Our Story
Milestone Crossing is championed by founder and principal Dave Dickinson, a seasoned startup CEO and corporate executive leader with a proven track record of developing breakthrough solutions to help innovators cross the critical business milestones required for venture success.
Dave Dickinson is an award-winning healthcare startup CEO, Board Director, and corporate intrapreneur who Finds the Big Idea that best represents the innovator’s gift to society. He has been called a strategic visionary, inspirational coach, and an all-people mentor who motivates diversified teams to discover gaping unmet market needs and then turn their innovation into a breakthrough solution. Dave always seeks to achieve true product/market fit, a memorable marketing raison d'etre and brand positioning, and a highly differentiated basis of competitive superiority.
Dave is a 4X startup CEO, 3X Board Director, and former Chief Innovation Officer, SVP Business Development, Chief Marketing Officer, and VC Executive-in-Residence within healthcare cybersecurity, Big Healthcare Data analytics services, digital consumer healthcare, and consumer packaged goods products for Fortune 200 companies: Mead Johnson/Bristol-Myers Squibb, Arm & Hammer/Church & Dwight, Johnson & Johnson, and Optum/UnitedHealth Group.
Most recently, Dave was the CEO and a Board Director for Tausight and raised $20 million for this Series A healthcare cybersecurity startup backed by top-tier healthcare technology investors, Polaris Partners, Flare Capital Partners and .406 Ventures. Tausight was founded in 2018 by the cofounder and former CTO of Imprivata, David Ting, with the vision of reducing healthcare cyber incidents using a more proactive, risk management philosophy to better secure protected health information (PHI) and patient safety.
Previously, Dave was the SVP, External Business Ventures for UnitedHealth Group R&D and Chief Innovation Officer for OptumLabs, where he led co-innovation partnerships that leveraged a de-identified patient database of over 200M individuals. A digital health pioneer, Dave also led Zeo®, a revolutionary digital sleep management company that created a global following, won numerous industry awards, and raised $32 million from Best Buy, Johnson & Johnson, Silicon Valley, and Taiwanese venture capital.
Dave has gained unparalleled leadership experience in both the startup and corporate venture world while also building a reputation as a respected CEO coach and mentor. As both entrepreneur and intrapreneur, he’s walked the exhilarating tightrope in dogged pursuit of breakthrough new products, services, and technology. He’s lived the challenges of discovering the Big Idea, honing true customer value, building a sustainable business model, and raising capital to achieve a dream.
We Speak From Experience
Our broad and deep experience comes from large corporate innovation ventures at Arm & Hammer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, and UnitedHealth Group, as well as within and alongside dozens of startups as CEO, COO, Board Director, Executive-In-Residence, and Mentor.
