Dominic Carter, CEO of the Carter Group, shares how a personal frustration with his aging parents’ care became a long-term mission: building real, user-driven aging tech in one of the world’s oldest—and most demanding—markets. From human-centric research to venture studio development, Dominic shows how Gen Xers can lead the future of aging by solving the problems we’re all going to face. This isn’t just eldercare innovation—it’s preemptive, practical system design. For those over 50 building what comes next, this episode is a field guide to action rooted in empathy, not hype.From Personal Wake-Up Call to Business Blueprint“I wanted better options for my parents—and for myself one day.”Dominic shares how watching his parents’ struggle with aging became the catalyst for a venture into real, human-first aging innovation.Aging Tech Isn’t Just for the Elderly“Aging begins at 50—and the opportunity starts there.”He reframes aged tech not as a niche, but as a massive, underserved market hiding in plain sight.Start with the User—or Don’t Start at All“If you don’t listen, you’ll waste time, money, and trust.”Dominic explains why most aging tech fails: founders fall in love with ideas, not problems—and skip the hard part: listening.Culture Is More Than Geography“The cultural gap between 55 and 75 is as wide as the one between Japan and the West.”He unpacks why aging solutions must be co-designed with users—and adapted not just to national cultures, but age-based subcultures.Building Credibility One Win at a Time“Get the use case. Prove the value. Then scale.”Dominic outlines his venture studio strategy—prioritizing two user-validated products (a friction-reducing linen set and a wearable tremor device) to establish proof before expansion.______________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guests: Dominic Carter --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.15 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>150,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: Who is Dominic Carter and what is his background?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist humility for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today, we are talking with Dominic Carter, CEO of the Carter Group, whose journey from Australia to Japan is anything but predictable. He didn't just move aboard.
He jumped headfirst into a new culture, built a career, burned out, left, and then came right back, this time on his own terms. In Part 1, we dig into his early days, how a fascination with Japan turned into a full-blown career, why opening a Tokyo office at 24 almost broke him, and what made him bet on himself as an entrepreneur. In Part 2, things get personal.
Dominic, now in his 50s, is facing the same challenge as many of us are, aging parents. Only he's not just navigating it, he's building businesses around it. We'll dive into the future of aging tech, the cultural barriers that slow innovation. and why the biggest business opportunity in Japan might just be the one no one's paying enough attention to. Let's get started.
I know there's a personal reason that led you to this next big thing. Can you share that story with us? What made this the right path for you?
Chapter 2: What personal experiences motivated Dominic's focus on aging tech?
Yes, I think a lot of people, and a lot of people my age too, because I just turned 50. And so a lot of people around our age are dealing with their aging parents. And I became, honestly speaking, I became very frustrated dealing with my parents because they
I wanted them to be a lot more proactive about the way that they were managing their situation and the fact that their independence was gradually disappearing. I could see that happening. I think they were in denial, but my brothers and sisters And we were very concerned about it. So I started, I gave, I got dad an Apple Watch, for example.
We tried speakers and we tried the pendant that they wear. If they fall over, they can't. But it was very hard to get their cooperation.
Right. So.
in Australia yeah my brothers and I have four brothers and sisters and they're still in Australia and I'm the only one in Japan I was looking at I just looked at their experience and I thought you've got to be better than this like I wanted to be better than this when I'm the same age as well because when we think about when we think about aging yes we want to help out we want to help our parents but we're also thinking of ourselves as well you've
And I'm thinking like when I'm in my mid-70s, I think these are the types of solutions that would be great to have around. And I certainly hope that I'll be able to access those and I'll have the capacity to help myself in a way.
But very much looking at my parents' journey and all of the issues that they've had, I thought, yeah, this is an area of business where we can actually really, of course, there's a huge opportunity in a market like Japan. And Japan's not the only aging market, but it is the oldest market. So I'm 50, but the median age in Japan is 50. So half the population is over 50.
30% of the population is over 65. The size of the market is massive and aging people in Japan tend to have more financial resources than younger people, interestingly. So it's a big business opportunity in that sense and there's a lot of interest in it globally.
From the point of view of being able to work on projects that have a genuine positive impact for people, I think it's something that we can also feel very proud of. good about as well, because the products that we're working with really do help improve people's quality of life.
