What Hangar does

Hangar is a privately held venture studio founded by Josh Mendelsohn in 2018 and headquartered in New York with a Washington, D.C. office. The firm identifies problems that government agencies cannot solve alone, recruits founding teams, designs prototypes, pilots solutions, and builds standalone technology companies targeting the public sector. Revenue derives from equity ownership in portfolio companies and standard fund economics (management fees and carried interest on the $15 million uncapped fund closed in August 2020), not from product sales.

Hangar has launched six portfolio companies addressing distinct public-sector verticals: Cornea (real-time wildfire intelligence and analytics for incident management teams), Camber (location intelligence and infrastructure analytics over petabytes of place data), Outcome (Income Share Agreement and Deferred Tuition Agreement financing for higher education), Roster (community health worker deployment for Medicaid patients with chronic conditions), Meter (AI-powered government procurement analytics), and Squall Insights (commercial data products for political and healthcare marketing). Portfolio technology stacks leverage data science, machine learning, geospatial analytics, and real-time data pipelines; AI is applied at the portfolio level rather than unified into a Hangar-branded platform.

The firm monetizes through venture capital-style returns and operates an enterprise field sales motion into government buyers via its portfolio companies. Limited partners in the fund include the Kresge Foundation endowment and Michael Bloomberg. Hangar maintains a small core team (1–10 employees) augmented by portfolio company operating teams, with a Washington, D.C. presence led by partner Mike Ference (20+ years on Capitol Hill) to support federal engagement. Key strategic positioning events include representation on the White House COVID-19 Task Force in 2020 and a USDA SBIR grant award in 2021 for wildland fire management technology.

Name

Hangar

Website

https://hangar.is

Company type

Private

Founded year

2018

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Hangar is a New York–based venture studio that builds and launches standalone technology companies addressing U.S. public-sector problems in wildfire intelligence, location analytics, education financing, community health, and government procurement.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

New York

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Others

Revenue model

1. Venture Capital Returns: Hangar builds and invests in companies, generating returns through equity ownership and exits.
2. Venture Studio Services: The venture studio model involves building companies from the ground up, providing operational support, resources, and networks to portfolio companies.

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels2 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Hangar is a public-sector-focused venture studio that identifies problems governments cannot solve alone, recruits founding teams, designs prototypes, runs pilots, and builds and launches standalone technology companies to scale. Its portfolio companies sell data-driven software and services—including wildfire intelligence, location analytics, community health worker platforms, education financing, and AI-powered procurement analytics—to federal, state, and local government agencies as well as municipalities and public service providers.

Product overview

Hangar is a venture studio and investment fund, not a product company. It builds and launches separate portfolio companies targeting the public sector. Its 2018 portfolio companies include Camber (location intelligence), Cornea (wildfire intelligence), Outcome (education financing), Roster (community health), Meter (government procurement AI), and Squall (digital marketing insights). These are independent companies, not modules of a unified Hangar platform.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Cornea Real-time wildfire intelligence and analytics platform that provides on-site data access, analysis, and visualization for incident management teams responding to national and international wildfires and natural disasters, helping decision-makers deploy firefighting resources more effectively.
• Camber Location intelligence and infrastructure analytics platform that aggregates petabytes of place data from billions of device data points to help cities, agencies, municipalities, and public service providers monitor and project utilization of facilities, roads, bridges, water pipes, and power supplies, and to inform mobility, equity, and emissions decisions.
• Roster Community health worker management platform that pairs specialized technology with deployed community members to manage and monitor Medicaid patients with chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, COPD, and HIV, extending care beyond traditional clinical facilities.
• Outcome Higher education financing platform that supports the creation and expansion of Income Share Agreement (ISA) and Deferred Tuition Agreement (DTA) programs, tying repayment to post-graduation income outcomes and enabling inclusive, sustainable alternatives to traditional student debt.
• Meter AI-powered government procurement analytics platform that parses millions of government records to provide comprehensive procurement reporting for market research and source selection by public-sector buyers and contractors.
• Squall Insights Lead generation and digital marketing insights platform that uses commercial data to support campaigns and outreach in the political and healthcare sectors.
• Hangar Alpha, LLC Hangar-affiliated entity established to advance wildland fire management technology R&D, supported by a U.S. Department of Agriculture SBIR grant awarded in 2021.

