🔒Spark to Flame: Josh Geballe will help turn Yale innovations into profitable businesses

Josh Geballe knows what it takes to transform an idea or invention into a successful venture, and now he is helping the Yale University community do just that.

Geballe is well-known for his work in Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration, where he had high-ranking roles such as chief operating officer and commissioner of the Department of Administrative Services.

But Geballe on Feb. 14 returned to his entrepreneurial roots when the Yale graduate joined the university to lead its entrepreneurship and innovation efforts.

Geballe spent roughly 17 years in the technology sector, most recently at Thermo Fisher Scientific. He joined that company after it acquired Branford-based software firm Core Informatics LLC in 2017, where Geballe had been CEO since 2013. Geballe’s business background also includes an 11-year stint with IBM.

In his new position, Geballe will lead efforts to translate research in Yale’s labs into real-life products and services. In 2021 alone, 11 startups spun out of Yale with $53.3 million raised in new venture financing. A record-breaking five IPOs occurred in the past five years for Yale spinouts including Arvinas, Biohaven Pharmaceuticals, Inozyme, NextCure and IsoPlexis. In yet another example of research turning to innovation, Yale launched its SalivaDirect test for COVID-19 in 2020, to help fight the pandemic.

Geballe will also work closely with the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY), which helps the university’s student entrepreneurs.

In April, Yale announced it was launching Yale Ventures, a new initiative to support and expand innovation and entrepreneurship throughout both the university and Greater New Haven region. Geballe is leading the organization as managing director, and he will work to translate Yale research into products, services and social ventures.

Geballe joins Yale just as it prepares to host the annual Yale Innovation Summit, slated for May 17-18 at the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale, back as an in-person event.

New Haven Biz recently chatted with Geballe about his new role. Here’s what he had to say:

Tell us about Yale Ventures and how it will work.

It is a new organization that we have created to broaden the support that the university provides to our faculty, our students, and the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem — to help launch new innovations and new startups that are tackling the biggest challenges facing society.

We’re providing help in four main areas. The first is technology transfer, so the patenting and licensing of Yale developed innovations. The second is training programs to help people develop their ideas and turn them into new ventures.

The third is around corporate partnerships, leveraging more resources from the private sector to help accelerate research and innovation. The fourth is around “innovation community,” so helping to build a broader entrepreneurial ecosystem in New Haven that can help increase the chances of success for new startups and attract and retain talent here.

What will your new job entail and what do you hope to accomplish?

I’ll be the managing director of Yale Ventures, leading the team. Our goals fall into three main categories.

The first is to provide great service to the community to help them launch their innovations and navigate what is a very challenging and daunting task of starting a new venture, or translating your innovation into new products and services.

The second big set of goals is around having the greatest impact that we can, seeing these innovations become products and services that cure different forms of cancer or address climate change, or other major challenges we are facing in the world. And in so doing drive economic development, job creation, and inclusive growth here in the New Haven region.

The third goal we have is to build the entrepreneurial community, to really make this one of the absolute top destinations for innovation in the world, and become a magnet for the top scholars, students and innovators.

How often does Yale launch a new company?

We have been averaging about 10 new startups per year over the last several years. Many of them have now grown to become very meaningful companies. Arvinas (a New Haven-based biotech company developing treatments for ailments such as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease) is going to be the anchor tenant at the 101 College St. development. We are very optimistic that with additional services and support, we can launch even more than that in the years to come.

What are some examples of recent Yale ideas that have turned into business ventures?

A couple of the most noteworthy ones are going back a couple of decades. Alexion was a Yale spinout that of course grew tremendously and was acquired last year by AstraZeneca, one of the largest biopharma companies in the world.

It is resuming growth here in New Haven, hiring and adding jobs in a research capacity. Arvinas is another Yale spinout from (Yale scientist) Craig Crews’ lab that is growing rapidly in Science Park. As soon as (the bioscience tower under construction at) 101 College St. opens, Arvinas will be moving in there, taking a significant chunk of the space at that development.

Another good example would be Biohaven Pharmaceuticals, which has been growing rapidly and having a huge impact on human health.

Can you elaborate on how you will be helping turn Yale discoveries into viable businesses?

Yale Ventures plays several important roles in that journey. First and foremost we are the partner to faculty members and researchers who are doing science.

We will be partnering with them to help them patent those innovations and then license out those innovations, either to new startups or to established companies that will help develop their work. So there is the patenting and licensing.

We are also working with them to help develop their business concept. We help them think about their market and how they are going to scale their business and attract the initial team that can help build it.

We help connect them with investors and mentors, and in many cases, grants or other programs that help them start fast.

On the student side, we have Tsai CITY, which is also working with students across a very wide array of programming. This ranges from interesting speakers and workshops around innovative thinking to accelerator programs that help students start up new ventures of their own.

What are Yale researchers, faculty and staffers working on now that could be the businesses of the future?

Biotech has been an area of real strength for Yale for many years. We expect that to continue and to grow further.

Our School of Engineering & Applied Science made a major announcement that they are going to increase by about 50 percent the size of the faculty. It is a major investment the university is making to increase our research and scholarship in that area. We expect that to result in a number of new innovations and startups.

Artificial intelligence, data analytics, cybersecurity, block chain — these are a few areas of real growth, interest and innovation right now where we’d expect to see more startups emerging in the coming years.

How will these efforts translate to real estate use?

As the entrepreneurial ecosystem continues to grow, we will continue to see more startups formed. We’ll see more of those startups become large and extremely successful, and we will see more demand for office space, for lab space.

I think we should expect to see more development in New Haven to meet the demand of these growing companies.

What can we expect from the upcoming Yale Innovation Summit?

We are thrilled to be back in person. For anyone who came to the Innovation Summit in the pre-COVID days, this was always a phenomenal event. We are expecting well over 1,000 people. We are going to have dozens of speakers coming in from around the country and pitch competitions from area startups.

Programming will include keynote addresses and panels on a variety of topics, ranging from biotech to digital health to innovation in engineering.

There will be prizes awarded for some of the leading startups in the area. There will be a real opportunity with dozens of venture capital firms in attendance for a lot of those startups to get a lot of visibility with potential investors. We are super excited about it.

Visit https://ventures.yale.edu/yale-innovation-summit-2022 for more information.