Redirecting.work
David Holstein: Building Bettera
A Tech Consulting Pivot Toward Higher Education and the Impact Sector
For more than a decade, David Holstein built and scaled consulting firms inside the Salesforce ecosystem. He joined a boutique services company, 7Summits, and helped differentiate it in a crowded market. Revenue grew rapidly and its reputation in the Salesforce ecosystem along with it.
He later joined Neocol, a small advisory firm that wanted to enter the Salesforce space but lacked a clear strategy. David believed he had the playbook. Over seven and a half years, he helped pivot and scale the firm to approximately 185 employees globally, culminating in a private equity investment.
By conventional standards, it was a success. He loved building and shaping go-to-market strategy. Yet a question kept emerging for him: Do I care about the ultimate impact of the work we’re doing? Neocol helped subscription and SaaS companies grow. The outcomes were measurable. But David realized that helping large technology firms scale didn’t “strike the fire” he wanted to feel when he woke up each morning.
With the private equity investment, leadership hoped he would remain for several more years. Instead, David chose to be honest. He told the founder, “It’s not what I want for my life.” Rather than pushing him out, leadership created space. His day-to-day responsibilities were removed for him to focus on strategy. For several months, he was given room to think.Those months, he says, were “the most wonderful four months of my life as an adult.” He felt rested, present with his family, and mentally clear. In that clarity, professional capability began to merge with personal meaning.
Two life experiences also were shaping him.
First, he and his wife lost their second son shortly after birth. Instead of retreating, they immersed themselves in work with March of Dimes. That experience grounded him in service and gave him a deeper sense of contributing beyond corporate success.
Second, education for him has always been personal. His mother is a professor. Much of his family works in higher education. David himself was placed on academic probation during his first year at Indiana University. Looking back, he realized that warning signs of missed assignments and disengagement were visible early, yet no one intervened until the semester ended.
Now, as a father of two young boys, another question emerged: What will the world look like for them as AI reshapes everything? And more personally, Can I help shape the educational systems that will shape them?
That convergence led to Bettera.
Current direction
David founded Bettera with a simple thesis: use technology to help those who educate, serve, and heal. Higher education is his starting point.
Operating as a ServiceNow partner, he focuses on reducing administrative burden so students, faculty, and staff can spend more time on meaningful human connection. Higher education faces rising costs and skepticism about value. If institutions can remove inefficiencies and create better experiences, they strengthen both outcomes and credibility.
One early focus is student success. Universities already collect engagement data across learning platforms and advising systems. The problem is fragmentation. These systems rarely communicate. David envisions early-warning models that surface at-risk students in week two rather than after a failing semester. Advisors could intervene proactively, preserving not only tuition revenue but student trajectories.
The Bettera mission extends beyond students. He wants his mother, and professors like her, to do what they love most: teach, not drown in administrative tasks. Another Bettera focus is on improving IT help desks serving campuses: He wants IT leaders to build trusted relationships with users, not spend their days fielding repetitive requests that systems should handle automatically.
By integrating service portals and applying AI thoughtfully, repetitive friction can be automated. Professionals can focus on advising, mentoring, teaching, and building relationships, the work that gives education its meaning.
Bettera is a services firm, not a product company. David customizes solutions for each institution and is building the firm to be AI native, automating repeatable consulting work so more energy shifts toward strategy and change. It’s early in the journey. He is building pipeline and willing to do pro bono work to earn reference accounts. What feels different, he says, is energy. He is busy, yet he wakes up fired up.
Advice for Others Moving Towards Serving
David does not advocate reckless leaps. His advice is measured.
Build transferable skills. For him, learning to tell a compelling story that moves people was foundational.
Take staged risk. He moved into progressively smaller, higher-accountability environments before launching his own firm.
Conduct regular personal inventory. Most people climb ladders without asking what feeds them personally and professionally. Strategic reflection should not be reserved for organizations. Individuals need it too.
His pivot was not away from ambition. It was toward alignment. When professional capability converges with personal meaning, work changes. For David, that alignment now feels worth building.