<p>Started Papa to care for my grandfather. Today: 7,000 cities, $240M raised.</p><p>🎧 On this week’s Zero to One, we sit down with Andrew Parker, Founder &amp; 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.</p><p>👉 A must-listen for anyone building in healthcare, tech-enabled services, or marketplaces.</p><p>🔥 How Papa works and how it got here:</p><p>→ A tech-enabled human touch delivering real health outcomes</p><p>→ 300k+ trained companions (“Pals”) supporting seniors nationwide</p><p>→ An outcome engine tracking impact beyond visits</p><p>→ Took the opposite of YC advice, built a “fake” product first</p><p>→ Scaled a unicorn from Miami</p><p>🎙️ In this episode:</p><p>* Why you should start with service before building tech</p><p>* How Andrew landed national partnerships before product-market fit</p><p>* The surprising TikTok virality that crashed their hiring system</p><p>* Why AI is a tool and not a strategy for solving real problems</p><p>💡 Plus:
The “resolution ladder” framework for internal decision-making, and the one underrated tactic that helped Papa scale.</p>