When I started OneVillage, nearly every advisor and investor I spoke with gave me the same advice:
“Start with a point solution. Solve one problem better than anyone else. Then expand.”
I didn’t just hear this advice—I used to give it. Before founding OneVillage, I spent years as a venture capitalist. I sat on the other side of the table, coaching founders to stay focused, go narrow, and delay complexity.
It’s good advice—most of the time. But when I looked at the healthcare ecosystem and what people actually need to navigate it, that strategy didn’t make sense.
So I did the “wrong” thing. I started with a platform.
Why Point Solutions Don’t Work for People
Healthcare is crowded with point solutions. One app for fertility. Another for nutrition. A separate service for mental health, caregiving, weight loss—you get the idea.
Each of them might be great at what they do. But together, they create a fragmented experience that puts the burden on the individual to figure out what help they need, when, and from where.
For HR teams, it's a contract management nightmare. For patients and employees, it’s confusing, duplicative, and often inaccessible.
The truth? People don’t want more apps. They want answers. They want one place to go. One experience that connects the dots.
Why I Went Against the Grain
At OneVillage, we believed from the start that the future of healthcare would be integrated, not siloed. I didn’t want to build yet another disconnected tool. I wanted to build the connective tissue.
That’s why we didn’t try to be the best “app” for nutrition, or sleep, or insurance. We didn’t need to be—we just needed to hire the best talent in those fields and bring them together into a platform that delivers whole-person support through a single, unified experience.
We’re not experts in building a vertical solution for every problem. We’re experts in assembling the right team—and creating the infrastructure to support them.
The Industry is Catching Up
We made this bet early, and it’s paying off. But we weren’t the only ones seeing the shift:
- Rob Moffat at Balderton Capital wrote about the pitfalls of trying to build platforms later via acquisition, noting that integrations often fail or drag on for years.
- Brex's President, Karandeep Anand, talked about how even fintechs are realizing customers don't want tools—they want outcomes.
- A16z has noted that point solutions often get commoditized and that platforms build real defensibility through user experience and scale.
Every industry eventually moves toward platforms. I just decided to start there from day one.
The Outcome So Far
Today, OneVillage provides:
✅ Concierge medical and insurance navigation
✅ Live coaching and consulting in 35+ categories—from financial wellness and sleep to cancer care and caregiving
✅ A personalized member experience that connects people to the right help, not just another login
We do what 10+ point solutions try to do—only better, faster, and more affordably. And we do it with heart, efficiency, and a whole lot of lived experience behind the scenes.
The Lesson
Building a platform first isn't always the obvious choice—but when you know where the market is headed and understand the full complexity of the problem, it's sometimes the only choice.
As a former VC, I knew all the conventional wisdom. But as a founder, a caregiver, and a cancer survivor, I knew what people actually needed.
And I built that.
Want to learn more about how OneVillage is changing the game for employee benefits and supportive care? Visit our website or connect with me on LinkedIn.
