Marvee was born from conversations on how we’re helping our aging parents, how technology can make a difference, and our desire to combat social isolation and improve quality of life during the aging journey. You may notice we tag our notifications and messages with “Powered with by Marvee”. This is for a very specific reason. The inspiration for our solution is a real person, the founder’s mom. Her name is Marvee.

Marvee raised six children, was an active tennis player well into her late 80’s and overall has been blessed with good health. However, at the age of 90, Marvee began to lose her vision due to macular degeneration, a common eye disease among the aging. Marvee became legally blind and had to deal with the loss of her visual independence and the increased isolation and dependence that followed. It’s been a journey of adjustment for Marvee, and for her children growing into the ever-changing role of family caregivers, local and remote.

Marvee’s children, always on the hunt for gadgets to help, discovered the newly-launched Amazon Echo back in December 2014. The Echo is a hands-free wireless speaker you control with your voice. “The Echo was an immediate hit with mom. She didn’t need to see the device, feel for a button to get something to work or even touch it! She quickly was asking Alexa for her favorite music, the news, and to listen to her Kindle books. “It’s fantastic and a wonderful thing to watch her increased feeling of independence. We just want mom to stay safe and happy”.

Over time Marvee began to ask for certain things that were unique to her and her limitations. Thus an idea was born. “Let’s build an app for mom, and also make it easy for us to manage what she needs all in one place. We’ll name it after her and call it Marvee!”.

The idea was mapped out, features defined with input from the real Marvee and we moved from idea to reality. Through the process we quickly learned how our “mom” is not alone. There are over 100 million people with vision, mobility or aging challenges, many desiring to age-in-place as long as possible. There are 45 million family caregivers looking for ways to care for a loved one with ease and awareness.  This drives our passion to help!

Our initial integration will be an Alexa Skill integrated to work with the Amazon Echo and other Alexa-enabled devices. We’re building Marvee from the voice of the user, to an easy-to-use web portal, and extending to family with a Marvee mobile app. We expect to integrate in the future with Google Home, Apple’s HomePod and other voice service platforms. We will be a full-service VoiceFirst platform meeting users where they are. But first, welcome to our initial Marvee Alexa Skill.  Marvee is a voice-driven social companion that gives those hindered by limited vision, mobility, aging or other challenges an easy way to communicate just by using their voice! Purpose-built and “Powered with by Marvee”.

Let’s meet our loved ones wherever they are and help!