At Alloy Partners, we are often humbled by the nature of the problems we’re asked to help solve.
In 2022, the University of North Carolina and The NC Collaboratory, a state-funded research organization, challenged us to “take a big swing” at one of the most painful and complex issues of our time: the opioid crisis.
We didn’t take this invitation lightly. That year alone, over 80,000 Americans died of an opioid overdose, and millions more were affected by addiction, grief, and loss.
In Western North Carolina — particularly Asheville — this crisis was especially acute. Yet in the face of this staggering challenge, UNC's Eshelman Innovation believed that Alloy’s venture-building model could uncover scalable, impactful solutions. It was a daunting but energizing mandate.
At Alloy, we don’t seek out easy problems. We look for urgent ones.
As venture builders, our process is designed to find opportunities for new startups where others might see only intractable complexity. We believed there might be meaningful solutions, particularly on the demand side of the crisis — those centered around community-based, person-first models of care.
Community health is one of the most promising frontiers in both healthcare and venture, and the opioid crisis offered a painful but powerful place to apply it. As we began the work, one of our most valuable discoveries was the resilience and innovation already present in the Asheville community.
Our partners at UNC Eshelman had built an amazing foundation of participants and experts within the Western North Carolina ecosystem. Local organizations like the Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC), Buncombe County EMS, and other public health leaders were testing promising models for overdose response, treatment, and peer support.
We realized that Asheville’s role as an epicenter of the crisis had also made it a laboratory for community health innovation — and perhaps, a launchpad for solutions that could scale across the country.
The program
Over a 16-week program, we partnered deeply with community members, addiction-medicine experts, and individuals with lived experience of opioid use disorder. Our research surfaced dozens of ideas. Some aligned to startup creation. Others were better-suited for non-profits, universities, or community health initiatives.
To ensure all promising concepts had a path forward, we built a public idea repository for the Asheville ecosystem, enabling local innovators to pick up where we left off.
Through our discovery process, one insight rose to the top:
The handoff from overdose to treatment is broken.
Peer responders and EMS workers — especially in programs like Buncombe County’s Post-Overdose Response Team (PORT-CP) — often make first contact with individuals following an overdose. These teams have a golden opportunity to engage individuals when they are most receptive. Despite their critical role, though, they lacked the tools to document, refer, and follow up in a consistent, connected way.
Our goal was clear: Build a purpose-built platform to empower these first responders and care teams, enabling them to deliver compassionate, effective care at scale.
During Sprint Week, a four-day product development sprint that condenses months of startup work into a focused venture-build process, we worked with UNC Eshelman Innovation, MAHEC, and local EMS leaders to shape the product, user experience, and business model for a new company.
The company
That company became Goldie Health.
The first-of-its-kind, overdose-detection and -response platform from Goldie empowers community health workers, EMS teams, and municipalities to implement and scale post-overdose care.
Goldie integrates directly with electronic patient care records (ePCRs) and health systems to identify individuals at risk, enabling rapid, targeted interventions during the critical window following an overdose.
The startup's solution streamlines case management for field workers, enabling real-time documentation, consent collection, and warm handoffs to treatment and support services.
Early results of Goldie's implementation have been promising.
In Carteret County, NC, Goldie’s algorithm identified 72% more eligible patients than traditional EMS referrals, and 300% more than hospital referrals. These improvements aren’t just operational — they’re lifesaving.
At its core, Goldie Health is about community health.
It’s built to work within local systems, not around them. It supports the real people — peer responders, social workers, field medics — doing the work on the ground. And by creating shared visibility across agencies, Goldie strengthens the entire care ecosystem around individuals navigating recovery.
The opportunity
Goldie's initial focus is opioid overdose prevention, but the underlying platform is extensible.
As behavioral health challenges continue to evolve, so will the need for tools that empower communities to respond with speed, care, and connection. Already, plans are underway to expand Goldie to new states, new use cases, and new partnerships.
At Alloy, we believe that venture has the power to do real good, especially when it's shaped by the people closest to the problem. Goldie Health represents the kind of company that only emerges through deep, local collaboration paired with venture-scale ambition.
It’s a clear example of our model in action: Define real problems, co-create with those on the front lines, and build advantaged startups that create lasting change.
