MITH Lab. Another shout out to Boston, shout out to the ecosystem [00:08:00] there. That's really looking at the future of aging. And we really were, before we started like going hard, we asked, can we actually do what we're setting out to do? Which is can we help people? Build better relationships.

Matt, you know, this social isolation leads to a 30% increase in all core, all cause mortality. It's ties to a 30% increase in risk of stroke and heart disease, a 50% increase in risk of cognitive decline. It has ties to, um, of course depression, to anxiety, even to medication, uh, mis adherence to risk of diabetes immunosuppression.

It's a dangerous place to be. It's one of the number one things that as an industry we can come around and help solve because, especially within the senior living side of this industry, structurally, there's no reason for social isolation. We just need to create opportunities for people to spend time together that counts as meaningful time and so.

With this first study with MIT age lab, we asked can we make that happen? And we put [00:09:00] groups of eight residents together. This was at Benchmark communities across Boston, and they would either do VR or they would do TV based programming, similar. Um, just really looking at modality. And what we found was that after.

Just two weeks of daily sessions. This was high frequency. We saw statistically significant decreases in depression scores and increases in multiple measures of social health for the VR group, most interestingly, people actually started to trust each other more. They report the trust of other residents of staff members.

And if you think about what a relationship is, right? I think we all talk about relationships and trust. So congruently, right? You need to trust someone to have a relationship with them and to actually cause trust to increase. I think that just showed us that the door can be wide open if you use technology to really build connection.

Matt Reiners: Hmm. Yeah. No, and it, and I think too, what I love about the, the RRendeverer, it's like these shared [00:10:00] experiences, right? And like, I think in terms of building that trust and building that connection, it's through these shared experiences that are, you know, a little bit different than just, you know, sitting around watching the news, right?

Like, uh, it, it's more, it interactive, it's more engaging. And that's where I start to see that. And I, and I love how you're talking about some of the social isolation facts, the one that always sticks out to me. You know, it's more of a, a comparison, but you know, it was like the prolonged stints of social isolation is compared to smoking 15 cigarettes per day, which, you know, I was raised to believe cigarettes would probably be the worst thing that I could ever do.

And just to kind of see that comparison and, you know, I think with COVID, it kind of. Highlighted and really showcased what that social isolation can do with people. And you know why? I've really just fallen in love with the RRendeverer platform. It's, you know, I think when people think of life enrichment, life engagements, what can happen between these four walls, but now with what you guys are doing, it's really what can we do with this in the entire world, um, which I really love and.

Kyle Rand: It brings the shared experience side into the personalized side as [00:11:00] well. And I think like this is also what I loved about Ever sound is all the videos, whenever we would co-present these videos, would not just show people using technology, they would show people using technology to reconnect to something that is so, so significant and then truly emote from those.

Like I, I think about the video where the woman. I don't remember if, if it was the woman or the gentleman who had Alzheimer's disease listen to the wedding song and just like, mm-hmm. They started dancing. Like, I don't know how many times I have cried watching ever sound videos, and it's because of that.

Right? It's not just the connection, it's, it's the personalization that happens through the connection. 

Matt Reiners: Exactly. I think it's, you know, when I think of technology and its role that it can play, it's like, how does it reconnect us with our loved ones and like these, these memories and these thoughts and like really just provide that level of independence and that level of, uh, familiarity to what, you know, life used to be.

And yeah, that, that video definitely stands out to me. Uh, shout out Commonwealth on that one. [00:12:00] Um, and. Yeah. And you know, obviously you've had this front row seat, uh, to all these emotional responses that VR can unlock. You know, I can think of a couple of videos that come to mind from you. 'cause Kyle and I speak, uh, quarterly or trimester, whatever, however often they have their, I.

Two times a year. I don't know, two, uh, college campuses. So we always get to see everyone's, uh, each other's latest and greatest, uh, stories. But I'm wondering like if there's any one experience or reaction that stayed with you and fundamentally shaped how you think about aging? 

Kyle Rand: 100%. And I think you, you'll probably connect to this, right?

We have. Press that comes out almost weekly at this point, highlighting how residents are reacting to virtual reality. Um, 'cause it does this great thing of like helping to uplift the industry and tie real emotional reactions that are positive to people living within the industry. And I think that that's, um, something I take super seriously.

