We leave the light on.
Lantern helps your family look after an aging parent — a warm daily phone call, gentle signals from home, and one honest picture of how she’s really doing.
Building in Memphis with ten founding families · private by design
“Did Mom eat today?” shouldn’t be a question you carry to bed. It should be something your whole family simply knows — gently, every day, together.
Fifty-three million Americans are caring for someone who raised them. Most of them are doing it with a group chat and a knot in their stomach.
A day with Lantern
No dashboards to babysit, nothing for her to learn. One day, start to finish:
7:40 AM
The good-morning call
Her phone rings — the regular one on the kitchen wall. A warm voice asks how she slept, whether she's taken her pills, what she's up to today. Three minutes, and she never has to learn an app.
Through the day
The house keeps gentle watch
A sensor on the fridge, one on the kettle, one in the hallway. They learn her rhythm — coffee at eight, lunch at noon — and only speak up when a day doesn't look like her.
fridgekettlehallwayfront door9:14 PM
You check, and exhale
One screen for the whole family: she answered the call, ate three times, moved like herself. The night you don't have to wonder is the whole product.
Today looked like Mom
House rules
Elder tech keeps getting built like security software. Lantern is built like a family promise:
- She's a user, not a subject
- Your mom sees everything you see about her — always. Lantern is a window, never a one-way mirror.
- Add help, never take independence
- Every suggestion adds support. The word “decline” doesn't appear in this product.
- Calm by design
- Fewer, better alerts. When Lantern speaks up, it matters — that's a promise we measure.
- Consent is a feature
- Every signal is a switch she controls: granular, revocable, logged. Not a checkbox at signup.
- Private by design
- Daily signals come from small sensors on the fridge, the kettle, the hallway — the rhythm of the house, not a video feed of her living room.
- Useful on day one
- The daily call works the morning you join — before a single device is installed.
Questions families ask
What is Lantern?
Lantern is an elder-care platform for families: a warm daily AI check-in call to your parent's regular phone, gentle signals from small home sensors, and one honest Independence Score that tells your family — early and gently — when it's time to add help.
How does the daily check-in call work?
The caretaker rings her actual phone — nothing to install, nothing to learn. It asks about sleep, meals, medications, and plans in short, unhurried questions, then your family receives a plain-language report of how she's really doing.
Does Lantern watch my parent on camera?
No. Daily signals come from small sensors on the fridge, the kettle, and the hallway — the rhythm of the house, not a video feed of her living room. And she always sees everything her family sees about her.
What is the Independence Score?
A gentle 0–100 read on how independently a parent is doing, measured against her own baseline — with bands for Thriving, Watch, Support, and Transition. It's decision support for families, not a medical device, and it never uses clinical language.
How do we join, and what does it cost?
Lantern is onboarding its first ten founding families now — early access is free for design partners. Ask for early access on this page and we'll write back within a day or two.
Across town, or across an ocean
Lantern was founded by Jonathan Greer and friends — adult kids who compared notes and realized they were all carrying the same worry in different cities. We’re building the app we wished our own families had, whether you live ten minutes away or ten time zones.
We’re onboarding our first ten families.
If you’re looking after a parent, we’d like to build Lantern around your family — free, hands-on, honest.