Clipboard

In early 2016, founder Wei Deng reflected on her life and set a mission to help others climb the socioeconomic ladder. She initially launched Clipboard Health as an income-share agreement alternative to student loans for software engineers, lawyers, and doctors, but few people were interested. When she shifted focus to nursing students, she discovered a pressing problem: they were anxious about securing employment after graduation. Wei quickly learned that unemployed and underemployed people didn't want financial assistance - they wanted jobs.

This insight led her to create a healthcare job board, which attracted staffing agencies as customers. Through conversations with these agencies and healthcare facilities, Wei discovered a critical gap: facilities needed to fill shifts urgently but agencies inflexibly required full-time commitments from nurses. When she directly called facilities, they confirmed they just needed reliable staff regardless of who showed up. Wei saw an opportunity to revolutionize healthcare staffing by creating a marketplace that offered flexibility for both professionals and facilities. Clipboard Health was born from this realization - a platform where trained healthcare professionals could pick up shifts on their own terms while facilities filled urgent staffing needs instantly.