Patrick Nelli is the founder and CEO of Aligned Marketplace, which provides self-insured employers access to advanced primary care services across geographies. He previously spent nearly 10 years at Health Catalyst, a leading provider of data and analytics technology to healthcare organizations, in executive roles including CFO and, most recently, President. Learn more about Aligned Marketplace via their website, or on LinkedIn.

Office Hours is building the world's largest and most powerful expert network for technology and healthcare startups. Founders and operators book video or phone consultations with thousands top professionals in technology and healthcare to solve their most pressing challenges, from product or market validation, product feedback, lead generation, competitive intelligence, recruiting, to functional expertise.

After spending nearly a decade rising through the leadership ranks at Health Catalyst, Patrick Nelli decided it was time to branch out and start his own company.

His experiences at Health Catalyst gave him and up close and personal view of the complexities of American healthcare. Specifically, Patrick identified an opportunity to help self-insured employers in the U.S. offer advanced primary care services to their employees, regardless of their geography. Advanced primary care services are generally considered to provide a better patient experience and offer attractive cost savings to the employers who offer them as part of their benefits packages.

It’s one thing to have an idea. Deciding to commit years of your life and significant capital to that idea is another thing entirely.

It's age-old advice for those looking to launch a startup, even for those who have done it before: identifying which problem(s) to solve, and for whom, is the first and most important step in launching a new company. Then, you need to make sure your solution to the problem is something people will actually pay for.

Traditional methods of validating ideas are are time-intensive and often insufficient. Working personal networks, cold outreach to to experts in the space, and doing qualitative industry research can all be fruitful to varying degrees, but it can be hard to trust the quality of those feedback signals. It’s also easy to lose steam and think enough research has been done.

It’s intuitive but bears repeating - sourcing the broadest array of perspectives will dramatically increase a founder’s odds of success. 

How Office Hours streamlines idea validation via access to expert perspectives

In Patrick’s case, he needed real-life perspectives from key decision makers overseeing health benefits strategy for major self-insured employers in the U.S. with over 5,000 employees. Was there an appetite for this sort of offering? Are they already offering advanced primary care? Are any competitors deploying a similar model?

Office Hours has built a network of thousands of knowledge professionals and a software platform to help startups seamlessly access their perspectives. We also have a team of client services professionals in San Francisco and New York whose sole mission is to find and recruit the exact experts our clients need.

Between our existing network and our team, Patrick had conversations on our platform with 14 advisors, including CHROs, Chief People Officers, and Heads of Benefits from major companies like Honeywell, Ralph Lauren, GitHub, Better.com, Allegiant Air and others.

All-in-all, these conversations cost Patrick a total of ~$5,000.

Insight gained via Office Hours consultations, coupled with countless hours of research and groundwork work Patrick invested, ultimately gave him enough conviction to take the leap and launch the company.

Expert calls helped Patrick accelerate the first phase of Aligned Marketplace’s journey and move on to the real work of building a successful company.

As startups grow, their need for expertise grows exponentially. Following launch, Office Hours helps startups access functional expertise on-demand, and can even help startups find new customers.

We’re standing by to put you in touch with the people you need to validate your idea and maximize your chances of success.

Do you or your team need efficient, cost-effective access to expert perspectives? If so, let’s talk, or sign up for free to explore our network.

Learn how founder Patrick Nelli tapped into expert perspectives via Office Hours to validate the idea for his recently launched startup, Aligned Marketplace.

How Office Hours helped a seasoned healthcare exec validate and launch his own company with confidence

At Office Hours, we have the privilege of helping a fantastic roster of customers easily access expert perspectives. That roster includes some of the world's foremost advisory firms and consultancies, venture-backed startups, venture capital firms, and many others. 

In this series, we'll be profiling many of our incredible customers, and explaining how the Office Hours network and platform help them efficiently access the perspectives they need.

Rock Health Advisory is a digital health strategy group that helps enterprise companies understand and act on opportunities, craft novel solutions, and succeed in an evolving healthcare landscape.

As part of a recent client strategy project, the Rock Health team wanted to connect with healthcare executives with experience in the payer and specialty clinic spaces.

Leading network of advisors in healthcare and technology

Office Hours has thousands of experts in healthcare and technology available on-demand, including payers, physicians, key opinion leaders (KOLs), and digital health strategists.

In this case, Rock Health Advisory was able to complement its industry-defining research and data by leveraging Office Hours’ network to quickly connect with the right advisors across a range of health plans and specialty clinics. 

Dedicated customer success team & easy-to-use platform

Our dedicated customer success team supported the Rock Health team by searching for relevant advisors outside the platform and bringing them into our network. 

The platform's scheduling tools simplified logistics so the Rock Health team could stay focused on getting as much value from their conversations with advisors as possible.

Ultimately, the Rock Health team was able to connect with multiple current and former senior executives from leading payers and service delivery organizations. 

Perspectives from these hard-to-access experts helped the team to develop robust recommendations for their client.


Curious to learn more about Office Hours? 

To learn more about how Office Hours can support you and your team, please schedule a demo or drop us a line at sales@officehours.com.  

How Office Hours helps a leading healthcare advisory firm efficiently access expert perspectives

Customer highlight: Rock Health

One of the most effective ways for startups to increase sales conversion is to refine their product positioning by interviewing key decision makers. Doing so allows founders and marketers to gain valuable insight into their customers’ core priorities and concerns, which helps them better position their products to address those unmet needs — essential in a crowded market segment like sales software tooling.

Basis Set Ventures recently conducted interviews on Office Hours with 25 top sales executives (from companies like Scale, Figma, and Loom) to better understand the current state of software buying in the sales and revenue space.

Getting your message through to sales and revenue leaders

There is still plenty of opportunity to make inroads in this constantly evolving segment. The study revealed that the best sales teams are agile and adaptive, embracing changes in their technology stack and consistently exploring new tools to stay ahead. More than 60% of sales leaders made significant changes to their tech stack during COVID, and over 70% identified gaps in their stack, highlighting the importance of staying on top of technological advancements.

Top sales leaders expressed unmet needs for deal acceleration, forecasting, and lead prioritization. While the market offers numerous solutions, there is still room for innovation and improvement in these areas.

The need for clear proof of value when evaluating new tools

The importance of hands-on experience with the product

The importance of personal recommendations and customer case studies

Click here to read the Basis Set report in its entirety:


Ready to improve your product positioning? Sign up for Office Hours today.


Book key decision makers on Office Hours to improve your positioning

Ready to explore the network?

Sign up to explore the network, or schedule a demo with a member of our team.