Two things we learned very quickly as a venture studio:

1)  We can’t do this work alone; and 2)  the process of innovation and company creation is not cookie-cutter. 

Sure, there are common attributes each process shares, but the blood-type of each of our startups is different. In each startup we have to optimize for different requirements. Each co-founder has their strengths, history, and tail of resources they’ve used in the past. Each enterprise or VC co-build partner has different resources they bring.

Each of our six (or perhaps seven by the time you read this) ventures requires a village of partners, contract, and full time resources to build a great company. That’s why, for Hashed, the Resource Cloud approach makes sense.

What is a “Resource Cloud”

While many studios opt for internal resource development, we advocate for a collaborative approach through our resource cloud.

Hashed Health’s Resource Cloud is a network of talent, enterprises, and investors who are critical to our ideation, validation, building, and commercialization processes. These three elements comprise the Resource Cloud at Hashed. Below I will briefly describe each.

Talent Cloud

Our talent cloud is a living community of entrepreneurs, team members, advisors, and specialty partners. We are constantly growing and organizing this community so we know who we should go to in any given situation. 

The development of a founder pipeline is an obvious example. In the last week alone, I met with three potential co-founders including a remarkable founder who started her own pharma solutions company after a long battle with cancer (I could write a whole blog on her inspiring story alone) and a technical founder spinning out of Microsoft with deep clinical communications expertise. 

The talent cloud is also how we build a bench of specialty product and engineering resources. For example, I recently began working with a team of advanced AI / ML experts that includes dozens Ph.Ds in computer science and engineering capable of tackling complex data challenges beyond what we could hire and beyond what any typical consulting firm could provide. We are now using this group to access partners and use cases that were previously off-limits. We’ve added a whole new set of design patterns to our toolbox. They benefit by combining their team with healthcare experts, product leaders, and designers who bring the requisite expertise to our shared project.

The same goes for incredibly talented product, design, data, specialty engineering, and other specific capabilities. Instead of trying to recruit, hire and retain each of these capabilities individually, we have the freedom to plug “just right” resources into the company creation process.

Enterprise Cloud

Our enterprise cloud consists of health systems, payers, employers, and other enterprises who share an interest in co-building or supporting our builds. These enterprises are aligned philosophically with the Hashed approach and have an executive-level understanding of the value of building outside the walls of the organization. This is larger than just co-building. The enterprise cloud includes validators, users, customers, and subject matter experts who can provide validation and feedback on our work.

Investor Cloud

Our investor cloud includes strategics, VCs and family offices who can be co-builders, validators, or investors in our new builds. Their thesis aligns with the work we do at Hashed. Some of these investors sit on our cap table. Most do not, but value the de-risked pipeline of startups we bring. 

When there is strong alignment, it is not uncommon for VCs to establish connectivity into our validation process as well as relationships with the many of our co-founders. A recent conversation with a provider resulted in a strategic relationship on a new build in discovery, as well as investment conversations with four of our six existing co-founders. 

AI Copilots

We recognize the importance of AI copilots in our cloud approach. We have an evolving list of tools that we use to hack certain activities in our process. Some recent favorites we are learning include Bubble (prototype & launch), Notion (everything), mixo.io (website design), Lead Fuze (prospecting), and Process Street (process management). As these startup co-pilot tools continue to develop, we believe we can move through our process in an even more capital efficient way.

Say Hello to Venturous

Our decentralized approach to talent informed our thinking behind our portfolio company, Venturous.

Venturous is a specialized and exclusive platform that matches high-growth healthcare companies with top-tier executive talent for fractional consulting, advisory, full-time, and board placements.

Recruiting the right talent is challenging, time-consuming, and expensive. Venturous is redefining talent acquisition with process and tools that provide a deep understanding of a company's needs and culture. For executive talent, Venturous makes finding opportunities that best suit expertise easier while enabling access to a community of like-minded peers and companies.

Radical Collaboration, Endurance & Evolution

Since starting Hashed Health, community has been top of mind. We have very intentionally focused on how we can differentiate and out-compete by extending our team into our large community of aligned experts. Our experiments with the Resource Cloud approach have matured and we now consider it a differentiator in our ability to build successful, capital-efficient businesses. We have intentionally woven this approach into the fabric of our studio business and, as a result, we offer our startups (and ourselves) a sustainable competitive advantage that drives a growing awareness of our brand and our value to the future of healthcare. This approach has helped us find great talent, generate great ideas, validate business and technical architectures, source early customers, and partner with investors. Now, with six companies under our belt, we feel the flywheel spinning faster.

At Hashed Health, one of our core values is radical collaboration. Another is endurance and evolution as being critical to our success. When it comes to our team and our studio process, these values enable us to think differently about how we act in service to the studio and each specific startup we build.

The Resource Cloud is a radically collaborative approach that enables us to endure and evolve in an extremely dynamic environment where we are engaged in multiple companies at any given time and always thinking about what’s next. In this environment, leaders are required to embrace change and engage an evolving community of experts who architect, design, and build for an evolving set of business and technical requirements.