GoGoGrandparent sprouted from a family's needs and became a lifeline for countless others
NEED TO KNOW
- Justin Boogaard was living with his grandma, Betty Luce, when she started talking about her struggles getting around
- Justin partnered with David Lung to create GoGoGrandparent, initially built to help connect senior citizens to ride-share services that could provide safe, reliable drivers
- Justin and Betty tell PEOPLE about the road to the successful business, which now provides various service for thousands of users
A man listening to his grandmother's needs built a business that's making life a little easier for thousands of seniors.
The idea first came to be when Justin Boogaard was living with his grandma from 2012 to 2014.
"I was broke and so she was offering a place to stay. Eventually, nothing was really going anywhere, and Grandma sort of gently persuaded me to consider getting a job somewhere else. I started thinking about it, but then one day at dinner, she brought up that she needed a ride," he tells PEOPLE exclusively.
Justin's grandma, Betty Luce, was headed to a play with a friend of hers and asked her grandson for Uber's phone number, having heard of the service before. He explained that it was an app-based service and there wasn't any number to call.
"Then she said, 'Well, why don't you make that?' And then that idea kind of got lodged," he recalls.
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It wouldn't be easy, but quietly over the next few months, Justin connected with co-founder David Lung about the idea and began to develop it, without telling Betty. As it progressed, Justin told his parents about the idea and they did what they could to help, "because we were all heavily motivated," he shares.
"We wanted this to be something that she could use, that she'd be able to rely on and that worked for her. That's a good summary of the things that are the most important that went into this. It needed to be something that Grandma was comfortable using — and so that meant that it couldn't be an app. It couldn't be a smartphone thing. It had to just be a phone number that she could call."
Betty was looking for a way around where she could feel "safe and comfortable, especially at night, when she'd be alone with a driver."
Thus came GoGoGrandparent, which allows you to call a number to coordinate any number of services using a numeric menu. The service lets callers schedule or immediately request an Uber or Lyft to be sent to their home, last drop-off point or a custom pickup location. Users can also request meals delivered from local restaurants, as fulfilled by services like DoorDash, groceries delivered from local supermarkets, medication management, home chores and more.
Having operations available 24/7 by phone was an important component to getting it right, according to Justin. Having started to get the pieces in place, Justin began his plan to introduce Betty to the service.
"For Grandma's very first ride, it was her and then her friend Edie. It was still a secret to Grandma that we had made the thing for her, because we wanted to see if it would be really useful. If I had told her we made it for her, she's a really good grandma, she would use it for sure," Justin says with a laugh.
"We got super lucky with Grandma's first driver, Luther. If it hadn't been for him, I don't think GoGo would've really succeeded. He was world-class. He drove for premium versions of Uber. I gave him a call and I explained the needs. In this particular case because she was going to the theater with her friend, Edie, it was, 'Grandma's going to need someone that can accommodate people that walk slowly.' Since Edie had a cane, I'd already checked to make sure that his vehicle wasn't too high off the ground or too low to the ground. Then once the trip starts, also being a presence to make sure everything is going okay is critical. "
The trip was a success, but the family still hesitated to tell Betty what Justin had developed. "We wanted to see if she would use it again. We were being kind of sneaky," he explains.
"Eventually, we did tell her, even before she used GoGo again, but it was because her friend Edie called a week later and got a trip to a medical appointment. There's no way that Edie could have gotten the phone number if Grandma hadn't given it to her. And so it was just a beautiful thing," he says. "So when Edie called the next week, my co-founder and I, my family and I, we were just all jumping up and down."
Once Betty learned that this is what Justin had been hard at work on, she was very impressed.
"I was really pleased because it was especially to be used for elderly people, and the drivers were told they were taking an elderly person and what help they'd need that was necessary. They were very helpful," she tells PEOPLE. "The drivers did theirs jobs so well and I think that was one thing I really appreciated. When I called them, they were here just practically within minutes and delivered me to my destination in minutes, and helped me to whatever point I needed help. I thought it was wonderful."
Once she was in the know, Betty was all in on helping Justin and David spread the word. Busy herself in three book clubs and two social clubs, she explained the service to friends.
"They thought it was a great idea. They were amazed that a young man could come up with something for the elderly people that was really helpful," Betty says.
"Quite a few of them did take advantage and start using the service and I think they're probably still using it," she adds.
Justin was grateful as the users poured in. "Grandma was one of the most popular people in Torrance. No joke, we probably got 300 or 400 people just from her network, all in Torrance and the South Bay. And so that was where we learned a lot of our chops around reliability and how important that is for our clients."
In 2015, the word of mouth took the company to the next level as Justin and David took the idea to different retirement communities.
"We'd give presentations. We went to probably 100 communities throughout California before starting to go to other states," he shares.
In meeting different elderly people with different medical backgrounds and needs for aid, they learned "reliability is a huge piece" of the business.
"A lot of clients may only need us once or twice a month, but that once or twice a month is for a critical medical appointment and they're relying on us to get them there so that they can feel safe in their home," he notes.
"For my grandma and for many of our clients, it's much more than convenience. If the wrong milk shows up that someone can't drink, because it has lactose in it, that could be the difference between them drinking milk or even being able to make a meal for breakfast that morning or not. They can't just run to the corner store to go pick something up," Justin continues.
"What we discovered as GoGo kept going was that we weren't just offering older adults convenient services. We weren't just being a taxi company for seniors. We were actually offering an alternative to traditional caregiving," he says. "Our service was helping people live longer in their homes. That was really cool because that's a pretty broken system that we have in the United States. We started to get really excited and it led us to start investing in more services for people. Now, we're doing care advocacy services for our clients and so much more. That was the big unlock for us, that for our clients, these aren't just rides; these are years longer that they're going to be able to spend in their home. And that was really cool to see."
Justin is happy to continue to be excited about growing the business as it come up on its 10th year in 2026. He's also happy to continue sharing his success with his grandma.
Knowing she was the inspiration behind his business "makes me feel six feet tall," Betty shares.
"I was very pleased. I still strut with pride," she says. Though at 94, she's handling "a few medical problems," she's enjoying the people closest to her.
"I have good friends and a wonderful family, in addition to my wonderful grandson," she shares. "I try to do as much as I can. I'm trying to enjoy life with limitations."
