Lily Sarafan

Lily Sarafan is Co-Founder and Executive Chair of TheKey, formerly Home Care Assistance. TheKey says she served as chief executive through December 2020 and helped build the company from startup into a national home-care provider focused on aging at home.

Her operating background is centered on senior care, caregiving, and health services. TheKey describes its model as science-backed in-home care using its Balanced Care Method and says the company delivers more than 12 million hours of care annually.

Sarafan also holds several institutional and board roles. TheKey lists her as a Stanford University trustee and as a member of the Freeman Spogli Institute Council, Undergraduate Cabinet, and Life Sciences Council at Stanford. It also says she is a Founding Partner of Project BIG: The Brain Immune Gut Initiative and was appointed to the California Governor’s Alzheimer’s Task Force.

She has a Stanford M.S. in Management Science and Engineering and a B.S. in Science, Technology, and Society. TheKey also lists recognitions including Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Women Health Care Executives Woman of the Year, Fortune 40 Under 40, Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow, and World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.

• Signal/NFX lists Sarafan as an Angel investor with a $5,000–$50,000 check-size range and a $25,000 target check.
• Signal/NFX ranks her in Seed-stage categories including Human Capital/HRTech, Cloud Infrastructure, Consumer Health, AI, Enterprise, Health IT, Digital Health, Health & Hospital Services, Enterprise Infrastructure, and Enterprise Applications.
• Her visible investment pattern overlaps with her operating background: health, aging, care infrastructure, human capital, and enterprise data/infrastructure.
• TheKey’s description of her leadership roles points to interest in “precision health, economic development, and informed civic engagement,” which is consistent with her disclosed health and enterprise investing activity.
• Warm-intro relevance appears important: Signal specifically surfaces “intro paths” and co-investors, and lists co-investors including Jerry Yang, Marissa Mayer, Paul Levine, Aydin Senkut, Marc Benioff, and Steve Chen.