The Strategy of Health

Turning Passion into Action: How Jill Michal Is Reinventing Caregiving with Kith & Kin

By: The American Journal of Healthcare Strategy Team | Apr 30, 2024

In an era when the burdens of caregiving are surging—driven by an aging population, chronic disease, and a fractured healthcare ecosystem—the tools that help families coordinate care are, shockingly, still stuck in the past. Enter Kith & Kin, an innovative startup reimagining the very nature of family health management. At the center of this movement is Jill Michal, Co-Founder & CEO, whose career arc from public accounting to United Way leadership to startup founder delivers both credibility and candor.

This story isn’t just about launching another health app. It’s about why who builds our caregiving solutions matters. On The American Journal of Healthcare Strategy podcast, Jill sat down to reveal how decades of leadership, mistakes, and soul-searching led her to tackle a societal pain point often overlooked by health tech: the invisible, unpaid labor of family caregivers. With real-world lessons for aspiring founders, executives, and policymakers, this conversation dissects how experience, humility, and resourcefulness can turn passion into transformative action.

Why a Startup for Caregiving? From Corporate Suite to Founder’s Table

What made a seasoned executive like Jill Michal leave the security of corporate leadership for the uncertainty of a startup?

Jill’s path to founding Kith & Kin was less a calculated leap and more the result of being “wrong about myself”—in the best way possible. Despite earning a bachelor’s in accounting from Penn State and thriving as a public accountant, she confesses: “People used to say to me, you don’t seem like an accountant… but actually, no, I loved it. It was kind of like an MBA for life.” Seven years in, she took the plunge into social services, rising rapidly at United Way from CFO to CEO, all while raising toddlers and weathering crises like the Great Recession.

But after years at large institutions like Independence Blue Cross, Jill found herself craving a different kind of challenge. “I’ve always said to people, I was entrepreneurial but I’m not an entrepreneur. Turns out I was, again, totally wrong about myself.” The pivot happened thanks to a mentor’s call—and her husband’s unflinching support—launching her into the world of early-stage startups: “I come sit next to my husband on the sofa… I’m going to go work in Phoenix. He’s always been incredibly supportive and he looked at me and he’s like, okay, whatever you want to do, it’ll be fine.”

Key Takeaway:
Sometimes, your professional identity is waiting to surprise you. For Jill, being a great “number two” prepared her for the top spot—and ultimately, for founding her own company.

Why Caregiving? The “Aha” Moment and Founding Kith & Kin

What was the spark for Kith & Kin? How did Jill identify a market problem so acute, yet so invisible?

Jill’s origin story for Kith & Kin is rooted in both data and personal experience. “It was at one of the 10,000 healthcare conferences—Health, out in Vegas… session after session about patient adherence… and then one morning there was a woman from Oliver Wyman who flashed a slide that said women control roughly 70% of the healthcare spend and utilization in the US.”

The insight was electric. Jill looked around and realized, “The person in charge of patient adherence in my house is me… I have better tools for travel volleyball than I do for managing health information.” This wasn’t just her story: friends were lugging binders for loved ones with cancer, using ad-hoc tools like WhatsApp and text threads to keep everyone in the loop.

The challenge: Health technology is still designed around institutions, not the lived realities of caregiving families.

The User Research-First Approach

Before a single line of code was written, Jill and her co-founder spent “a thousand hours in user research”:

  • Listening: “We were just trying to listen to people about how do you manage this information now, what do you do with it, who do you share it with?”

  • Validating need: The team heard again and again that people wanted a tool that “mirrors their existing social support structure… where it’s truly portable, it includes your voice, your information, you can share some information with some people and other information with other people—the way you do in real life.”

Key Takeaway:
Effective innovation in healthcare means starting with the “kitchen table,” not the boardroom. Listen first, build later.

How Kith & Kin Works: Features, Pricing, and Business Model

How does Kith & Kin actually help caregivers, and how does the business sustain itself?

Kith & Kin’s value prop is simple: it organizes health and life management in a way that matches how real families actually operate—not how healthcare wants them to. The app, available on iOS and Android, offers:

  • A free-for-life version with core features (emergency information, medication, allergies, practitioner lists, etc.).

  • A premium subscription ($3.99/month or $30/year): Unlocks:

    • Storing unlimited photos and documents

    • Custom sharing permissions

    • Task assignment (e.g., “I’m the kin keeper… now I can create a task list and assign tasks to you or to other people”)

    • Collaborative care features (e.g., request help, share to-do lists)

“There will always be a free-for-life version… and then a premium subscription lets you unlock everything… We spent a thousand hours in user research, I also spent a lot of time talking to companies who’d taken a run at this before us and failed, and one of the things was pricing—it’s got to be accessible financially and from a technology standpoint.”

Revenue Model Highlights:

  • Direct to consumer via subscriptions

  • B2B2C via employer benefits, long-term care, rare disease organizations, etc.

Why keep pricing so low?
Jill’s accounting background keeps costs lean. “For us, especially at an organization at this size and stage, having a highly variable cost structure—being able to dial things up and down… you have to be able to turn on a dime… you just can’t keep spending where it doesn’t make sense.”

What Sets Kith & Kin Apart? Lean Operations and Resourcefulness

How does Kith & Kin deliver a polished, impactful app on a fraction of the budget compared to Silicon Valley startups?

Since 2020, Kith & Kin has raised just $2.3 million—a low figure in digital health—yet boasts a polished app, strong user feedback, and real revenue. Jill credits:

  • Frugality born of experience: “Certainly my frugal nature is one of those [reasons] but really… we had to build an affordable solution, so we couldn’t overbuild the technology.”

  • A deliberate, user-driven approach: “Nothing helps you be more frugal than a recession, a banking crisis, and a pandemic.”