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Chapter 3: Why is the aging market in Japan a significant business opportunity?
And I think that our generation has that mindset, but I think we really need to get in early because hour over time, we become more set in our ways. And I think we just want to be aware that we are aging and that we might want to be thinking about this as we get older.
Sure. So far, I haven't asked about your specific role in this tech space. Are you more of an investor? Are you actually building the technology? Or are you more on the marketing and community building side? What exactly is your role right now? And looking ahead, do you see yourself shifting, doing more of certain things, less of others?
Because beyond just creating new products, there's also the challenge of shaping mindsets, helping people become more open and receptive to this future of aging. How do you see your role in making that happen?
I think that the first thing
to bear in mind is I think this is a huge task, like it has many aspects to it and there are many roles within that and many opportunities, but we're coming, we've of course started off as being researchers, which means that we've spent, for example, we've spent a lot of time in the last five years with people in their homes, for example, looking at how they, how do they prepare their meals as they get older?
How do they clean? How do people go shopping? So where can technology come to play a role in those daily tasks? Now, in the last three or four years, we've done about 25 projects just on those sorts of issues on robotics because we have clients that are looking, how do we build really good human-centric robotic solutions that people actually want to work with?
Because people generally don't, just in the area of robots, they don't really know how to interact with them. And the attempts have been put on the market so far, they've had their limitations. So we're starting from a perspective as researchers, because I say we see, as researchers, we see a lot of stuff that doesn't work. We see the issues in people that make tech. They can see problem.
In aging, problems are very easy to see. Sometimes in innovation... You can have the situation that we have a solution, but do we have a problem? That happens a lot, actually. In aging, the problem's really obvious. But what seems like a very reasonable solution from the point of view of the technologist, when you put it in the user's hands, it may not work.
We've got examples of how that can be an issue. So I think that the first thing that I am working on is ensuring that we have a very good fit between user needs and what that technology does. So our first role in the whole area of aging tech is to filter the ideas that have potential from those that are much longer term.
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Chapter 4: What challenges affect technology adoption among the elderly?
It may stop you putting lots of resources into a solution that just isn't something that people really feel that they need or creating a user experience that just doesn't really suit the way that people live and what their priorities are. And then I think the whole area of aging tech will get a lot more credibility and traction. Absolutely.
Because there is skepticism around, I think people are very hopeful that we can improve lives, but I think that there's some justified skepticism around it as well. And as I say, working on the right projects, I think is really important.
You are looking to establish successful use cases, something tangible that can attract more resources, build momentum, and bring more voices to support your vision. That's how real impact happens. So I'm curious about the two projects you are currently working on. What are they, and more specifically, what problems are they solving? Since you mentioned that you carefully selected them,
There must be a strong reason behind why you believe they have a real short SSS. Can you tell us more about that?
We started recruiting a user community about two years ago. And what we're asking these people to do is work with us to praise the technology. And these are ordinary people, like they have more than average, they have an interest in technology, but they're not terribly different from everyday people. And so last year we tested 26 different age tech
concept with them and we found several that we thought were very promising on that basis that the guys in the community themselves have said we're very interested in these and out of those there are two that we're working on the first is it's actually fiber technology that's a canadian company called comfort linen it's a pajama and sheet set that you have to wear the pajamas when you're in bed but the pajama fabric and the sheet fabric
to make it very easy for you to move around in bed because mobility in bed is a big issue, for example, for people with Parkinson's disease. But even just as we age, it can get harder to move around. We don't have as much sort of muscular power.
to move around and so people can end up being very uncomfortable in bed and your ability to move in bed has a big impact on your sleep quality, which is something that I had no idea about. Like people that have the issue can relate to that idea very easily. We found, I would say much more than I expected, a lot of interest in the products.
And then we took that product in home trials and the people that we worked with really were just raving about it. So we had people, we tracked people for a month, we gave them the product for a month and then at the end asking them how did it work for them and people were saying, well, I'm sleeping so much better now. And they really want to tell other people about it as well.
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Chapter 5: How does mindset influence the use of aging technology?
For those listening or watching this on YouTube, whether they're builders, entrepreneurs, or investors, or maybe they're already working on something in this space, what advice would you give them? What risks should they watch out for? And on the flip side, what immediate opportunities should they pay attention to? your insights could be incredibly valuable to those making way in this space.
