IS Alex Bogusky becoming the Johnny Appleseed of advertising?

Mr. Bogusky is known in the industry for the risk-taking, rule-breaking creative ideas he came up with in the more than two decades he spent at Crispin Porter & Bogusky and its parent, MDC Partners. Since 2010, when he left MDC, he has started projects like Common and FearLess Revolution. He also joined Made Movement, a fledgling agency in Boulder, Colo., as a minority investor and creative adviser.

Now, Mr. Bogusky is helping an agency in Chattanooga, Tenn., open its doors by becoming a minority investor and creative adviser there, too. The new agency — in keeping with Mr. Bogusky’s seeming penchant for affiliating with nontraditionally named ventures — is known as Humanaut, a word coined from human and astronaut (or cosmonaut, if you are a Russian Op-Ed columnist).

“I’m the world’s smallest holding company,” Mr. Bogusky said, laughing.

When the Appleseed comparison was suggested, he said he liked it. “Just seeds in his pocket and holes in his pocket,” Mr. Bogusky said. “I’m just a guy with money falling out of my pocket.”

Mr. Bogusky knows one of the two founders of Humanaut, David Littlejohn, because they worked together in the Boulder office of Crispin Porter & Bogusky. The other Humanaut founder, Andrew Clark, is a longtime friend of Mr. Littlejohn’s; before starting Humanaut, they had collaborated for two years as consultants for start-ups — advising them in areas like brand identity and user experience — under the banner of a company with another unusual name, Pale Dot Voyage.