Digital healthcare company Lottie has ranked third overall in this year’s Fast 50 awards. The London-based company was founded in August 2021 by brothers Will and Chris Donnelly, who have a family background in healthcare and more than a decade of industry experience. For Will, the motivation behind Lottie is both personal and professional. He wants to challenge misconceptions about the care industry and, as he puts it, “help people see it in a more modern and positive light.”

Lottie is a Software as a Service (SaaS) enabled marketplace that helps families find the best care option for a loved one – be it a care home, home care service or a retirement living property. Providers are evaluated using an internal scoring system that takes into account the quality of care, facilities, and customer feedback. Will’s interest in the sector began early in his career when he joined CBRE’s healthcare team, a division that was often overlooked within the company. During a visit to one particular care home, he was struck by how meaningful the work felt. “People often see this as an uncool or unglamorous sector,” he reflects, but the experience left a lasting impression, motivating him to pursue a career in the industry.

Through subsequent roles, Will developed a deeper understanding of the challenges facing the health and social care sector. “While a minority, a lot of people go into the sector for the wrong reasons,” he explains. “For some, it’s seen as an easy way to make quick money, but in the end, it’s always the residents, families, and staff who lose out because of this.” Over time, he learned to spot the difference between operators delivering high-quality care and those who did not, and how that distinction shaped people’s experience of the system. He reflects that it took him five years to fully grasp the scale of the issue. From a family’s perspective, the problem seemed obvious: “How is someone, suddenly faced with care decisions, supposed to know what good or bad care looks like?” That question became the starting point, and the company has since scaled to match nearly 50,000 families to care providers every month. Lottie now has two main products: the first is the SaaS enabled marketplace which helps families find and book care options. The second, which is the focus of the business, is Found – an AI operating system built specifically for the care industry and that helps operators better manage their day-to-day operations and boost profitability margins.

Founded in Will’s parents’ spare bedroom during COVID, Lottie has grown to more than 70 employees in London. Will attributes part of this growth to the company operating in an industry “that every investor wants to get into”, given the size of the market opportunity and just how behind the industry is in terms of digitisation. He highlights the important role of angel investors and seed enterprise investment scheme funding in supporting early growth. To date, the business has raised more than £25m in investment, with backing from tier 1 venture capital firms including Accel and General Catalyst.

Looking ahead, for Will, the success of the business “lies in the impact it’s having on families and providers.” He believes Lottie can become a global success and the catalyst to building the care sector of the future.