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Kaizen Design
Techstars '26Kearney, US · 1 known investors
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Kaizen offers an enterprise platform for health systems to centralize, manage, and enforce building design standards across capital projects. The platform replaces static PDFs and documents with a governed system of record that improves consistency, reduces rework, and accelerates project delivery.
Also known as Kaizen · Kaizen Design
Founders & leadership
Investors · 1
How we know: the Techstars portfolio · open dataset · Top 3000 Accelerator Startups (no YC) 2026-08 · Not right? Tell us
Company profile
researched Sep 2026Kaizen develops the Living Standards platform, an enterprise system of record that health systems use to collect, improve and enforce building design standards across capital projects. The product is positioned as a replacement for design standards held in PDFs, binders, SharePoint folders and undocumented institutional knowledge, which the company argues causes teams to spend weeks searching for requirements, buries decisions in email threads and leads to repeated mistakes across projects.
The platform is organized around three functions. Collect covers uploading and organizing standards into a structured, searchable repository with role-based access and defined ownership. Improve provides collaborative review, update and approval workflows with version tracking and audit trails intended to make decisions defensible for board, auditor or regulatory review. Enforce surfaces published standards during capital projects so they are applied across sites and building types. Kaizen describes the outcomes it targets as fewer change orders, faster project delivery, auditable decision records, lower building lifecycle cost and consistency across a portfolio spanning ambulatory to acute facilities.
Founding story
Founder and CEO Becky Holden states she spent 20 years leading capital projects, including work with Cleveland Clinic and Stanford Health, serving as a designer for Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi and a design leader for Stanford. She describes observing health systems across the country struggling to treat design as a strategy, and built Kaizen to let operators capture learnings from each project and align project teams.
Business model
Enterprise software sold to health systems as an organization-wide governance platform for design standards, with deployment described as phased across a customer's capital program.
Traction
Founder Becky Holden, based in Kearney, received a $5,000 top prize reported by University of Nebraska at Kearney news.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography
Market position
Kaizen positions itself as the first enterprise platform aimed at health system owners for design standards governance, contrasting itself with Procore and similar tools that it characterizes as serving contractors managing projects rather than the owners defining what gets built. It frames the addressable problem around an approximately $70 billion annual U.S. healthcare construction spend with roughly 15% of project value lost to rework, change orders and preventable failures.
The company cites three differentiators: a data model built by a healthcare capital projects operator to match how health systems structure standards; a compounding dataset of standards, decisions, exceptions and outcomes contributed by each customer; and an enforcement-oriented governance platform with versioning and accountability rather than a document repository.
Technology
A governed system of record for building design standards featuring structured, searchable storage, role-based access, defined ownership, collaborative review and approval workflows, version tracking, audit trails, and delivery of published standards into active capital projects. The company states that standards, decisions, exceptions and outcomes contributed by customers accumulate into a shared dataset across the platform.
Go-to-market
Direct enterprise sales driven by a 30-minute briefing request on the company website, in which the prospect's current standards process is reviewed, the Living Standards platform is demonstrated and a phased deployment across the capital program is outlined.
Health systems and the owner-side capital project, facilities and design leaders who define building standards, as distinct from the contractors served by project management tools.
Geography
Based in Kearney, Nebraska, with a product framed around the U.S. healthcare construction market.
Compiled by commissioned research from 5 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 1
launches, deals, and filingsBecky Holden of Kearney took home the top prize of $5,000, per University of Nebraska at Kearney news coverage tagged to Kaizen Design.
$5K source ↗
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 5
primary sources listed
- Kaizen Designthekaizendesign.com · web
5 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Kaizen Design do?
- Enterprise platform for health systems to collect, govern and enforce building design standards across capital projects.
- Who founded Kaizen Design?
- Kaizen Design was founded by Becky Holden.
- Who are Kaizen Design's investors?
- Kaizen Design's investors include Techstars.
- Where is Kaizen Design headquartered?
- Kaizen Design is headquartered in Kearney, US.