And while these are coming out every single [00:13:00] week, I always think back to the beginning ones. I always think back to the moments that like really just. The light bulb always came on. Right. And like the video that I think always has stuck with me and you have seen it before, is the video of Mickey. This was a shout out Maplewood Senior Living.

This was early days. We had launched in maybe three communities in New England. We were still like getting our feet underneath us, still understanding what the industry really needed. And we did a demo at one of the Maplewood Senior Living communities, and it was all their assisted living and this room was.

Packed. Like we had only brought eight headsets and there were probably 30 people all waiting for their turns. And the room was big enough that they put everybody in a circle. And there was just like this kind of organic, natural sharing of the headsets between experiences. And it was fun. It was boisterous, like everybody was laughing, having a great time.

And then about halfway into the demo, they wheeled in this woman named Mickey. [00:14:00] And Mickey went into the middle of the circle and before we put a headset on her, her caregiver came running up to me and was like, I need you to understand Mickey's story. And everybody, like there is a resident that has this story in every community, right?

Mm-hmm. She was. The boisterous one. She was the, the light of the community. The person who always had hi to you in the morning knew everybody by name, big smile on her face, always waving just like she was this light. She was this life. And she was diagnosed with early stage dementia and eventually moved upstairs into the locked memory care floor.

And as he's saying this, like tears are welling up around his eyes and he's like, it's been three months since that transition has happened. Express aphasia is. Full blown. I haven't heard her talk. I haven't heard her laugh. I haven't seen her smile. And all I want is my Mickey back. And again, we're early, right?

We're still trying. I don't even think we'd done the MITH lab study. Uh, or we hadn't [00:15:00] finished studying the, or getting the results from it. And so we're like, okay, cool, cool, cool, cool. What are we gonna do? And so we did. I think what anybody might end up choosing that situation is we put her into a room full of.

Puppies. Mm. And the reaction was so instantaneous, right? I had just heard this caregiver sharing that had not seen any positive emotion in months, and then she was surrounded by these cute little dogs, and the smile that spread across her face will be seared in my memory forever. Right? She starts laughing, she starts calling out to the dog.

She starts like. Kissing to them, fully engaged and present in the moment with this huge smile across her face. And she actually starts talking to them like she, she says things like, I can almost feel them. She says things like, oh, come here. She's just engaged in the experience. [00:16:00] And at the end of it, she took the headset off and she looked around the room.

With this big smile and you could just see that the light had turned back on. Like she was engaged, she was part of the conversation. She was like, there was joy and I think gratitude in her eyes. And at the end of the session, she followed us out of the building truly. And. Told Tom, our co-founder, that we need to bring this to schools because it would be so amazing to help kids learn through these kind of experiences.

And that's three months. Three months of full blown expressive aphasia to pitching us business ideas after one VR session. And I will never, ever forget that because I think it shows not just the technology of vr, but I think it shows what this industry can do when it connects people back to true joy and the things that make people light up to open [00:17:00] up just a world of experiences.

Matt Reiners: Yeah, I love that. And, uh, I've seen that video. Uh, you know, of course I'm biased towards the ever sound videos, but I think when I think back to that, it's such a sweet one and, uh, I can like almost hear her joyful laughter as you, uh, you know, share that memory. And, uh, I love that. And, and I know too with like over the years and even recently, like, so RRendeverer, you know, kind of started as this like shared VR experience and now.

You know, you're getting into some more of this like staff family training and like your dimension empathy training has been a standout. I took it myself. I've got mine right here, which I still need to raffle off to a lucky community. I've got a, I've got a couple people put their, uh, names in the hat so far.

Um, but I'm wondering like, from your perspective, like how does putting someone inside this experience or kind of like living through this really change the way that care teams understand and support residents living with dementia? 

Kyle Rand: God, there's, there's so much opportunity. Uh, I kind of wanna flip it back at you, [00:18:00] like I, and, and I'll, I'll add one thing that's a bit personal, right?

Like, I think that I have seen a lot of people come and start building in this industry, which I love. 10 years ago, there were very few people who were turning their retention early in career to senior living. That's changed. We have a lot of people coming here. If we have people who are coming into this industry because of the financial tailwinds, without having the personal touch.