Quantifiable outcome

• 65,000 wildfires burning over 5 million acres tracked and analyzed for improved fire response
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers3 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Three partnerships are on record, tiered core and flagship.

• Covid-19 Mobility Data NetworkcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 27 April 2020Camber Systems (a Hangar portfolio company) participates in the Covid-19 Mobility Data Network, a voluntary collaboration of epidemiologists analyzing aggregated data from technology companies to provide daily insights to city and state officials. Camber provided mobile application data from digital ad companies to researchers.
• White House Task Force on COVID-19flagshipStrategic or Co-development Partner · 17 March 2020Josh Mendelsohn, Hangar's managing partner, helped organize a task force that presented disease mapping and telehealth ideas to the White House. Discussions included representatives from tech giants (Apple, Google), public-health leaders from Harvard, and smaller telehealth startups. Hangar represented investors and entrepreneurs working at the intersection of government and technology.
• Jain Family Institute (JFI)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 6 February 2020Outcome Group Inc (a Hangar portfolio company) partnered with JFI to expand students' access to Income Share Agreements. The partnership includes licensing of JFI's ISA model, the most comprehensive ISA pricing and underwriting engine combining 20+ datasets to model ISA structures and terms.

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Idealab: Long-running Pasadena-based technology startup studio that creates and operates companies. Comparable as an established venture studio with a multi-decade track record, though significantly larger and broader in vertical scope than Hangar.
• Techstars: Global accelerator and venture fund that operates thematic programs including a government technology vertical. Comparable in supporting early-stage companies targeting government and regulated markets, though accelerator-based rather than a full studio model.
• Insight Partners: Large-scale software investor with significant GovTech portfolio companies. Comparable as a capital provider to government-technology companies, though structured as a scale/growth-stage investor rather than a startup studio.
• Science Inc. Los Angeles-based startup studio and venture firm that builds, invests in, and operates technology companies. Comparable on the studio model of building companies from inception, though focused on consumer/digital media verticals.
• Andreessen Horowitz (American Dynamism): Major Silicon Valley venture firm with a dedicated 'American Dynamism' thesis investing in companies serving national interests including government, defense, and public services. Comparable on the GovTech thesis but operates as a traditional VC rather than a venture studio.

Direct peers

• Atomic: San Francisco venture studio that partners with entrepreneurs to build companies, sharing a similar studio model to Hangar — recruiting founders, providing capital, and operating shared infrastructure. Comparable on studio mechanics, though with broader vertical focus.
• High Alpha: Indianapolis-based venture studio that builds B2B SaaS companies from scratch with a similar studio model — recruiting founding teams, providing capital, and operating shared services. Directly comparable as a venture studio serving specific verticals, though focused on SaaS rather than GovTech.
• 1776: Washington, D.C.-based GovTech startup incubator and venture fund focused on startups solving regulatory and public-sector challenges. Directly comparable on the public-sector / government technology focus, though structured as an accelerator rather than a full venture studio.
• Betaworks: New York-based startup studio and venture fund that builds and invests in early-stage companies around specific themes. Comparable studio mechanics to Hangar with a similar NYC base, though focused on consumer/internet themes rather than government.

Emerging players

• gener8tor: Milwaukee-based accelerator and venture fund operating multiple programs including government and public-sector tracks. Comparable as an early-stage program supporting startups with capital and mentorship, though accelerator-based with shorter engagement cycles than a venture studio.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/hangaris
• Facebookfacebook.com/hangarcap
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/hangar
• Instagraminstagram.com/Hangar.is

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles12 records

Subsidiaries7 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Hangar