Singapore Isn't Just Our Next Market. It's a Signal.

When Neil and I started GetSetUp, we believed that most of the world was thinking about aging backward.

The prevailing narrative, that older adults are a cost to be managed, a burden to be absorbed, a demographic in decline, wasn't just wrong. It was leaving an enormous opportunity on the table. 

We built GetSetUp on the opposite premise: that retirees are a resource to be activated. That the largest untapped demographic on the planet, over 1.4 billion people aged 60 or older by 2030, doesn't want to be cared for. They want to contribute.

We proved that model in the United States. Through our work with Medicare Advantage health plans, SilverSneakers, and government programs across New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Washington, and beyond, we've reached millions of older adults, not as a niche product, but as mainstream infrastructure for the longevity economy. Our Guides, older adults who teach, mentor, and earn on the platform, aren't passive recipients of services. They're the engine of the whole thing.

Now we're taking that operating system global. And the story of how we got here matters.

Learning to go global: the India chapter

Before Singapore, there was India. Our first international expansion was through a partnership with Walkabout, and it taught us about what it really means to scale across cultures.

India is one of the world's most diverse and rapidly aging markets, and it is humbling in the best way. Language, family structures, community dynamics, economic realities: none of it maps neatly onto what we'd built for the US. We quickly discovered that our instinct to work through local partners wasn't just a strategic preference: it was the only way this could work. Walkabout brought the relationships, the cultural fluency, and the on-the-ground trust that we couldn't manufacture from the US. We brought the platform, the model, and the playbook. Together, we made it work.

That experience sharpened our thinking considerably. We stopped thinking of GetSetUp as a product to be exported and started thinking of it as an operating system to be powered by local expertise. That shift changed everything about how we approach new markets, including Singapore.

Why Singapore, and why now

We didn't choose Singapore because it was easy. We chose it because the timing was right.

Singapore is one of Asia's most rapidly aging societies. Its government doesn't just acknowledge the challenge of an aging population: it invests seriously and deliberately in active aging infrastructure, policy, and community programs. The Active Ageing Centres already embedded across the country represent exactly the kind of local ecosystem that a platform like ours can extend and amplify, especially for seniors with mobility limitations or varied schedules who can't always show up in person.

Beyond the infrastructure, there's a cultural readiness. Singapore's seniors aren't waiting on the sidelines. They want to stay engaged, keep learning, keep contributing. That instinct is what GetSetUp was built to serve.

And then there's the signal Singapore sends to the rest of the region. What happens there matters to Japan, to the UK, to markets across Asia that are watching closely. Getting this right in Singapore is a proof point for a much bigger opportunity.

That's why we partnered with iWOW, a company with deep roots in Singapore's technology and eldercare ecosystem, recognized by DBS Foundation for their innovation in reshaping the aging narrative in Asia. They bring the relationships, the trust, and the local knowledge that no outside company can walk in and replicate. We bring the platform, the Guide model, the curriculum architecture, and the insights from millions of interactions with older adults around the world. 

Together, we launched at the World Ageing Festival, and we're starting with something concrete: peer-led programs helping Singapore's seniors adopt AI tools like ChatGPT, and Google Gemini in practical, non-intimidating ways. Peer-guided, not expert-led. That distinction matters more than most people realize.

But the programs are just the beginning. The bigger ambition for GetSetUp Singapore is to activate Singapore's seniors as contributors: as Guides, mentors, teachers, and earners. Not just recipients of services. We started that through our new partnership with NTUC Health, expanding in a hybrid model to all 27 Active Ageing Centres (AACs) across the country, allowing seniors to participate in person at local centers or from their home via: https://ntuc.getsetup.sg/en-SG 

The model we're building and why it works everywhere

Here's what I've learned after years of doing this: the core truth is universal.

Older adults everywhere want to contribute, not just receive. They want to keep working, keep teaching, keep being useful. The platform and the programs look different in Singapore than they do in Michigan or Mumbai. But the underlying human need is identical.

What we've built at GetSetUp isn't a US product that we're dropping into new markets. It's an operating system, platform technology, curriculum framework, community architecture, and hard-won insight into what actually works for older adults that local partners can build on. We tested this model internationally in India through our partnership with Walkabout, and it worked. Singapore is the next validation. Japan, the UK, and others are on the horizon.

The goal is to be the platform infrastructure that powers the global longevity economy, enabling partners in every major aging market to serve older adults across the full arc of later life: learning, work, health, community, and purpose.

A call to partners

If you're working in aging, longevity, or eldercare, whether you're a government agency, a health plan, a technology company, or a community organization, and you believe older adults deserve better than passive decline, we want to talk to you.

We're not looking to replicate a product. We're looking to build with people who understand their markets, their communities, and their older adults, and who want the platform, the model, and the accumulated insight to make something real.

The world's largest demographic deserves a platform built around what they can offer, not just what they need. Let's build it together.