That worries me. And I remember getting asked a lot as a, as a younger person in the comm in the industry, whether or not I really knew what I was doing. Right. We talked about ageism last week, and I had that personal experience. I studied cognitive decline. I spent time with my own grandparents like navigating these changes.

I think it's not just for people in this industry, it's not just for frontline caregivers. It's not for, um. A specific person. I think as a society, there's an opportunity to better understand [00:19:00] what dementia feels like, what dementia looks like. And I think when we were building this, our focus was how do you actually cause a societal shift?

Hmm. I mean, you know. Right. Like what, you probably faced a lot of the same questions, and I know you also have a personal connection to the industry, but having worked here for so long and then trying this experience, like what did it feel like? 

Matt Reiners: Yeah. So I mean, I will, uh, keep the swear words to myself in terms of the bathroom scene.

'cause I just kept forgetting the steps the entire time. Um, but you know, I think it, it kind of gives you a few of those aha moments coming out of it. Right. Because like people can kind of express to you what it's like or like what you kind of read about and papers or different articles, right. But to kind of like live there and try to like.

Do some of these things by some, by the point of like doing some of it, I was just guessing at the end. Right. And like could almost feel this sense of defeat when I was doing that. And I think, you know, I'm not working with someone living with dementia on a daily basis, but I think if I, I [00:20:00] was, it would almost like.

Help me to be more patient and kind of like what we're doing and how we're interacting with people and like what that actually looks like from their perspective. And I think too, like, you know, they say if you wanna really see what someone's living through, like go walk a mile in their shoes and like this gives you the opportunity to do that right?

And really see that firsthand, um, work at a pace that makes sense to you. And it's just so overwhelmingly. Uh, you know, you're in there right in the VR world, that you're really just embracing all of that. And so I think, like I just had so many aha moments coming out of it where like, if I'm a product designer or doing some of the other stuff, or like how do I speak to it and like, how do I just really, you know, meet people where they are and try to help them the best way that I can.

Kyle Rand: It's that right? We tell people to meet people where they are, but what if you don't know where that is? A lot of people who are frontline care workers don't necessarily know where that is. And I think it's so important to have an accessible tool that you can spend 30 minutes with [00:21:00] even one-on-one to get that exposure and understanding.

And to me, I think. In a perfect world, anybody who enters frontline, they get that experience in the first two weeks, right? You might not get it on day one, but I think what we've really focused on and how we built out this program is, you know, Nova's there to debrief with you. It's all guided. Um, there's instructional parts in the beginning to help you understand that, how to use vr if you've never used vr.

It's really, if you can, if you're gonna give someone 30 minutes sitting in a room to understand what dementia feels like. From an emotional place. We're hoping that that will solve that. And I've spent a lot of the last couple months going around the country visiting operators, and we've seen some really beautiful things.

I, there was someone who, again, has worked in this industry for 30 years who did the pill sorting experience, and at the end was crying because pill sorting, right? Such a, such a simple thing, such a [00:22:00] critical thing. Anybody who's dealt with an aging parent has probably had an experience where medication management was dipping and there were challenges, and that actually might have star sparked a conversation.

If you can't manage your own medication because of any of these symptoms or any related symptoms of aging, it could be a life or death scenario. Mm. Right. And I think just to put that in someone's face in a way that doesn't necessarily throw the emotion at you, but opens up the opportunity for the emotion, um, is really beautiful.

I'm curious there, in the, one of the modules, we have a symptom library, right? And as a society, I think people understand dementia and Alzheimer's disease and memory loss, right? Like those are the three words that probably stick together, or five words that stick together. We really wanted to focus in on what exists.

Outside of that, was there anything that was super surprising for you as you were going through the [00:23:00] symptom side? 

Matt Reiners: I think. So, yeah, the default, what I would say, right, is like, people forget things, right? I think it's like the simple way to kind of do it, but like, I think the hallucinations from like my perspective, and I know I've got a, a friend living with Lewy body, shout out Michael Belleville, who's expressed kind of like what those hallucinations were like to him and like.

You know, um, fortunately, knock on wood, I haven't experienced hallucinations for one way or another, you know? And, and I think just kind of like experiencing that and seeing that, like, firsthand of like what that actually looks like, right? Because when you think of hallucinations, you think like there's a person right there.

