In 2018, Highline Beta combined the strength of both worlds to find the sweet spot for innovation and build the next generation of successful startups. But it turns out that “Aha!” moments are often accidental, with no guaranteed process to reach them sooner—or at all.

In the early days, Highline Beta leaned on their innovation services, assembling the best startup talent to build new ventures alongside corporate giants. This work allowed the team to connect dots and learn what mattered to these companies, opening up a path to opportunities Highline Beta could build and invest in. However, when ideas reached the validation stage, corporations often chose to build in-house, believing their own teams could lead these ventures to success. We couldn’t convince them that their top performers, with full salaries and no personal stakes in the outcome, couldn’t be trained to think like startup founders.

Enter Highline Beta’s venture studio, proving that with the right founders, funding and industry insights from day one, they could de-risk and speed up innovation for corporations and create successful companies with them.

Highline Beta’s first success story was called Relay, a collaboration with American Family Insurance that closed a $3M seed round in its first year. In 2022, Relay was acquired.

At Highline Beta, I led product, research and design on teams of scrappy entrepreneurs, industry experts and corporate innovators to turn twelve different ideas into viable businesses.

The goal wasn’t to “build and ship” for the sake of it but to discover the truth, uncover real user pain points, and ensure the market was compelling and strategic. There were no fixed timelines or guaranteed outcomes.