Yale Gets the Startup Bug
Yale University invests about $1 billion each year in research, all of which is churned out by some of the world’s most brilliant scholars and innovators, who flock to the prestigious university in New Haven, Conn. for faculty appointments or to study.
Now, Yale wants to leverage these investments to create startups that solve the world’s global challenges. A new initiative, Yale Ventures, will translate the university’s research and ideas into real-world solutions and hopefully, accelerate the expansion of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in New Haven, which is booming with exciting startups in medicine, science and engineering.
We talked to Josh Geballe, a 1997 Yale graduate who leads the program as Managing Director. Geballe formerly served as COO in Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont’s administration. He was recently named Senior Provost for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Yale and he’s a Board member of Connecticut Innovations, the state’s venture capital arm.
Archie: What are the goals of Yale Ventures as you see it?
Josh: We’re bringing together an array of services that we already provide across the university. It’s primarily aimed at helping our faculty take their inventions and their ideas and launch them out into new companies and new partnerships that will scale them up. This will help get new products and services to market that can help tackle the big challenges we’re facing in the world. We help with the technology transfer operations, providing patents and licensing support to our researchers and innovators and then assisting them in planning out how to start with ventures, such as the business plans, plus the connections to advice, mentorship and investors that are needed to launch their ventures.
Archie: How does your former role in Lamont’s administration carry over to Yale?
Josh: My background is in the technology industry. For about 20 years prior to joining state government, I worked for over a decade at IBM and I was the CEO of Core Informatics, a Branford, Connecticut software startup in the scientific informatics area that was acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2017. So in many respects this role is coming back closer to my roots. But my time in state government was actually quite helpful in terms of building relationships and connections to state resources and the broader ecosystem that will help us build the innovation pipeline and drive economic growth here in greater New Haven and throughout Connecticut.
Archie: How does Yale Ventures compare to Blue Ivy, Alumni Ventures or even Connecticut Innovations?
Josh: Yale Ventures is not a venture capital firm. We will not be making venture capital investments into startups. Rather, we’ll help launch more startups and ultimately expand the deal flow for VC firms like Connecticut Innovations and others in the ecosystem. Yale invests $1 billion each year in research and has some of the most brilliant scholars and innovators in the world who come to New Haven for faculty appointments or to study. Our goal is to help them transform those innovations into startups that create a robust pipeline of opportunities both for local VCs as well as the leading venture capital firms around the world.
Archie: How will Yale look to build partnerships to scale the program?
Josh: We have extensive local partnerships with building the physical infrastructure, the offices, the labs space and the partnerships with the service partners—whether those are accounting firms, law firms, venture investors or others that help build the ecosystem locally. We have partnerships with the Mayor’s office in New Haven, and we have our legislative delegation with the Connecticut Governor and his team. We also have significant partnerships with large companies and investors from around the nation. We have a number of leading VC firms from around the country now looking at companies coming out of Yale as outstanding investment opportunities, and they have made a number of investments already into Yale spinouts. We also have a large industry from around the world partnering with Yale faculty and other innovators in this ecosystem and they are rapidly growing partnerships in this market.
Archie: Do you expect a tide of collaboration between established companies and the tech startups you’re helping to create?
Josh: I think what we’re seeing is significant interest from industry in partnering with organizations like Yale that are on the cutting edge of research and innovation in very important domains like life sciences, but also increasingly in other areas like quantum computing, climate solutions, blockchain and other areas. We have seen a number of partnerships flourish in recent years, particularly between large pharmaceutical companies, and a lot of the research that is going on in life sciences at Yale. Increasingly, large companies are looking to research universities like Yale as important collaborators to help identify innovations early, accelerate their development and scale-up to provide solutions to the world’s problems as quickly as possible.
Archie: What sectors are you most interested in exploring through Yale Ventures?
Josh: Certainly, first and foremost our bioscience industry and cluster around New Haven is one of the real stars of the innovation ecosystem in Connecticut. It’s growing rapidly and has had a number of very successful companies grow all the way through initial IPOs over the last several years. There have been several significant acquisitions recently. Notably, as with Alexion (acquired by AstraZeneca) and more recently, BioHaven, the acquired companies are continuing to stay and grow in New Haven, which is really exciting to see.
The advanced manufacturing industry is a real strength in the state, while the insurance and insurtech industries certainly in and around Hartford are notable, and the finance industry with a strong presence in the Fairfield county suburbs close to New York. We’re also seeing emerging hubs of innovation around quantum computing spinning out of Yale like Quantum Circuits, one of the leading quantum computing companies. Blockchain is also increasingly an area of investment innovation with Digital Currency Group setting up their global headquarters in Stamford, Conn.
Archie: What makes you bullish on Connecticut?
Josh: Connecticut ranks in the top five in the nation in terms of most measures of innovation, such as advanced degrees and patents. Not surprisingly, across-the-board growth, plus an educated and innovative workforce, is what’s propelling Connecticut now and will continue to do so in years to come. And it’s not just me. At our recent Yale Innovation Summit, over 1,000 people attended, including over 100 VC firms and 300 corporate partners. We had feedback from attendees that they learned a lot about the exciting startups spinning out of Yale and from across the state, and they built a stronger appreciation for how strong the momentum is in the local ecosystem.