Ecosystem Spotlight: Halo

Discover interesting players in our network who are building something new or scaling something powerful.

Kevin Leland is CEO of Halo, an open innovation community where companies connect directly with scientists to solve problems and bring new innovations to market. Prior to Halo, Kevin was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at venture capital firm Lightbank, where he led marketing at a number of venture-backed start-ups, and was a founding partner at Argyle, a start-up growth consultancy. He has been published or quoted in The New York Times, Forbes, Fast Company, AllThingD (now Re/Code), NBC and The Boston Globe. Kevin holds a BA in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, an MS in Journalism from the Medill School of Journalism and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management.

Large companies often source R&D partnerships with scientific researchers by going to industry conferences, asking for referrals, and issuing requests for proposals (RFPs). It’s a manual, time-consuming process. Researchers can spend days or even weeks compiling exhaustive proposals for companies to review. Those proposals often arrive with different focuses and formats, which makes it challenging for companies to evaluate them side-by-side.

Halo changes that. The digital marketplace and network moves science forward by connecting scientists directly with companies for research collaborations and funding opportunities.

“RFPs have historically entailed a lot of paperwork. It’s a pain,” said Halo founder Kevin Leland. “Everything about Halo is designed to get rid of all of that pain. We make it as easy to post and respond to an RFP as it is to post and apply for a job on LinkedIn.”

Leland, a start-up veteran who previously worked at IDEO and venture capital firm Lightbank as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, launched Halo in January 2019. Since then, thousands of scientists and start-ups across 65 countries and six continents have joined Halo. Customers include Bayer, Baxter, Reckitt-Benckiser and PepsiCo.

Halo features a common proposal where scientists share their hypothesis, rationale, validation, and relevant publications — nothing more. It takes about 30 minutes to complete, and scientists can save their answers to include in future RFP responses. Companies can use Halo’s project management tools to review proposals collaboratively and get in touch with researchers.

“Companies reach out directly to scientists to learn more or provide feedback,” Leland explained. “If the two are interested in sharing confidential information or negotiating an agreement, the conversation moves off of Halo and the process proceeds per usual with any industry collaboration.”

As Halo grows, Leland looks forward to supporting more cross-disciplinary initiatives.

“You have pharmaceutical companies interested in sustainable packaging. PepsiCo recently hired a chief medical officer. You have chemical engineers working with machine learning specialists or artificial intelligence specialists.That’s why a platform like Halo is really important. You can make those connections programmatically and find mutually beneficial collaborations between industry partners and the scientists.”