You can clearly see them and talk to them, but like, it's more of these kind like figures or shadows and like, that kind of like really took me for a loop. 'cause I've heard these stories of people living in these communities where they think people are after them and they're hearing some of these things.

And I think from my perspective, like. Just the all encompassing, it's not like, oh no, you know, grandma and grandpa can't really remember anymore. Like it's, it, [00:24:00] it can be a scary experience, um, from the symptoms side for sure. So, yeah, 

Kyle Rand: I, I saw something similar. My mom, so for those of you who don't know, my mom is a physical therapist.

She was a physical therapist before retiring in this industry. So spent a lot of time in communities in Rochester, New York. Um, love the Eden Alternative, which is also from Rochester New York. Shout out and. 30, 40 years ago, she did an empathy experience where she rubbed Vaseline on her goggles. She put on headphones and she put on mitts.

And so seeing her go through this and then like bring up those stories and like even still remembered some of the like, immediate reactions that she had, um, when she tried putting herself in those shoes was really, really fascinating. What I loved when she did it was that my grandpa is 96 and a half years old, living alone in Long Island, New York.

Um, significant [00:25:00] macular degeneration, glaucoma, um, and one of the symptoms that is shown is, uh, contrast degradation, which can happen just with standard aging. And we, she turned on the contrast degradation and turned it back off, and then turned it back on, and then turned it back off, and she was just like, Hmm.

No wonder Dad always says the TV's in black and white. Mm-hmm. Right. Like simple things, right? These simple moments of recognition, that same one. The color and contrast I had, I was on site with Human Good last week and they brought in like everybody across their community, like multiple different levels and roles and functions within the community.

From dining through activities and um, the thing that kept coming up was, you know, they talk about, I think in that community they were using, making sure they were using red plates. I was like, why do we use red plates within dining? And someone else made these similar comments, right? We can't use white tablecloths with white napkins with white plates.

[00:26:00] Neutral colored food. If your person is living with contrast and color degradation, it all just looks muted and bland. And so incorporating colors and having that aha moment to what the end user experience is and connecting that to what the training says, I think opens up the door for so much of the training that already happens in this industry.

To resonate and kind of really become an embedded understanding, not just something that someone at corporate said during week one. 

Matt Reiners: Right. No, and I, and I love that. And I think too, you know, we had talked about some of that medication management. I'm thinking back to my own experience and. Let's just say I was guessing by the end of it, so I would've been very sick by the, uh, end of it if that was, uh, real life.

And you know, and it's, it's kind of interesting to think about VR 'cause like, you know, it's awesome. Often framed as a tool, right? So like, especially like nowadays, if you look today like how do we use it for like dimension empathy training? How do we use it for like this, like resident engagement?

Resident [00:27:00] experience. But do you ever see it becoming more than that? Maybe like a medium for memory preservation or storytelling within senior care and. If so, like what do you think that looks like? A hundred 

Kyle Rand: percent. A hundred percent. I don't know. You met Nova. You met Nova. So we actually have an AI companion named Nova who's designed to take all of this and bring it to the next level.

I think one of the things that we really learned, we have at this point, over 25 clinically validated outcomes of using VR across populations and older pop populations. And one of the things that we learned is that. VR provides so much impact on the ground. Like every time we do a study and we see the results, it truly blows my mind.

And we just finished a three year long clinical trial, um, that we submitted our first publication over the summer. Hopefully it gets approved in the next couple of weeks. And then we just got another clinical trial as a carry on approved, which I think out of [00:28:00] anything, shows that the results are super promising.

Um, so all the research, all the work that we've done in the communities has shown the impact on the ground. The big question I think for operators and for people who are thinking from a frontline perspective is how do you really make sure that that level of impact is delivered day to day? And this is where I think the best opportunity for AI and continued expansion comes for us.

It's making sure that we are using. What other technologies we have at her disposal to keep the experience high intent, highly personalized and highly usable. And I think it's really funny, whenever we talk about usability in vr, a big thing that we've had to study in order even to unlock this clinical trial funding is like, what are the UX and UI paradigms that we leverage to make sure that this technology truly is usable and adoptable?

Um. And when we're looking at AI and [00:29:00] Nova as our new friendly companion, it just takes it to the next level. Um, I'm, let me share one moment that has resonated with me this year about the. Incorporation of Nova, and that was, we were at CES, which if you've never been, is this wild showcase, like 300,000 people all interested in technology.

