Today’s guest is Matt Mitcho, CEO of Gemelli Biotech.

In this episode, we will focus on the creativity behind the medical research innovation, the developed medical product, how Matt has creatively developed a model to build a company, and his own creative process of hiring and building out his team.

Matt has a degree in Public Affairs and a master’s in business. He has spent over 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry. For him to succeed, Matt attributes this to his upbringing. He was never afraid to fail because his parents assured him he was loved no matter what. This encouraged him to take more risks in life. He is also surrounded by great mentors, collaborators, and colleagues who work together to push the company forward and pivot even during Covid. 

Key things from the conversation with Matt:

• Gemelli means "Twins," but for Gemelli Biotech, it means having a “Twin purpose” and for Gemelli Biotech their twin purpose is by doing well, you can do good.
• Matt and his company have developed mail-in testing for people suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) one of which is a blood test and the other a breath test.
• Collaboration is key in this industry.  A lot of people, on the outside looking in, don't really appreciate the combination of this science thinking, the real bench research, and the commercialization mindset that it takes, to invent something. 
• At Gemelli Biotech, Matt has ensured that Culture trumps Strategy. The dual purpose of the company leads to culture. This culture leads to us being able to recruit great people first that happen to be talented at what we do for a living, and then to build off of that.
• Unapologetically sharing your story leads to people caring about what you're doing, as long as you have good intentions.
• What’s on the horizon for Gemelli Biotech?   According to Matt, Gemelli Biotech is at the expansion stage and is looking for a variety of partners to go along on the journey.  

In conclusion, Matt says from his experience of successfully pivoting during covid, you must always trust yourself, your gut. If somebody is sitting on an idea, do the work, see whether or not there is a path forward, if there's a path forward, do it. You'll never regret trying if there's no path forward, 

In addition, part of making connections is don't make a connection to see what you can get out of something, make a connection just to be there for someone else. People can see through selfishness. So make a connection to be a giver, not a receiver and things will work out.

Gemeli Biotech Website: Gemeli Biotech

auto generated transcript

Unlocking your world of creativity with bestselling author and brand innovator. Mark Stinson, Mark introduces you to some of the world's leading creative talent from publishing, film, music, restaurants, medical research, and more. You'll discover how to tap into your most original thinking, how to organize your ideas. And most of all, how to make the connections and create the opportunities to launch your creative work, unlocking your world of creativity.

Welcome back everybody to unlocking your world of creativity, the podcast, where we explore, where you get inspired, how you organize your ideas, and most of all, how you gain the competence and the connections to get your work up and out into the world. And a perfect example of that is the kind of medical research innovations that are going on right now, how to find them, how to build them, how to create companies around them. And we're talking today with somebody who's got experience in all of that, Matt Mitcho in research triangle. Welcome to the program.

Thanks, Mark. Thanks for having me. I appreciate you allowing me to share our story. I will tell you it's a pretty cool place to live. So, you know, between the three universities right here in our backyard and it is a state Capitol, the infrastructure that we have, and then all of the ancillary sort of support networks that have popped up around all of that infrastructure. I don't know if I could ever leave here it is spectacular.

Yeah. Well, Matt is the CEO of a fantastic company called Gemelli. And I want to hear Matt about, all three aspects of what I'm thinking about here, the actual creativity behind the innovation and the medical product that has been developed and how then that formed the company. And now you've creatively developed a model to build that company and then your own creative process and hiring and building out the team.

That's great. I'm glad to share. There's a lot there to unpack.

We start with the product itself.

