As we close out 2024, the team at Novy wants to take a moment to reflect on what has been a tremendous year of growth and innovation for us. From launching the venture studio 12 months ago to expanding our vast community of experts (like you), we are deeply grateful to everyone who has supported our efforts each step of the way.

In our very first blog post (of what will be more to come), we’re taking a look back at our journey through 2024, celebrating the moments that shaped our studio to-date, and setting the stage for what’s to come in 2025 and beyond.

Launching Novy: The Beginning of Something New

November 2023 marked the opening of a first-of-its-kind venture studio headquartered in Iowa, Novy, meaning “new” in Czech. The co-founding team of Partners set out to bring a fresh, new alternative to the world of startup launching and scaling that many in the state had not been exposed to before.

For those unfamiliar with the venture studio model, it’s designed to co-found companies alongside idea generators by pouring hands-on expertise into the company from day one with the necessary direct capital invested to support its growth. Essentially, filling the roles of entrepreneur, operator, and investor for each portfolio company (or portco) created.

On top of sharing efforts to lighten the load, Novy developed our own six-stage process each of our ideas (and eventual portcos) will follow to dramatically accelerate the businesses from ideation to exit, increasing the likelihood of success. In fact, venture studio startups have a 30% higher success rate than traditional startups, according to a GSSN study. 

Each stage of the Novy process is led by one of our experienced Partners with a team of expert resources behind them. Those same Partners, Eric Engelmann, David Tominsky, and Krista Martin, were core to establishing Novy’s central mission from the very beginning—to turn great ideas into valuable companies.

In those early days, the team was laser focused on laying the groundwork for the studio. They narrowed our target industry to healthcare software, began mapping out our six-stage process, and most importantly, started developing relationships with innovators from all over the world.

Growing the Team: Building a Strong Foundation

By March 2024, Novy was ready to make its first hires, Sarah Wallace and Jess Greiner.

Sarah joined the team as Process Leader, focused heavily on developing a repeatable, efficient, and reliable playbook—centering around Novy’s six stages of Ideation, Validation, Creation, Growth, Exit, and Spinout.

Jess came on as VP of Marketing, pointed at developing Novy’s brand and go-to-market strategy to attract the very best industry experts, healthcare software ideas, and talent for the studio and its future portcos.

In June, Novy brought in two recent college graduates, Stephanie McClelland and Shreya Yeturu, to take on market research and customer discovery work for the summer. Stephanie joined full-time in October as our Studio Associate, bringing our team total to six.

All of these hires marked significant progress for the studio, as we added individuals who not only shared our passion for innovation but also brought diverse expertise to the table. Today, we have a team that’s equipped to deliver at the highest level across every stage of our process. 

As we continue to move through new stages and narrow in on our first company to create, we’d encourage you to keep an eye on our job board for future open roles.

Testing Our Process: Ideation and Validation in Action

The summer and fall brought more defining moments to Novy’s journey. We successfully completed our first round of Ideation and Validation!

Ideation captured over 50 healthcare software ideas for us to explore, with talented idea generators from all over the U.S. Over the course of three months, our team ran initial vetting to identify each idea’s riskiest business assumptions and potential fit for Novy’s studio model. 

We were then able to narrow that list down to just five ideas to take into broad validation testing. This included conducting dozens of customer discovery and subject matter expert interviews per idea, as well as performing extensive market research on each industry, its buyer demand, and the competitive landscape. 

From there, we moved our top two ideas into more in-depth targeted validation and financial modeling across September and October, as we inched closer to our ultimate goal of creating zero or one company. After all-hands-on-deck testing and careful consideration, Novy ultimately made the decision to create zero companies in this first round.

As a group, we retrospected what worked well and thoroughly mapped out everything we’d like to enhance in round two. From there, we’ve wasted no time putting those plans into action.

We are entering a fresh round of Ideation in the new year, where we will continue to meet with idea generators and entrepreneurs across a variety of healthcare specialities and solution sets in our pursuit of the first Novy portfolio company.

For those of you that may have any early-stage healthcare software idea to share with our team for consideration (or know someone else that might), applications are officially open! Visit novyventures.com/apply to tell us a bit about it. We’ll follow up to connect further. 

Expanding Brand Awareness: Gaining Industry Recognition

A major benefit of a venture studio like Novy is the network of expertise we’re able to build across internal team members, future hires, external subject matter experts, and collaborative partnerships. 

In order to get our name in front of those leaders, there’s been a big push for increasing our nationwide brand presence, engagement on LinkedIn, and earned features from industry influencers and media outlets. We’ve also been dialed in on ramping up involvement within our communities and member groups, as well as with colleges, universities, and accelerator programs.

This year, we entered into meaningful partnerships with several regional academic institutions and accelerators, like the University of Iowa and Gener8tor, that proved to be excellent resources for Novy. We were also able to bring them immense value in return by supporting their efforts to nurture early ideas and entrepreneurship across their students, faculty, and cohort participants. 

For 2025, we plan to add ten new partners to our growing ecosystem. If your organization fits into the academic or accelerator buckets, we’d love to connect to learn more about your current focus areas and discuss some ways Novy could complement your work.

2024 also brought Novy multiple honors for our unique team culture and work in driving healthcare innovation, including HackerNoon’s Startup of the Year and CBJ’s Coolest Places to Work. These awards have been a testament to the dedication of our team and our commitment to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

Spreading the Word: Sharing Our Vision and Expertise

In addition to award nods, Novy had the privilege of being invited to speak at several industry events, as well as to students at major colleges and universities across the state of Iowa.

These speaking engagements have allowed us to connect with other experts in the field and inspire a wider community of changemakers. It’s been an incredible opportunity to highlight the work we’ve done and continue building towards our goal of creating our first company in 2025.

Closing 2024 Strong: Laying the Groundwork for What’s to Come

As we quickly approach the end of year, the team isn’t letting off the gas. 

From 1996 when the very first venture studio was launched to today when there are 800+ in existence worldwide, it couldn’t be a more exciting time for Novy to enter the space. 

As studio awareness is increasing, so is the room for studio differentiation. Whether by industry or geography, each one is finding their own niche and creating incredibly unique businesses that are leaving a big impact.

We’ve been hearing it time and time again, Idea Generators are craving a model like ours that provides a balance of financial stability and proven frameworks to a time that can feel extremely uncertain in the early days of creating a company.

Exits from venture studio companies are also showing to be faster—33% so to be exact (GSSN)—with many of the most common risks mitigated for the founders going in. You’d be surprised how many famous, global brands like Dollar Shave Club, Liquid Death, Hello Fresh, Medium, and Hims actually spawned from venture studios like our own. 

Stay tuned for more updates and ways to get engaged with our team in the new year. And to everyone in our Novy network, THANK YOU again for the continued support and collaboration. We’ve already started to build something incredible together and it’s just the beginning!