Josh Geballe
Appearances
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
marshalling resources from the National Guard and a lot of agencies that have resources and operational excellence, but also getting support from the private sector and from other nonprofit organizations to be able to execute the strategies that we put in place to procure or deploy, whether it's testing or PPE or vaccines or whatever the challenge of the day was at the time.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
Yeah, I think it starts with making sure that everybody you're working with knows that you're operating with integrity and that you're operating in good faith and that the point of view that you're going to push forward is one that's clear and hopefully aligned with something that people can understand and get excited about, or at least understand and empathize with.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
The second point too, which is often when we're working with people with different agendas or different goals, the importance of listening as well and really understanding the perspective of that other party and what was important to them and why were they espousing a different view or why were they pushing in a different direction?
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
I think too often people don't take the time or room to really put themselves in the first choosing. If you do that and you do that sincerely and really invest the time, it does make it
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
more likely that you can find common ground but at a minimum if you do have to you know negotiate through or navigate different conflicts or disagreements at least there is that kind of base of trust that at least you understand what's important to them and why they feel that way
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
In the end, it does require effort to push things forward and sometimes have to agree to disagree and to try to drive towards the outcome that you feel is the right one at the end. And I think maybe those are some of the common themes that I've experienced or observed over the years.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
Yeah, every case is different, of course. There are some common themes. One is helping a particularly very accomplished PhD media scientists learn how to talk about their idea in a way that resonates with potential investors or potential founding teammates, as opposed to what they've been used to most of their career, which is how to present at an academic conference or an academic environment.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
Very different things. And that's certainly one area. Another is helping to make connections that help them get their venture off the ground. And that can be connections to investors, people that might be excited about that idea and want to fund the seed round or the series A to help get the company formed.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
or connections with people who could become the founding CEO or the founding chief scientific officer, let's say, or other early employees who could take that idea and run with it because if it's a faculty member, they're not going to leave their job at Yale and we need to find a team that can help them get it off the ground.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
Or if it's a student, oftentimes it's a more kind of educational experience and we run a number of programs that complement what our students learn in the classroom to help them learn to become innovators and problem solvers and understand what good next steps in their careers might be. Because the reality is very few of them will become founders right away.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
Most of them will go get jobs at other companies, large companies, other startups, but help them prepare for their career journey and help them understand that if they do become a founder in the future, how to know when is the right time to do that and how to organize to be successful at that point in time as well.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
There's a few bits of advice I find myself sharing rather commonly. I think first and probably most importantly is try to work, especially early in your career, for people who you're really inspired by, who you think you can learn a ton from. I think often people chase a specific job.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
rather than the opportunity to work with individuals who are really spectacular, who can really help get them going in their careers and really help build their base of knowledge and experiences of the best possible ways to lead organizations or to solve problems. I have definitely been fortunate to work with a lot of incredible people during my career. There's so much you can do as one person.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
You have the opportunity to work with a lot of great people. Obviously, you get a lot more done. So that's one. I think a second is we all, when we were young and early in our career, were often very impatient, right? Wanted. to you as quickly as possible, get that next promotion or get that next raise or whatever it might be.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
And I think it's very important for people to try to keep that instinct in check, but really just focus more than anything else on doing the best possible job that you can in the role that you're in today and have confidence that if you're part of an organization that's
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
well managed that good things will naturally flow from that and just rather than being overly focused on those next steps and milestones just being really focused on working hard doing a great job at your current set of responsibilities seeking out new challenges and in that role and having confidence that as a result of that the great work that you'll do that new challenges and opportunities will present themselves although then specific
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
There's been a lot. I think if I had to pick out a couple of most influential writers, I think Nassim Tlaib, author of Fooled by Randomness, Black Swan, Anti-Fragile, among those more popular books, been very influential on me. He's a person who has a pretty sharp edge. And so this turns some people off.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
But I think the underlying kind of writings and intellectual arguments have been very influential to me in terms of thinking about risk and probability of how the world works.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
