Zak Holdsworth and the long way to Silicon Valley

Long before Zak Holdsworth had investors to answer to, he had a computer to think about. His father had brought home what Holdsworth remembers as the first computer in their New Zealand town. For a boy growing up on a farm near Gisborne, that machine suggested a destination remarkably distant from the paddocks: Silicon Valley.

He eventually got there. The interesting part is how many different jobs, people and revisions to his own thinking came between the wish and the company. Today, Holdsworth is the co-founder and CEO of Hint Health, the San Francisco business he started with Graham Melcher in 2013. His account of getting there leaves plenty of room for luck, late decisions and work that takes longer than advertised.

That last detail matters. Startup biographies have a habit of behaving like airport moving walkways: step on at childhood, glide past a degree, arrive at success. Holdsworth's version includes engineering, consulting, an uncertain search for a summer internship, venture investing and the eventual discovery that a good business can require a different sort of investor.

A computer beyond the paddocks

His father was an inventor and a pioneer in pultrusion, a composites manufacturing process. His mother had worked as a diplomat. Farm life and a view beyond New Zealand were both part of the family story. An interest in making things did not have to wait for a business school application.

Holdsworth earned an honours degree in electrical engineering at the University of Canterbury, which records his graduation in 2004. He began working with software and automation in Gisborne, then moved into technology consulting in the United Kingdom. The sequence gave him experience with both the workings of a machine and the people trying to make a business out of it.

His work included automation systems, embedded electronics and software. Later consulting clients included the Financial Times and Tesco Digital. These were different settings with a shared requirement: something had to work for the person using it. A qualification supplied the technical foundation; the jobs supplied successive opportunities to discover what that foundation was good for.

He has been clear that the route was only partly planned. Engineering was an early ambition, and entrepreneurship felt likely. The intervening itinerary remained open. That makes the childhood interest in Silicon Valley more revealing: he had a direction before he had a schedule.

The internship that arrived late

At Stanford Graduate School of Business, which he attended from 2009 to 2011, Holdsworth encountered a less tidy problem than a circuit diagram. He could not find a summer internship that interested him. His friends had secured theirs months ahead. With the end of term only days away, he was still looking.

The school's career department connected him with Curtis Feeny, a veteran venture capitalist. Feeny mentored him over the summer, and Holdsworth credits that experience with setting him on the path he followed. The familiar career turning point arrived through a practical introduction made while a deadline was approaching.

His brief period at Voyager Capital gave him a view from the investor's side of the table. He then joined WellnessFX, where he led business development. Moving from evaluating companies to working inside one changed his responsibilities: finding a promising proposition and helping it become a functioning business are different daily occupations.

There is something reassuring about that sequence. He reached Stanford with an engineering education and a desire to build. He still needed help figuring out the next move. Even an ambitious itinerary can benefit from someone in the careers office knowing whom to call.

Building with somebody else

Holdsworth and Melcher both worked at WellnessFX before starting Hint. Melcher brought experience in product and engineering; Holdsworth brought engineering training, investing exposure and business development experience. Their working relationship continued into a company they would spend years developing together.

By 2022, the work included revisiting earlier technical choices. Melcher described a substantial rebuild of the application's front end, reflecting how much software had changed since the company's beginnings. The team was moving from AngularJS to Elm. The product needed maintenance and renewal while customers continued using it.

For all the romance attached to starting a company, keeping one useful produces a more prosaic agenda. Old decisions need inspecting. A sensible tool ages. Teams have to build the next version while supporting the current one. Holdsworth's engineering background gives that part of his career a continuity that the change in job titles can obscure.

The money had to fit the timetable

In June 2022, Hint announced a $45 million investment led by Banneker Partners and Frist Cressey Ventures. A funding announcement offers a satisfyingly clean number. The decisions behind it were more particular: what pace the business could sustain, what its investors expected and how to bring those expectations together.

Looking back in 2024, Holdsworth described a company growing roughly 35 to 40 percent annually as it approached revenue in the $7 million to $10 million range. Those were historical figures from the period he was discussing. They help explain the financing question he faced: steady growth could still sit awkwardly beside the returns later venture investors wanted.

He described offering existing investors a choice. They could support the business on the proposed plan, or take an exit through a private equity transaction. In his account, $33 million of the $45 million transaction went to existing shareholders. That distinction makes the headline more intelligible. Money changing ownership and money available to operate a company serve different purposes.

The new partners also mattered beyond the amount. Banneker's focus on enterprise software and its work with management teams offered a different context for the next stage. In their announcement, the founders set out plans to add product, engineering, customer success, analytics and operations capacity. The ambition had a staffing list.

Holdsworth's experience raises a useful question for anyone building a business: whose timetable is the company following? Changing the answer may involve negotiations with people who supported its beginnings. His account gives those investors credit for backing the eventual arrangement. A company can outgrow a financing relationship without requiring a villain.

Focus acquired a different meaning

Experience also changed his interpretation of product focus. Early on, he understood the instruction to focus as a reason to build less. His later view puts more weight on choosing a specific customer, then serving that customer's needs more fully. The boundary belongs around whom the company serves; the product still needs enough breadth to be useful.

His approach to leadership makes a related allowance for other people's expertise. He describes hiring specialists and giving them room to work. He can estimate revenue; his commercial leader can supply the precise figure. The division of knowledge is deliberate. A founder who once did a little of everything has to let a team become better at its individual jobs.

“I like fixing broken things.”

Zak Holdsworth

That short description of what he enjoys about work fits the span of his career. It accommodates an automation problem, an ageing software component and an organisation that needs a different arrangement. Each requires attention to what is happening in front of him. The scale changes; the attraction remains recognisable.

The conversation after the talk

There is a smaller scene in the public record that helps put a person beside the résumé. After speaking to the University of San Francisco Entrepreneurship Club, Holdsworth stayed to eat pizza and answer questions. The organiser remembered both his generosity with time and his willingness to talk candidly about the perseverance a startup requires.

Another former colleague described someone who gathers feedback quickly, combines it with his own thinking and moves to implement it. These are other people's recollections, rather than an invitation to assign him a collection of polished character traits. Together they suggest a working style that includes both momentum and conversation.

The pizza is a welcome detail. A stage can make a career seem remote and complete. Staying afterwards lets students ask about the uncertain parts: finding a direction, making a decision, continuing when progress takes longer than expected. Holdsworth has enough of those parts in his own story to be useful company.

There is still work around the house

Away from the company, his interests include kite surfing, adventure sports, gardening and being a handyman at home. His university's alumni portrait describes family life in San Francisco with his wife, two daughters and three dogs. The domestic version of fixing things has apparently survived the executive job.

Gardening and home repairs make an apt closing pair of occupations for someone candid about slow progress. They offer tangible jobs with their own demands on attention. The dogs, presumably, have limited interest in the financing structure. Family life also gives the geographical journey a second destination: a home in the city he once imagined from New Zealand.

Asked whether his career developed as expected, Holdsworth's answer allowed for both continuity and delay. The engineering ambition became engineering work. The entrepreneurial inclination became a company. Almost everything took longer than he had anticipated.

That is a useful way to read his journey from the farm to San Francisco. A childhood computer supplied a possibility. Education, introductions, colleagues and repeated decisions gave it substance. More than a decade after co-founding Hint, he is still at work on the business. The boy had picked a destination. Getting there left him plenty to do.