This narrated essay is water lily. Edited for length and clarity.
As a child, I was fascinated by space and wanted to understand how the world worked. Science has taught me that even the biggest and scariest questions can be broken down, understood, and ultimately solved.
I, too, grew up with limited resources, but my experience working in my parents’ factory after school taught me how hard families go to build stability, and how much discipline and resourcefulness it takes to build something out of something so small.
When I was 11 years old, I entered and won a NASA contest with a homemade water rocket, which gave me the opportunity to visit the Kennedy Space Center. Then I interned at NASA when I was a teenager. For years, I thought aerospace engineering was my future.
Then my aunt was diagnosed with cancer, and the course of my entire family changed almost overnight.
My aunt didn’t speak much English, so my mother translated for her during medical appointments. My family quickly learned that there would be an unexpected expense. We also learned that caring for people with serious illnesses goes far beyond a doctor’s appointment.
I was 16 when she got sick. What I remember most is not a single diagnosis or conversation. It was quiet.
The whole family was exhausted, going from work to doctor’s appointments to caregiving, without stopping to talk about what was going on. There was so much to do that we were all on autopilot.
After seeing my family unravel, my definition of influence has changed.
Courtesy of Suiren
My mother became my aunt’s primary caregiver. The rest of us worked in the family factory whenever possible. After school, I would go to my parents’ factory and often stay until 10 or 11 p.m. before heading home.
It wasn’t until later that I found out the full cost.
Our family relationships were strained. Economically, there was almost nothing left. After my aunt passed away, the blame, tension, and loneliness continued for a long time.
Growing up in a first-generation immigrant family, I always understood that money was important. My parents worked incredibly hard, but I learned early on that working hard alone does not guarantee financial security. Economic value must be created. This lesson has shaped nearly every decision I’ve made since then.
After my aunt passed away, I started asking other questions. Instead of thinking about how I could build a better rocket, I wondered why families like mine had to get through one of life’s most difficult moments with little support.
I realized that no one was solving the problem I cared about most.
Vittayarkuskul co-founded her company to help families avoid what she went through. Courtesy of Suiren
I still loved engineering and building things, but I realized I could apply those skills in a more personal setting.
I spent nearly a decade leading product and engineering at early-stage companies while learning everything I could about healthcare, financial services, and underserved populations. I wanted to understand why aging and long-term care planning is so fragmented.
No one seemed to be solving the problem the way I thought it needed to be solved. That’s why I co-founded Waterlily.
Waterlily is an AI-powered long-term care planning platform that helps people estimate when they will need long-term care, how much it will cost, and how to pay for it based on their health, finances, and family situation. The platform provides personalized forecasting and financing strategies for insurance, savings, care planning, and more to help families prepare for the financial and logistical challenges of aging. Since launch, the company has raised $9.2 million.
The work was much more difficult than I had imagined.
Healthcare does not exist in one industry. There is no aging. We’re working on health care, insurance, and financial services at the same time, and each has different incentives and different ways of operating. Every week seems to introduce a new layer of complexity.
There were many moments where I doubted whether I would ever figure it out. But what drove me was the same question I asked myself after my aunt passed away. If we don’t solve this problem, who will?
After speaking with thousands of families, one thing struck me. I thought my family’s experience was unusually tragic. In fact, we found that many families with serious long-term care needs face financial burdens and relationship breakdowns. Although the details differ, the emotional toll is often very similar.
Establishing this company has changed the way I think about my future.
Starting Waterlily changed me in unexpected ways.
I have become much more financially savvy than I ever thought I would need. Building Waterlily required us to develop deep expertise across insurance, retirement planning, healthcare, and financial services. Understanding aging means understanding how all of these systems and the decisions families make fit together within them.
Understanding aging means understanding insurance, retirement accounts, savings, investments, and how it all fits together.
The way we think about responsibility has also changed.
When I was younger, I thought success meant solving interesting technical problems. Now, I think success is building something that helps people regain a sense of control in those moments when life feels completely uncertain.
If my aunt were alive today, I don’t think she would care much about the technical details of the platform. But I also think she would ask me two questions.
- Are you helping people?
- Is this business sustainable?
I think she would be proud of both answers.
Waterlily offers: free tools This site provides personalized insights based on over 500 million data points to better understand what aging and long-term care is like.