All people who probably have made very, very significant investments in their own technology and they want to see what is the latest and the greatest. Doing a demo at a show like that. Is like doing a demo at a senior living conference times a thousand. Truly, it's like nonstop flow. And if you've ever run a VR session, in order to do that, in order to make it personalized, in order to make it enjoyable, um, high intent, you need, as a facilitator, you need to really nail the, the whole thing.

And so. What we did at CES this year was we took off the facilitator. It wasn't me. It wasn't my team, it [00:30:00] wasn't anybody on the show floor leading these VR sessions. It was all Nova. And so all we had to do was offer to the people who were interested in seeing what, what the latest was, offer them. A chance to sit down, put the headset on, put headphones on, and then meet Nova.

And then Nova introduced herself and then took them through a highly personalized VR journey. So would ask them questions about their life, about what their interests are, um, about where they grew up. Like really just trying to get to know them in a few short questions. And then from that. Literally would snap her fingers and then the world would change and it would go back to something that is meaningful to them.

It would go back to something that was connected to 'em. It could be their childhood home, it could be, um, their favorite beach in Bermuda. It could be anything. But she's actually sourcing that and bringing that up through the conversation and then serving it in real time and. I think for me why that really [00:31:00] sticks and why it's so exciting is it takes care of this challenge, which is true of any technology, not just vr, of how do you make sure that the champions who are on the ground are delivering this high intent, high personalization, high impact session, and we have all the research, all the data and all the insights to let Nova take care of that, where staff get to be part of the beneficiaries.

And leverage the technology to actually build the human relationships, both between residents and with the residents themselves. 

Matt Reiners: Wow, that's awesome. And I'm not, I'm thinking like what my personalized VR journey might look like, um, for myself. Uh, I can get you on, you have the headset. Ooh. Uh, maybe I won't raffle this off and I'll just keep it, but No, no, I gotta give it to someone.

Um. But like, I guess that's like a, it's a perfect segue into my next question here, because like, obviously this industry is wrestling with workforce shortages, burnout, resident engagement, and you know, you might've just already answered this, but like, how do you see VR fitting into this broader [00:32:00] evolution of care delivery?

Kyle Rand: Hmm. Yeah. I really, I think what I get excited about Matt, is that we are kind of at this place where in this industry VR adoption has entered the early majority. If you look at the map of like top 100 senior living providers, nonprofit, and for-profit, at least half of them have some level of VR deployment within their portfolio, and that's exciting, right?

As a business owner, I get excited about that as someone who's been pushing against these concrete walls for 10 years with millions of research dollars dedicated to really proving this out. I get excited. Um, I think where things are going, and I can say this from kind of a product perspective here at RRendeverer, is all of the various use cases that we've seen and the ways to drive on the ground impact are now starting to connect.

Right. And from a platform perspective, from um, a technology perspective, from an [00:33:00] integration of Nova as an AI companion who is designed to understand what the need is and then deliver on that need, I think we're at a place where these use cases are not really what we're selling. It really is now a fully integrated platform that can identify quickly.

Are you somebody who is stressed and needs a little bit of anxiety relief? Are you somebody who's feeling disconnected and needs to connect back with something from your past? Are you somebody who is a little sad and just needs joy in your life? Right? Like if we can identify that and that doesn't, that's not just residents.

That is 100% staff too. If you can identify that and then serve in the moment, it becomes just like a really, really vibrant. Opportunity and why I think VR will always be a little bit better than any other approach there is because for any mental health challenge that you're facing, depression, anxiety, right?

Stress, all these things, to be able to remove the [00:34:00] environment and become fully immersed in something that is designed to address one of those feelings, uh, it's night and day compared to just like, you know, looking at your phone screen and hoping no notifications, open up, social media, et cetera, et cetera.

Matt Reiners: Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. Um, yeah, and, and you know, I know you mentioned like you've been kind of beating this, uh, concrete wall for the last 10 years, and I'm wondering like, what are senior living operators still misunderstanding about VR and how can they reframe their thinking? 

Kyle Rand: I think to the credit of this industry and the credit of where we are here in 2025 versus where we were in 2016.

