STATUS
Live build underway
We invent, build and co-found companies. We turn grant-funded public-sector programmes into software and service companies.
Grants de-risk initial testing and investment funds growth.
Independent companies with shared foundations. Each has its own team and accounts, and shares the studio’s evidence, software and investors.
Each fund takes one public-service theme and spins out one or two companies. We stay a co-founder in each.
Many governments face the same problems.
They don’t each need their own project. One company can serve them all.
AgentBI surfaces task completion, supervision patterns, incentive uptake and retention signals as practical insight for programme managers, governments and funders. It is the business-intelligence layer for public-sector field workforces.
Climate-resilient seeds and other inputs often fail to reach the farms they were developed for. Grants pay for field testing to show that a better delivery model works. A company then turns that proven approach into a product for the agribusinesses, lenders and programmes that already bear the cost of poor distribution. AgentBI is the first company from this fund. Commonhold is now looking for a second company focused solely on agriculture.
Essential medicines and health services reach remote communities through delivery systems that no one is responsible for maintaining. Across Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, donors commission supply chains, health workforces and payment systems for a single programme and country. These systems are built around grant requirements, without a paying customer or a sustainable business model. When the grant ends, they shut down, and the next programme builds them again.
Fund II creates companies that own and operate this infrastructure. They sell to the ministries, distributors and insurers that need medicines to arrive. That revenue keeps the system running after the original grant ends.
Tomorrow’s most impactful companies are already hiding inside public R&D. Commonhold is the engine that finds them. Because philanthropic grants have already absorbed the cost of years of learning, testing, and data collection, the core risk is mitigated. The question is no longer whether an idea works, but whether the market will sustainably pay for it.
Every year, governments, foundations, and NGOs spend millions piloting better delivery models in agriculture, health, education, and finance. While most of these initiatives remain temporary projects, a select few possess long-term commercial viability. Commonhold identifies these outliers and builds them into independent, venture-backed companies, each equipped with a dedicated team and shared institutional foundations.
Each of our funds targets a single public-service theme. Our evaluation engine analyses the existing grant-funded programmes in that theme and ruthlessly screens them against three core criteria:
Will a government or large institution pay for this over the long term?
Can the solution work beyond its first grant and country?
Does this exact problem exist at scale elsewhere?
We stress-test the strongest candidates alongside dedicated co-founders. Ultimately, we spin out one or two high-conviction companies per fund, retaining a hands-on role as an active institutional co-founder in every venture.
We have worked inside the systems these companies sell to, including UN agencies, national governments and global health programmes. We know where to look inside a programme, and what it takes to make it a business.