  • Selective investment: “We’ve avoided spending a lot on AI advertising… I think another thing is why it’s important to either have experience yourself or have experienced advisors—you know, a lot of the young companies where it’s mostly young people, the money just seems to kind of just fly away.”

Bullet: Jill’s Principles for Sustainable Startup Growth

  1. Build for financial accessibility—keep both tech and pricing lean.

  2. Pivot quickly—structure costs so you can dial back failed initiatives in weeks, not months.

  3. Say “no” often—shed “the shoulds” and focus only on proven value.

  4. Rely on experienced advisors—especially when navigating uncharted territory.

Lessons in Leadership: How Decades of Experience Shaped the Kith & Kin Approach

What does 20+ years of leadership teach you about starting from scratch? And what advice does Jill offer to founders and executives?

Jill’s candor stands out: “I’m way better at doing a lot of things than I am at doing one thing… even United Way didn’t have a CFO role when I came, but all the roles, VP of Business Transformation, Head of Networks and Community-Based Org, those were created for me. If it doesn’t work, give it to Jill—she’ll fix it.”

Her experience building cross-functional, often unconventional roles has shaped Kith & Kin’s ethos:

  • Embrace ambiguity: If you wait for a perfect job description, you’ll never get to do meaningful work.

  • Learn to fail fast: “I care more about getting it right than I do about being right… if I’m going to fail, I’m going to fail fast. That doesn’t bother me—I care more about getting it right than being right.”

  • Confidence is about resourcefulness, not answers: “You just have to be confident you can figure it out, not that you have figured it out.”

Mentoring the Next Generation

Jill is clear: early career experience in large organizations is invaluable. “For me, having had all of those different experiences and being able to bring them to bear in one space was really valuable… in my 20s, I would have thought I could do it, but today I know what I don’t know. Now, I ask for help all the time.”

Key Points for Future Leaders:

  • Cultivate networks—they become your “content experts.”

  • Stay teachable—“People will teach you as long as you continue to be teachable. The minute you aren’t, they won’t invest any more time.”

  • Don’t validate, learn: Seek input to broaden your thinking, not just reinforce your beliefs.

Decision-Making in Uncertainty: Filtering Good Advice from Noise

How does an experienced founder separate useful advice from noise, especially in unfamiliar territory?

Jill describes her method as a mix of wide listening and gut-checks: “For me, it was about talking to as many people as I could and getting various points of view, but then still forming my own opinion… It’s about trusting my gut and forming relationships with people I felt were sincere.”

She cautions against seeking advice just to confirm your biases: “If you really go out in pursuit of information for information’s sake, as opposed to trying to validate a preconceived point of view, I find it’s a thousand times easier.”

Tips for Leaders Filtering Advice

  • Don’t chase consensus. Two or three reliable perspectives trump “72 different opinions.”

  • Look for sincerity and track record. Form relationships with those who offer honest, practical guidance—not just flash and charisma.

  • Be vulnerable and ask “remedial” questions. “Even after 20 years in the space, I still ask a remedial question almost every day—there’s no possible way I could know even a fraction of what’s out there.”

Building for Real Life: Kith & Kin’s User-Centric, Modular Approach

How does Kith & Kin’s technology differ from conventional health management tools?

Unlike rigid patient portals or top-down health tech, Kith & Kin “helps people manage health the way they manage life—not trying to force them into the healthcare paradigm.” The app offers:

  • Granular sharing controls—users choose who sees what

  • Portability—take your data and preferences wherever you go

  • Voice and photo features—so families aren’t lost in a sea of text threads or digital “binders”

  • Collaborative task management—for distributing the burden among friends and family

Jill notes, “One crazy thing—you would never juxtapose between MyChart and your life… in your life, you take pictures of 10,000 things… This is how people manage information.”

Bullet: What Kith & Kin Adds to the Caregiver’s Toolbox

  • Easy document storage (photos, discharge instructions, notes)

  • Emergency info and profiles for each family member

  • Tasks and reminders assignable to specific helpers

  • Affordable pricing to maximize reach

Financial Discipline: Surviving and Thriving on $2.3 Million

How has Kith & Kin achieved what many startups can’t with much bigger budgets?

Kith & Kin’s lean approach isn’t just about “spending less”—it’s about smart resource allocation:

  • Focus on what works. “You’ve got to be able to turn off the spigot because you can’t keep spending where it doesn’t make sense.”

  • Variable cost structure. “You have to be able to make a decision with a week’s notice and turn off what’s not working.”

  • Avoid the “shoulds.” “You’ve got to shed the shoulds—a lot of things people will tell you you should do, but you just have to know better in that space.”

Jill’s background as a CFO shows: “For $2 million, that is impressive… we couldn’t overbuild the technology such that a consumer subscription… has to be well less than a dollar a person.”

Actionable Insight: Passion, Persistence, and Pragmatism Win

What can healthcare executives, founders, and policymakers learn from Jill Michal’s journey with Kith & Kin?

  • Let passion drive you, but let discipline and humility steer you.

  • Build for the real world, not for an ideal user who doesn’t exist.

  • Start with deep listening; only then should you design and build.

  • Resourcefulness and the ability to pivot are more important than raising big rounds.

“I care more about getting it right than I do about being right… if I’m going to fail, I’m going to fail fast. That doesn’t bother me—I care more about getting it right than being right.”

Kith & Kin’s story is a blueprint for modern healthcare startups—combining empathy with execution, experience with agility, and frugality with innovation. For leaders navigating their own “islands of misfit toys,” the lesson is clear: your next act might just be your most impactful, if you’re willing to learn, listen, and leap.

Download the Kith & Kin app on Apple App Store or Google Play to see how modern caregiving technology is finally catching up with real life. For more leadership stories like Jill’s, follow the American Journal of Healthcare Strategy.