I, I think people are getting it, and I think even the people who don't get it now have this integrated understanding that it doesn't really necessarily matter if they don't get it as long as the end users get it and benefit from it. And so I think I would give a lot of credit to the industry for the level of adoption that we're seeing, the level of open-mindedness that we're seeing and the level [00:35:00] of like.

Egoless decision making that is starting to enter the fold. Um, so I would say I give more credit than anything else. Um, the thing that I think I would love to continue seeing this industry is again, we were kind of put into a situation where we wouldn't be here if we weren't evidence-based. Full stop.

And I think that that's an important distinction. I would like to see this industry bring that on more holistically. Don't make it about vr, don't make it about a technology that you're not used to. If you're gonna bring in a technology that is resident facing or is staff facing or is designed to tackle one of the, especially mental health challenges that exists in the industry, make sure there's evidence.

Don't, don't fall for a sales pitch. That's just a sales pitch. Would you agree with that? 

Matt Reiners: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think, you know this. You know, it's, it's funny being on my side now 'cause I've been the one [00:36:00] delivering that kind of like those sales pitches and now I can kind of, granted I never lied or did anything.

And uh, but uh, you know, there's definitely, it's interesting to see them now is like how other companies are talking about their offering or like what that can do. And you know, even speaking to some of our clients, how they kind of feel like they've been. You know, under promise, or I'm sorry, over promise and under-delivered.

And it's kind of been interesting to see how that can navigate. And I think too with like what's been interesting from a senior living provider standpoint with innovation requires a certain level of risk tolerance. And I just think at times they're, you know, some don't have that appetite. And I think it's, uh, it's been interesting to kind of see, but I think.

Kind of the proof is in the pudding. We continue to see these positive things coming out, and I think those groups that are embracing technology, leaning into it, understanding it. Willing to find what solution makes the most sense. Like the, the residents of today are the different from the residents of yesterday, and we're gonna only see that tech app appetite increase.

So, [00:37:00] um, you know, and I think too, it's been interesting you start to see their group, these groups talk about what their tech stack looks like beyond just like the EHR platforms and some of those things that were thought of need to haves. I think some of the platforms like VR were always, and every sound too were looked at as like nice to haves, but now they're becoming this.

Big points of differentiation, big points of resident experience, and I think more and more people are investing in resident experience and technology can be one of those solutions to that. Um. I'm, I'm curious and, you know, uh, second to last question here, you know, so as a more emerging tech leaders are entering the senior living space, I know like when we both started, we were young pups on the block.

Um, but like, how do we, how do they, or how do you think about balancing innovation with intentionality? Making sure that, you know, like operators aren't just adopting new tools for the sake of novelty. 

Kyle Rand: I think you just kind of nailed the answer to that question, right? I think this industry, whenever I [00:38:00] speak outside of senior living, I always point to one of the real impressive things about senior living is that when we talk about holistic health, when we talk about holistic wellness, this industry has done it far longer than almost anybody else, right?

Like all the research points to, in order to care for an older adult. You need to think about the entire person. It's not just physical care, it's not just prescription pharma. It is really how do we care about the entire person? And I think that understanding is so deep here. The question is of course, how do we then go from that understanding to a delivery of even better lifestyle and care?

And, um, if there's one thing that operators do need to understand is that wellness and resident engagement are not a nice to have. They are the must have. Especially as more and more technology enables people to age in place, one of the biggest differentiators that senior living can offer is structural community, structural social support, because everybody understands that social wellness is key to longevity.

Um, and these feelings [00:39:00] of thrivingness. So I think that as we continue to see people move in and innovation comes in and more people start selling tech into this industry, I think we need to acknowledge where we are and. For me, maybe Bailey would appreciate this metaphor. I feel like, especially the resident engagement side of innovation right now is almost akin to the skincare industry where there's plenty that you can get.

There's plenty that you can spend money on and. Also, there are things in skincare that are evidence-based that have gone through clinical trials, that have shown specific benefits for specific conditions. And so you can walk into a Sephora and spend tens of thousands of dollars on products that are packaged and branded and beautiful that don't actually have any science behind them.

And get none of the benefit that you would get if you really focus in on evidence-based technology. And so I think it's important to acknowledge that [00:40:00] and to really continue driving what people placed on us, which is if you're gonna bring this innovation in, if you're gonna bring this technology in, show us what it's good for, show us that it works.

And do that with legitimate research, not with self-guided three question surveys before and after.