The next category of workforce software won't be sold as software — it will be sold as outcomes. I'm building it inside healthcare, where the chaos is biggest and the stakes are highest — and writing about it as I go.
Three industries, twenty years, the same shape: people burn out, outcomes slip, and the tools get more expensive every quarter. The 1.1M US nurse shortage by 2030 (HRSA) is just the loudest version of it. I've spent my career trying to fix one corner of it at a time.
What I believeNo frameworks. No decks. Ship the smallest real thing, listen to what breaks, re-cut. Twenty years of operating taught me there's no other shape that survives contact with regulated reality.
The next decade of workforce software will be sold as outcomes, not subscriptions. An operator's argument for what AI thinkers are missing — and the category I think is about to get a name.
A team of four built a healthcare AI platform serving 78,000+ clinicians, and not one of us is the kind of engineer Silicon Valley would have hired to do it.
A narrative account of the sprint that turned a decade of operating context into a national platform — written for the founders who want to feel what it was like.
Four ventures, twenty years, one through-line: operators with deep domain knowledge, equipped with AI, can rebuild entire industries from the inside out. Scroll through them — newest first.
An AI-native healthcare workforce platform. Clinicians and facilities connect directly — no agency in the middle. The platform reads census, forecasts demand, and routes shifts before they go empty. Built by three people on Lovable, end-to-end. From zero to a national network in twelve months — sustained growth, accelerating quarter over quarter. ShiftNex is the first proof point of Outcome as a Service: a workforce platform that sells measurable improvement, not seat licenses.
Founded Action Healthcare Staffing LLC in May 2017. Founded Actriv Inc. as a more tech-forward staffing platform in April 2019. Merged the two in January 2021 — the combined entity, headquartered in Tacoma, took the Actriv Healthcare name and became one of Washington State's largest healthcare staffing companies. Four consecutive years on the Inc. 5000 — peaking at #40 nationally in 2021. Inc. Regionals Pacific — #51 in 2023. Expanded into Minnesota the same year. The lab where the IP underneath ShiftNex was first developed.
An on-demand work platform — a mobile-first marketplace connecting vetted workers to businesses, same-day. Ahead of its technology, but the operating thesis that started everything that came after. Covered by Oregon Business in their Where They Are Now series.
A handful of Kenya-facing internet businesses — Simbabiz, DVPlaza, Autogy — built remotely from forward operating bases during my years as a defense contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shipped on bad connections, on whatever time I had between rotations. The first lessons in operating discipline.
I came up the long way — Nairobi to forward operating bases to building companies in the Pacific Northwest. Different countries, different uniforms, same question underneath: why does the way we work look so much worse than it should? Everything I've built is one more attempt at an answer. If you're working on a piece of it too, I'd like to hear from you.