Another, not necessarily a book, but a collection of essays, particularly for people who are interested in entrepreneurship and innovation, I recommend reading Paul Graham, the famous founder of Y Combinator, has a number of essays published online about innovation and entrepreneurship, which I think are just excellent and really worth reading. diving into.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
Great. Thanks, Vince, for having me. I'm delighted to be here. As you point out, I started at Yale as an undergraduate, worked for a few years, went back to Yale to the School of Management to get an MBA, and then spent the majority of my career in the technology industry, so initially 11 years at IBM.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
I think at this point, I don't think so, clearly.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
mostly because of the role that i'm in now i absolutely love and had a successful kind of entrepreneurial startup experience and being in a position where i can give back to others who are just starting that journey is i find incredibly rewarding and challenging engaging and i love that aspect of it in this role now i get to work every day with faculty with you know students
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
who are just at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journey, who have maybe discovered something in their research or have an idea for how to solve a big problem in the world. And in many cases, these faculty members are the leading scholars in the world in a particular area of scientific research. But very few of them have business experience or startup experience.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
And so the opportunity that my team and I have to Packing around them and help them and guide them and position them to spin out that technology, build a company around it, attract funding, attract the team, and give that idea or that invention a chance to have a real impact in the world. It's so much fun. That's likely to be my life's work from here forward.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
I think it's an unlimited potential of opportunity to learn and to grow and to have impact. So I think that's where my focus will be going forward.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
climbing the corporate ladder, a number of different roles and client facing consulting roles, the integral finance organization, general management, but left to become the CEO of a software startup that was doing scientific data management, cloud software as a service for scientists and grew that company.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
I'd be delighted to come back, Vince. It's been fun.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
Over a number of years, ultimately we were acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific, one of the major global scientific tools companies. Worked there for a couple of years as running a new division they created when we were acquired called Digital Science. That was a combination of our business plus some other software assets that they had.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
And once that was integration was set up and my team was integrated, Left was taking some time off for the first time in my career. And he got a call from the woman who led the Series B investment in my startup company, letting me know that Her husband had just got elected governor of the state of Connecticut and asking if I wanted to get involved in the administration.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
And so that led to three years of a detour into the public sector where I worked for the governor here in Connecticut as the chief operating officer for the state responsible for all the executive branch agencies and
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
Did that for three years when this new opportunity presented itself to come back to Yale to a new role that was created to bring together all the programs and services that support entrepreneurs, innovators at Yale looking to have an impact in the world. So I'm sure we'll talk about that more, but that's my journey in a nutshell.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
Yeah, I think there's really been two common themes that I've been seeking out at each step. And first is impact, wanting to be in a position where the work that I was doing was making a useful impact in the world, solving a problem or contributing to solving problems that I thought were important to solve. And that if successful, would have a really positive impact on society more generally.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
So that's one. And then the second one was seeking out interesting challenges where I felt like I would learn, where I'd be challenged, where I would have to push myself to get better and to grow as a professional, as a person. And so those have been the two common threads that maybe weave together what would otherwise look like a rather unusual career journey that I've been on.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
Yeah, it's a interesting question. It's a very, it's a very deep question. Unfortunately, I feel like I'm going to answer it with a very shallow answer, which is ultimately, I think it was each of these big changes. It was just following my gut instinct.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
I think in each step, when opportunities presented themselves, I just pretty quickly would come to an instinct on whether it was a good idea or not. And I just followed that instinct. But in the end, I think it's really, for me at least, it's been that simple. And fortunately, there's none of those kind of gut instinct decisions I've made over the years.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
I go back and say, I wish I'd done that differently. It's been very fortunate that it's served me well so far.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
Yeah, my 11 years at IBM was amazing. Like I learned an enormous amount, incredibly rewarding period of time. I really loved it. As I got deeper into my time there, you know, I'd come to the conclusion that I didn't want to spend my entire career there. I think that was clearly a path in that direction. And a lot of the people I worked with had
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
worked there their entire career and it was a great company, still is. But I had this kind of growing instinct that I wanted to be part of something that was smaller, that was more entrepreneurial, that was more disruptive. During the second to last job I had at IBM, it was an international assignment, Europe.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
When I came back, started looking around, just trying to identify a company or co-founders that were doing something that I thought was particularly interesting. And it was casual at first. And I was just very fortunate to reconnect with actually an old high school friend who had co-founded this software startup and was at a point where they were getting some traction.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