So we have two tests. Now, one is a blood test called IBS smart that allows us to identify two antibodies that are elevated in someone that had a previous post-infectious event or a previous event of food poisoning that has led to irritable bowel syndrome. With diarrhea. We collect a blood sample from a patient with a physician's order and then report back those results of the two levels of antibodies. And if those antibodies are elevated, as I mentioned, it's really causal to someone having food poisoning or a post-infectious event in the past that has led to their condition. So what we're trying to accomplish with that is to allow a patient to get to a diagnosis more quickly so that they can get to either a therapeutic or dietary resolution more quickly and help them feel better. The second test that we have is called trio smart, and it's a breath test for identifying gases that are associated with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So this is an established market and there's one competitor on the market. But you know, essentially what we're doing is measuring three gases instead of the two that they measure, we have also built a proprietary collection system and instruments to measure the gas levels that we believe are an advancement from where the market has been in the past. So again, the goal is to get a patient an answer more quickly that allows them to either make a dietary or therapeutic change to help them feel better, which is the end goal.

And I guess the relationship that you have with the actual researchers that found, identified, developed these tests, I think just the collaboration is an interesting one to look at too.

Absolutely. So though I am in Raleigh are great friends on the west coast at Cedar Sinai in Los Angeles who have really developed these assets and, allowed our company to commercialize them. So we have, an exclusive licensing agreement with Cedars in order to bring these two assets to market. And specifically, the folks that have been involved in developing these assets are Dr. Mark Pimintel with the mast program, the medically associated science and technology program at Cedars, Dr. Ruchi Mathur Who's an endocrinologist, and just all-around amazing human, Dr. Ali Rezai who liked Mark is a gastroenterologist and the other scientific founder, who is a gastroenterologist is named Kapil Ghouta the four of them and myself are the founders of Gemelli. Four, four of them are MDs. And obviously, I am not, but I am grateful for their partnership and friendship. It's really incredible what they've accomplished.

And I think a lot of people, you know, sort of on the outside, looking in, don't really appreciate sometimes the combination of this science thinking, the real bench research and the commercialization mindset that it takes, it's like, well, "we'll invent something and everybody will clamor to it and then we'll change the world."There are a few steps in between it isn't there?

There are. I think that's actually how we met years ago. You were working with an advertising agency when I was working on another of Dr. Pimintel's inventions, Syphax in which he developed the use for irritable bowel syndrome. It’s a non-systemic antibiotic, that a ccompany, Salix pharmaceuticals that I used to work at had. And then we were required prior to coming to do this. So, that process is quite interesting, right? So you have technology that can help people, but then you have to actually connect it to the people. And what we do is figure out the position in the market, where it fits within the competitive set or the baseline of where the market is. And then messaging around that positioning that allows either physicians to understand where it fits into their diagnostic or therapeutic protocol. Or if you go direct for a patient to understand why this test could be important for them to get an answer that allows them to eventually feel better. So that's what I have done for a living is figure out the right words, words matter, to articulate in order for the end-user or the customer to really kind of connect with whatever asset it is that we have responsibility for.

And I must say the name of the company Gemelli Biotech, and honestly, Matt, I've known you I've known the company, but until today I did not look up the meaning, of the company name, and here we are talking about bringing the science to the patients and the people, and you built it right into the name. Haven't you? Tell us about that?

Sure. You should've known Mark better, an Italian Catholic guy from Philadelphia, you know, naming a company, it's an Italian name, but actually, I'll have to give Dr. Mathur Dr. Ruchi Mathur the credit for coming up with a name. She has twins who are now out of college, but when we came up with this, we thought that the goal of having a company that means twins and Italian is to, by doing well, you can do good. Now we are three years into this, and I believe we are doing well and helping a lot of people, but, the assets are, let's focus on the post-infectious situation. So, if we are able to have a successful company, it will allow us to have the resources to connect with people across the globe and to help them feel better. If you'd look at a lot of these kids in Africa that look malnourished or look like they are distended, et cetera.

My understanding from working with Mark and Ruchi is that a lot of these kids are really just suffering from multiple events of food poisoning and a post-infectious condition. Could you imagine if we take these commercial assets due to some success in the marketplace and are able to bring them to folks that could benefit from having a better understanding of what their problem is so that folks in the community can help them get better more quickly? I think that's the end goal. So yes, it's a fun name. It is not a macaroni-based name. As some people like to say, there is a pasta culture. It's really, you know, the dual purpose of what we're trying to accomplish.

