Along with Eduardo Fierro, Jon Ander Fernández and Haize Trueba, he is the founder of Kuvu, a social enterprise that aims to end the unwanted loneliness and social isolation of the elderly. To do this, they take advantage of intergenerational relationships by placing young people and adults under the same roof or through other specific means. In this interview, Eduardo talks about Kuvuz and its new projects.

What is Kuvu and how was it born?

We started in Kuvun almost two years ago, when we were at Mondragon University studying for the LEINN degree (Entrepreneurial Leadership and Innovation). We created the 20/75 project, where we wanted to improve the quality of life of the elderly. Thus, we began to identify the problem of unwanted loneliness. Many older people suffered and others did not, but that was their biggest fear. We started researching what the possible solutions might be and found that there was a sharing program within a network called Home Share International, and we started thinking about what technology we could use to create that impact. Thus was born Kuvu.

Kuvu is a social enterprise in which we have a mission to improve the quality of life of the elderly, avoiding unwanted loneliness and social isolation, and we do everything through this common line to unite different generations.

We have a marketplace, for the elderly, perhaps because the children have left and want to share the house, but they are scared. That’s one of the main reasons why an elderly person doesn’t want to share their home. We have created several services. In them, we help them choose the right person based on their hobbies or the way they live. Then we also help them in the protection of coexistence. We have a type of contract that is unique in Spain, which guarantees the protection of the elderly and, on the other hand, allows young people to obtain a cheaper home in a different environment. The profile of the young people who approach us is a little older.

On the other hand, with Covid, we created an app where we look to do the same thing. An elderly person may not want to share their home, but they do want to share moments. We call this app Kuvu Moments Share, and here we offer help when it comes to shopping, doing some business or having a coffee ... and we do it through a network of volunteers, which means we connect the elderly with the young people as close as possible. We try to do it between neighborhoods.

How does it work? How do you connect with users?

We have a part of the collaboration with public administrations and institutions, mainly to expand the possibility of sharing the house. But we do everything through Facebook. Despite the stereotype there are a lot of older people who have Facebook. We do advertising and digital marketing and target older people with information so they can share the house with others. Many of them contact us, many register directly on the web. We’ve been creating a nice platform to make registration easy and if they stop for a moment, an alert will be triggered and they can manage it over the phone and we can do it digitally. There are some people who call us on the phone or come to the office and others who do it digitally. Our headquarters are in the BBF, Bilbao Innovation Factory.

Young people are contacted digitally and we have made collaboration agreements with universities. Here we have agreements with all the Basque universities, Mondragon, Deusto and the UPV / EHU, and each one puts it on its website as a low-cost accommodation program or solidarity program, from which many people enter because they are interested in living with an elderly person.
Because we care so much about security, our growth is a little slower. We work mainly in the Basque Country, Bizkaia, and the Community of Madrid.

What are the most common problems and complaints among the elderly and the youngest?

The reality is that there is a lot of fear. Older people usually spend four or six hours a day on television. He is very sensitive to what the media can say. Through the news, the image of young people is very stereotyped, that they go to parties, drink bottles ... which causes a stereotype towards the young on the part of the old. So when it comes to living together, many are afraid of what coexistence will be like, they will have parties at home, what will happen to the kitchen ... these are elements that worry them, which add to the fear, for example in an adult who has only been 8 years old.

The young person who comes to us also has stereotypes about the older person. He doesn't know if he will have to take care of himself, how healthy he is, if he has to give medication ...

In the end, neither case is real. The elderly are completely autonomous, lead a normal life and have a very young spirit, they want to share their home because they want to live another experience, and the young are a little more mature, maybe studying for a master’s or doctorate and no longer want to live with young people.

Would you give us information on the evolution of Kuvu?

We created Kuvuk in April 2019. We’ve been in quarantine for a year. We covered about 100 rooms in March, but as a result of Covid we lost almost 90% due to quarantine and fear of coronavirus.
We have currently registered about 493 young people looking for accommodation within the platform and 185 registered owners; of these, we have about 12 homes occupied by active contract, while the rest of the owners, mainly due to coronavirus, are waiting for a while. There is a great deal of fear now on the part of the elderly.

What else does Kuvuk offer?

When the coronavirus started, we created an initiative called Covida, which we did in a completely altruistic way, trying to cover the elderly who could be vulnerable and could not leave their homes because of the quarantine problem. We have created a support network for these people, who are the most isolated due to the digital divide because they do not know how to use social networks, mobile phones or video calls.

We created a national network and tried to speed it up. Especially in the Canary Islands, we have received a lot of support from the Government of the Canary Islands. We are in all the Autonomous Communities, including Ceuta and Melilla, and right now there are more than 3,500 seniors and about 1,500 volunteers online. We manage about 850 media directly and others indirectly. What we have given is very strong security, legal verification, personal knowledge ...