We were looking for a business leader to come and help them grow and complement their technical skills. And just the stars aligned and it all fell into place. But It was really more than anything, this instinct that a lot of the real impactful change that happens in business and society often is driven by smaller, disruptive, kind of entrepreneurial startups. And that I wanted to experience that.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
I wanted to contribute to that, be part of that.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
Sure. I think that transition was, as you probably expect, rather dramatic. rather dramatic going from one of the biggest companies in the world to a tiny little startup. And there's an enormous number of benefits and things that I love about startups. I relished about that opportunity. Of course, it carries a lot of challenges as well.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
You're much more at risk in terms of having a smaller number of customers, more reliance on making sure the payables are coming through, the orders are getting done so that you can meet payroll and keep the lights on. While you're innovating and adding value, adding new features and products to grow the business, attracting talent, but it's much more kind of chaotic.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
Every day presents new challenges, but it was great. That's what I wanted. And I wanted that kind of very dynamic challenge. I got it. And so I think moving from a big stable company to that type of startup environment is not for everyone and certainly an important set of considerations for people considering a change like that. But it was just what I wanted. It was what I embraced.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
But it's nonetheless certainly In the moment, if we were battling for a new customer or we were trying to make an existing customer successful that was struggling with adoption, or whether it was trying to get a round of venture capital financing closed when we were running low on cash, there were so many of those moments of extreme challenge and stress that at the time were very all-consuming.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
You can look back afterwards at a successful outcome and embrace that as part of the journey. But it's certainly anyone who's worked at a startup or a fast-growing small company knows it's every day is this new challenge and a new opportunity to learn and to grow.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
Sure. Yeah. When I joined the administration, the Lamont administration at the beginning, the real or the original vision for what I was going to do was the governor had a very strong priority and agenda to use technology better in government to modernize our operations. We were really behind the times that there was a huge opportunity to modernize.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
modernize state operations to improve service, to reduce costs, but also to break down silos between state agencies and foster better collaboration, better problem solving, better service for the residents of the state. And given my technology background, that was really the main thrust to start. But then when COVID hit about a year later,
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
At that point, I was the chief operating officer for the states. I had all the other commissioners reporting to me. And I was at this battlefield promotion to lead the state's COVID response. And that was, yeah, quite an experience because here I am, this guy who's come up in the
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
technology industry now in the middle of this kind of once-in-a-lifetime public health crisis, having to be the person the governor is looking to marshal resources, help us chart our course forward as he is serving him and this kind of broad set of stakeholders we brought together.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
So it was quite a journey and it was obviously incredibly stressful in many ways, but in the end, I think also very rewarding.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
There's a lot of data to back up the kind of public perception that overall the state of Connecticut did a solid job of balancing many of the competing forces and factors that everyone was weighing through that period of time and I think leading the state through to overall very good outcomes relative to a lot of our neighboring states, a lot of other areas around the country and the world.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
It was hopefully something I'll never have to experience again. I think you guys probably feel that way. But at the same time, a period of my career I'm definitely proud of.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
Yeah, there were so many challenges. There were so many learnings and lessons along the way. I do think the point you make about the commonality with general business management, there were a lot of similarities.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
I think the importance of communication first and foremost was a period of time where even the experts, the public health experts, the medical experts were trying to figure things out in real time and often had more questions than answers. Just trying to make sure we were communicating openly and honestly and being transparent with the public about what
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
we had confidence in and what we didn't have confidence in what we were still working on and trying to figure out and also communicating internally we had a lot so many stakeholders involved agencies nonprofits hospitals etc and just keeping lines of communication wide open i think is a clear one also recognizing where you need to bring in additional help where you need additional expertise and not being shy about doing that and i think that was a real strength of our governor was
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
recognizing that we didn't have all the resources in state government that we were going to need to marshal the best possible response. And so he enlisted a lot of other outside leaders, health and health care and public health, but also in business. And we were obviously thinking about the impacts on the private sector, the impacts on education, children.
Chief Change Officer
#194 Yale Ventures Managing Director Josh Geballe: Bridging the Academic-Entrepreneurial Divide
And so bringing in experts from across the board to help advise us through that was a real important part. And then operations, too, had the benefit of