I recently talked to an author who really underscored what you said about doing well and doing good. Her phrase was altruistic capitalist, which I thought was a nice combination, but the fact that you've tried to build the business with this mindset, tell us just a little bit about the model of how you've set up the company and how you want to go forward. With it.

Years ago, I went to business school, chapel hill, and very grateful for that opportunity. And it's been a great relationship for me personally, throughout the years. And one of the things I remember reading there was culture trumps strategy. And, you know, you can argue that all day long because you obviously still need a great strategy. And the execution of the strategy is even more important, some would say, but the culture that we have established is what I'm most proud of. So, the dual purpose of the company leads to culture. The culture leads to us being able to recruit great people first that happen to be talented at what we do for a living, and then to build off of that, you know, and gosh, we're up to 12 people and only one person has moved on in those three years and it wasn't a bad situation, right? So we've been very fortunate to find great people that are really good at what they do for a living.

And you didn't go to the same cookie-cutter job description and hiring profile. You've got to tell us about that. I mean, it's part of that culture that you're describing.

Yeah, it's true. And it's a little bit of, I guess you could say self-hate, right? So I grew up as a sales rep, sales training person, marketing professional in pharma. And there are a lot of us now, Gemelli has one of us and that's me and that's okay. That's plenty. What we have tried to do is look for consumer packaged goods, folks, people with a diversity of experience, diversity of backgrounds, diversity of thinking the game that we play is really an operational game. If we can do something that's on the market, but do it more effectively, more efficiently with less error, that's the end goal. Our job is to report results to patients and those results need to be perfect. In order for the patient to understand what's going on in their body, in order for them to go feel better. So the recruiting personnel, and, our head of marketing and operations, went to film school at NYU. I mean, that's not your normal person that works in pharma and diagnostics and, and it's working for us because we believe in diversity of experience.

And I enjoyed reading some of the bios of those team members. And one of them comes from the hospitality industry. And I thought again, perfect, you want to serve people. You want to serve the customer, both the doctors and the patients and so forth, and to have that mindset, that mentality, and especially maybe that training, how do you create a process around sickness

That's, right. The person you're talking about she's spectacular and she's a great writer. And the way that her personality comes out in these communications is really, really who we want to be to the end-user. There's another person on the team that I think about on a daily basis. And he runs our customer service group. And, we get emails every day. But most of the time you get emails when things don't go well, but we get emails every day about like, "whoa that customer experience that I just had with, you know, X person was spectacular because et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." But it starts with the culture that we've tried to establish. And, you know, we fight to maintain that culture every day. And as we raise money and expand and get bigger, it's going to be harder to maintain, but so far so good. As long as I think we keep a focus on it, we should be okay.

And talking about these people's backgrounds, I wanted to think about you for a second, Matt. And that is where did this, we're going to do things differently. We're going to break the mold. How far back on your resume do we have to go to find that lesson learned? Was there an event, was there a mentor? Were there the educational experiences? Where do you think that came from?

Sure. If you asked my parents, is probably from birth. But no, I've been very fortunate to have a lot of great people in my life and, I will go back to my parents. So, I never worry about failing because they loved me. They still do great wife, great kids, if this fails, which I don't think it will. I still have them. I'm sure somebody would pay me to go do something for a living. So that's kind of how I think about it. Now don't get me wrong. I stay up all night every night, thinking about the business and cash flow and this, that, and the other thing. But I think that broader, more macro mentality, there are a handful of people. And then I'll tell you a funny story kind of over the last year and a half that's really, I think, transformed the company, but there, there are people like Dr. Jerry Bell at UNC Dr. Lewis Sheets at NC State, Dr. Raymond at Clemson University, she's a marketing professor that my wife had at Clemson. And she's taking a liking to kind of what we're building here. And I'm very grateful for that relationship, even Mark, and Ruchi the co-founders Ali Rezai, have been beyond supportive of what we're doing, kind of with their babies that they've developed and, and we're bringing to market, but, I'll take a step back to Dr. Jerry Bell. And if you look him up, he's kind of world-renowned, coach, teacher, et cetera. And when COVID hit, he called me and didn't really think so much about Jerry Bell thinking about me ever. But he did, he called and said, Hey, what are you doing differently with this business? How are you pivoting because you need to?

