Andrew Parker is the Founder and CEO of Papa, the first and only curated platform of companionship and clinical care for older adults and families. Prior to Papa, Andrew worked as Vice President of Health Systems at MDLive. He was there from the time when there were only around 15 employees and was able to help grow the company to hundreds of employees. Founded in 2017 in Miami, FL, Papa is now available in all 50 states. Papa experienced significant growth in 2021, growing 600% year-over-year. \n\n\nThis Episode\u2019s Heavy-hitters:\n\n- Andrew and his cofounder personally vetted the first thousand \u201cpals\u201d (the employees assigned to older adults) to be sure that they were the right fit for the job, beyond just the background checks and standard screenings.\n\n- Before he left his job at MDLive, Andrew had 10 families using Papa, which helped him build a proof of concept and feel confident when he started building Papa full time.\n\n- Andrew credits a great deal of his success to his optimism and doesn\u2019t believe he could\u2019ve done it if he hadn\u2019t fully believed in what he was creating.\n\n- Papa actually has special grievance protocols in place for the situations where adults pass away, to aid in the mental health of the pals who have built deep relationships with those that they help.\n\n- During the pandemic, most of Papa\u2019s support had to be offline or socially distanced at best. Thankfully, they were able to get all the pals and the older adults that they provide support for on virtual calls, which helped with the challenges of isolation.\n\nBe sure to check out Papa: https://www.papa.co/ \n\n\nIf you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review/ rating: https://ratethispodcast.com/thepozcast\n\n#thePOZcast is brought to you by our friends at Interseller \u2013 the prospecting + outreach platform of recruiters and sellers. Whether you\u2019re doubling down on business development or recruiting talent, Interseller does all the heavy lifting of finding contact data, automating the email and follow-up process, and syncs all that rich data into 20+ CRMs and ATSs. Reach out and get going in a 2-week *free* trial today and let them know you heard about them from Adam on #thePOZcast.\n\nCheck out a free demo today! https://bit.ly/2Fbm/BZ