IndustryApproved for Investors
The work model is pivoting. Your portfolio needs different talent.
IndustryApproved is the developmental layer for seed-stage capital. The Sprint that wraps around the team or venture you've invested in. The Pool of outer-minded talent you tap when you need to deploy.
Project-led.
AI augmented. Smaller teams. Bigger outcomes.
The kind of talent that thrives in this shift is not a graduate with a credential. It is a person with story, taste, judgement, and the capability to work alongside AI rather than be replaced by it.
We call this kind of person outer-minded. Diverse, unconventional, irreplaceable thinkers and doers.
IndustryApproved produces them. We layer into your seed-stage capital as the performance unlock for the teams you back, and as the pre-approved talent pool you tap when you need to deploy.
The Sprint
Wrap IA around the team or venture you've invested in. The performance unlock.
You back a team. We develop them. Twelve weeks. Founders, founding hires, early ICs go through IA. They come out with what is actually about them surfaced, expressed, and oriented around the work the venture is doing. The agency. The judgement. The creative confidence. The collaborative range. The grit.
The Sprint is wholly online. Daily content drops. Weekly mentor sessions with Matt and the IA agent. Cohort-based collaboration. It compresses what would otherwise be years of professional becoming into one quarter. Then your portfolio team is back at work, sharper, with the inside layer no machine can simulate.
Per-team programme fee. Cleaner than executive coaching. Deeper than another offsite. Faster than waiting for the team to figure it out under deal pressure.
Your team stays with the venture they were developed for. They are yours.
The Pool
A pool of approved talent. Available as a global fractional or employed resource.
No matter where in the world it's happening, every Open IA cohort produces approved talent that carries the IA mark. Pre-approved means we have seen them work the full Know, Create, Make arc. We can vouch for what they bring. Diverse. Unconventional. Irreplaceable.
The Pool grows from the network's open pathways. Open cohorts. The year-long Long Path. The pipelines forming at school-to-work and uni-to-work transitions. Every IA'er who enters the network solo is yours to deploy.
Each cohort makes the next cohort stronger through Tuakana Teina. Graduates return as mentors for the next wave. So the Pool does not just grow. It improves.
Three deployable configurations.
Squad.
A small unit, three to five, ready to drop into a contained project or pivot. Cohesive because they have come through the same developmental work.
Fractional or full-time. Project-shaped or role-shaped. The Pool flexes to whatever your portfolio actually needs.
The market is pivoting toward exactly this kind of talent.
The model is changing. AI is doing more of the work that used to require headcount. Teams are getting smaller. Projects are replacing roles. What you actually need are people who can think across domains, hold ambiguity, partner with AI as augmentation, and ship outcomes rather than perform tasks.
Most education systems still produce the opposite. Specialised, credentialed, role-shaped. They don't develop story. They don't develop taste. They don't teach how to author personhood in the world. They were not built for the world your portfolio is now operating in.
IA was built for it. Not as a reaction to the shift, but as a developmental architecture that names it, prepares for it, and turns it into an advantage for the people who go through us.
That is why outer-minded talent is the only kind that compounds inside the new.
Solo.
The right one person. An early hire, a creative lead, a founding storyteller.
Paired.
IA is the founder's doctoral research site. Becoming, Middlesex DProf. Peer-reviewed while it runs.
Closed cohort.
You sponsor a private cohort just for your portfolio. Three to four teams together. Cohort dynamics, your IP boundary. Premium fee.
Three modes of partnership.
Cohort buy.
You send your seeded team through a scheduled cohort. Per-team fee. The simplest engagement.
The three modes layer. Most investors start with a cohort buy on a single team, move to a closed cohort once they have seen the work, and add network access when the Pool is deep enough to be a meaningful pipeline.
Network access.
An annual relationship that gives your firm priority access to the Pool. First-look on approved humans. Pre-screened candidate flow into your portfolio.
Partner with us on your next deal.
Send a team. Sponsor a cohort. Take a network seat. Pick the entry point that fits where you are.
What you get in return. Unlocked teams. Pre-approved outer-minded talent on tap. A developmental layer that compounds with every deal you close.
Get in touch: industryapproved@me.com
The instrument that built fandoms for everyone else is now building the talent that builds them.
Twenty-five years across American Idol, BBC, Cisco, Spotify, Unilever, UNICEF, Magnum, Lively, Ed Sheeran, Warner Music. The work has always been about turning ideas, products, and brands into things people want to belong to. The methodology underneath that work, Know-Create-Make, is what IA now applies to the talent itself.
IA is also Matt's doctoral research site. Fandom is his DProf by Publication. The methodology is being peer-reviewed while it runs. The practitioner is the proof. The build is the thesis. Partnering with us is not backing an idea. It is engaging with a practitioner whose time has come, on the developmental work the world is just starting to ask for.
Matt Hart. Founder. Practitioner. Doctoral researcher.
Not looking for talent?
Three other ways IndustryApproved shows up in the world.
For Gen-Z
Machines can simulate the degree. They cannot simulate you.
For Organisations
University, school, or business partnership.
For Parents