Yes, given my background, it's probably unsurprising that I would say even at the point of conceiving your idea, it's very useful if you talk to users and the people that you're trying to help. You have to listen very objectively to what users are telling you. So it's very human for us to
hear the feedback and say, oh, I didn't really quite explain the idea well enough, or they didn't get, they didn't really quite get the idea, or I strongly believe that we're moving in the right direction, even though users are telling us they may have concerns or they're not so interested or, and I think you really, I think you really, you may need to change your idea.
You may need to come up with a new one, or you may need to adjust the way that you're approaching it. So I've worked in consumer insights for long enough, almost 30 years almost. You really, over that time, you understand that the people who are successful are the ones that do tend to listen to what their users and customers are telling them.
That doesn't mean that you're unable to lead the market or that the user's not going to be able to tell you what to do. necessarily in terms of how to deliver that innovation or what to create or whatever. But you really do need to listen to what they're saying. There's a little bit of a dance, but you really have to.
Sometimes you're leading, sometimes they're leading, but you've got to dance with them. If you're assuming that better what they want than what they know, like you're asking for trouble. So my advice is do that. Save yourself a lot of time, effort and money. It is much easier to pivot during the development process than to pivot once you're in the market.
My advice to investors would be to probably do more due diligence around the whole perspective of the user around these startups that you're investing in. I think you probably increase your odds of success if you do that. Having said that, the opportunities are huge. There's a lot of goodwill around anything to do with aging-related innovation, age tech, and age tech's a huge area.
It's not just care tech. When people think about Agetech, people go straight to, in our own minds, we tend to go straight to nursing homes. And that's, of course, a very needed area for technology to come into. But Agetech starts, I think, at age 50, around there. There's stuff that anything that we're
looking at to help us deal with the fact that we have some diminished capacity or we're concerned that we might or we want to prevent stuff happening that we hear about. Yeah, so in your 50s, even something like a fitness app or a nutrition app or even there are cognitive apps that people who are younger use. In Japan, cognitive training apps are used by people of all ages, right? Yeah.
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Chapter 6: What is Dominic Carter’s role and approach in the aging tech space?
At the end of the day, it's about understanding the user, what they want, what they don't, and why. Aligning both sides is what creates real impact.
Yeah, I think the culture is a very appropriate way of looking at it because, of course, I'm a foreigner in Japan, so I'm always confronted by those in my own experience here and people that want to sell into the market have to understand cultural differences. Actually, there are really big cultural differences between age groups in the same culture.
So the culture of a 25 year old is very different from the culture of a 55 year old. And the culture of a 55 year old is very different from the culture of a 75 year old. But they're both over 50. So we're going to have this one term that says aging adults. There's a cultural difference in age between age groups, even in the same culture. But we have to take the same approach.
So I would say to people when they're coming to Japan, I would say, look, you have to listen to what people are saying. put, even though it's impossible not to, but try not to put it through your filters and apply your playbook, how you deal with everything.
Because often people that come into the market here, they just want to apply their playbook and they're doing research to give them permission to apply their playbook. And that isn't necessarily what people are saying. They have to listen. We can't apply our same playbook with aging adults. that we would apply, say, to people in their twenties or thirties.
So I wish I had thought of this idea, but I did read a while back someone was basically saying that all user experience research should be done among elderly people first. Because every problem that you find in the tech with older people will immediately have that problem, right? Where younger people are compensating for it all the time and may not even notice that there is an issue there.
It's listen, really. And I think if you do that, you've got a fighting chance of being successful. But we see a lot of, unfortunately, it can be heartbreaking because there are concepts that we really like and we think that they can really help, but they just need a lot of work. Doing it the right way is really starting from the basics.
Change is happening whether we like it or not. We age every second. It's not about if we change, but about how we change. And that's exactly what you're working on. Helping shape that change in a way that's human and meaningful. There's so much to consider. Mental health, financial security, and yes, scams.
That's a serious issue in Japan, especially since it's one of the richest countries in the world with much of the wealth in the hands of the older generation. Lots to talk about and even more to do. Dominic, thank you so much for your time today.
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