What we have done now is to develop this application that was born out of pure philanthropy and we are turning it into a sustainable network of support for the elderly. With the support of the Government of the Canary Islands, we will launch the first marketing in the Canary Islands in October.

What did you find in the pandemic?

We are a company and we need to survive. For us, the coronavirus has had a huge impact, precisely because we reached 150 owners in March, we made a lot of investments in advertising, we made a new version of the platform ... and from there, we lost almost 80%. The investment round we made couldn’t be closed due to fear of companies ... but since we didn’t want to stop and created Covida, we were very active in the quarantine. Covida motivated us a lot and we created the impact and now the Government of the Canary Islands has bought two apps to launch there ... That way we have been able to survive. The housing sharing part isn’t so intensive right now, even as customers continue to come in, but we don’t make ads because we don’t understand the moment.

And then there’s a lot of fear. This situation is a bit of a bubble because people are getting help and we don’t seem to have a serious economic crisis, but what we noticed in customers is that they had to stop renting rooms because their children came home, for example, older people who had to leave home and share rooms. ..

How did you decide to enter the world of entrepreneurship?

Jon Ander and Haize joined LEINN when they were 18 years old. Jon Ander founded Kuvu, this was a company within LEINN, and Haiz founded another company and was working on education issues. I am a little older, I will be 28 years old and I come from the Canary Islands. There I created an association to help young entrepreneurs, I worked in investment advice, I created a line of business ... After taking my first steps, I decided to leave everything and come to Bilbao, precisely because I wanted to start a business and join LEINN I was. In the end, LEINN allowed us to come together to get things done together.

What is the positive and negative side of entrepreneurship?

As a young person, you have a socially transmitted vision, which is a waiting room for young people to become adults and be able to do things. You seem to have to enjoy things and then do it. But the reality is it’s not like that. We young people are often motivated to change, but you feel like you can’t. Being an entrepreneur changes your outlook because you realize that you are capable of doing things. Maybe you have an entrepreneurial project that more or less feeds you, but at the same time not only the way you see it changes, but also the way you act as a citizen, you are involved in many projects they have to do with creating the things you want. We have created exhibitions, support groups, donation projects for some people ... to make a change. So for me that’s one of the big positives.

And it has to do with the instability and pressure that the negative part creates. It is not the same to have a fixed salary and to be quiet in paying debts. Sometimes you even have to have two jobs to continue on the path of entrepreneurship in crises like the current one. If I hadn’t worked as a Mondragon consultant, maybe I should have gone back. So sometimes you have that counterpoint, stability is the main weight. We have to pay a lot of social security as a self-employed company. We pay a lot, almost three thousand euros a month between three, to start. So many times you feel like you have a lot of stones along the way.

What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs?

Those of us who are social entrepreneurs, in particular, need to start doing things. We often think we need to have a perfect idea and all we have to do is start doing it, building it. That’s how Kuvu started. Kuvu started with a coffee with some of the seniors who were in Sarriko, next to our university. We started going to the retirement center and one day we suggested an excursion. And the need arises when you start noticing in these conversations, that many people have the same account, you empathize with that problem, you take action and you start motivating yourself. So when it comes to getting started, all you have to do is work with people you’d like to work with, start researching and talking, with that audience and that problem that motivates you. All you have to do is approach it. I know a lot of people between the ages of 12 and 16 who are doing amazing things. So the first thing I would recommend is to stop thinking and start acting in a small way. And there are also entrepreneurial networks that can help, such as Startup Weekend, which is a weekend event that allows you to connect with people with the same philosophy.

What are Kuvu’s future plans?

The approach we have now, after breaking everything with coronavirus, is to pause Kuvu HomeSharing so intensively, even as we continue with our customers and continue with our line of accommodation. We will open in the Canary Islands in 2021, together with the Government of the Canary Islands, which wants to promote the project there. The opening plan for Barcelona and others will be paused until later.
In the part of the application we talked about, the idea is to create as much impact as possible, for free and non-profit, but what we are proposing is to create a sustainable network of support for the elderly. We would like to continue to create an impact in India. We would like to apply the Covida network, a new version that we will launch in October, to all the Autonomous Communities of the State. Therefore, the idea is to start creating a sustainable network. We have a vision to create a solidarity market where companies can work together to earn money and help young people. We are creating some incentives to encourage young people to get involved in the network.

We also opened a specific app for single-parent families who were Covida users as many single moms and single dads started to join. We have found that these families experience a worrying level of poverty, despite their jobs, especially with regard to women. We spoke to the Basque Government to see if the project will be released in the Basque Country.

How would you encourage young people and adults to use Kuvu?

Let them feel completely free on the net. They can call us to answer any questions ... Young people, especially in the network, have the whole process online, there are people who can do a compatibility survey and connect. Older people, dare to call them, go to town halls and there they will talk about us. And even if we’re not in a region, we’ll try to find a network that has a support program to help them. Let them call, no problem.