And I was like, well, I'm thinking about that right now but I honestly don't know what to do. And he said, "well, you have the one product on the market. Do you have anything in development?" And I said, "yes." He's like, "is it close?" And I said, "ish, but we could probably, move quicker on that second asset." And the second asset is turned into a juggernaut. So we're able to escalate development or scale more quickly. It is a true mallein test. So it does not require a patient to go into a doctor's office. It can all be done remotely, and we never skipped a beat. So by getting that product to market more quickly during COVID, allowed us to win and be where we are today. So I'm very grateful for its the butterfly effect, right? He picked up the phone, he called me, we had a conversation. We thought things through, and now the entire company and prospects of the company are in a much different place than if I was just on an island, thinking about it myself, I guess that gets to the mentorship a little bit. But I think unapologetically sharing your story leads to people, caring about what you're doing, as long as you have good intent.

I think so too well, let's continue that butterfly effect, that ripple effect. What do you think takeaways for other people who might be listening? They've been, I look COVID or no, COVID, somebody's sitting on something. What would be your insight in your experience on, "we gotta get it right. But sooner or later, we got a launch."

You have to trust yourself. So trust yourself, trust your gut. You know, so if you're sitting on this thing and you're like, "well, is there a market for it? Is it protectable? Is there IP? Is there this," You know? So I knew that these assets were really good. That's why I took the leap. I could have stayed in a very simple, totally, fine for other people, but I needed to challenge myself personally career. And I chose not to now, we'll see whether or not that was the right decision that the jury's out. But for me personally, the journey of the last three years have been, I would say professional defining, life-defining in many ways. And I would have always regretted not giving it a shot, I guess, to answer your question specifically, if somebody sitting on an idea do the work, see whether or not there is a path forward, if there's a path forward, do it. You'll never regret trying if there's no path forward, be honest with yourself and say, Hey, you know what, "maybe that thing's not as good as I think it is." Because it really doesn't matter what you think it is. It matters what the market thinks it is

Fantastic. Well, we have to look towards the future. Certainly we've been looking for brighter and more optimistic times I had for all of us, but specifically for you Matt, and your business, what do you see over the horizon?

Sure. Expansion. So we're working with a variety of partners right now to scale the business. We think that we have two really special assets, and there are other things that I think we could bring into the business, but for now, we really want to stay focused on our core competency, which is, mallein testing for these two assets, and get it out to a lot of folks that could benefit from it, both in the US and internationally. I think by doing that and being patient in doing it the right way, we'll benefit from the rewards of what we've built later, but focusing on the day-to-day making sure the culture's right, making sure that the end user is benefiting from our assets and hopefully feeling better based on getting an answer. We focus on those things. Everything will be fine.

Terrific. Well, you know, on this show, we talk a lot about collaborators and cooperation and partners, and I can't help, but think about what you're building there. What do you need? Say, somebody out there is looking to team up with somebody like you, what are you looking for?

That's funny. So I was listening to a few of your other podcasts and you always, at the end to ask everyone sort of, who's your customer, what do you, what do you want out of this? And, you know, I think I said it earlier, just sort of the normal course of the conversation, that I am unapologetically sharing our story. Every opportunity I can and whether or not that means that it's a business relationship that comes out of it. That's fine. Reach out to us. It's great. Glad to take your first call. More importantly, if there are people listening to this that have been suffering from GI conditions for a long time, maybe we play a small role in helping them feel better and getting more out of their life on a daily basis. So, whether or not it's calls that I take with finance folks or personal conversations, when folks understand kind of what we do for living, there's always a personal connection. It's always, Hey, my mom, Hey, my wife, Hey, my husband, Hey, my, this person could really benefit from kind of what you guys are doing. I mean, this is a condition, either IBS or SIBO that affects somewhere between 30 and 45 million people just in the U S alone. So you're not alone. It's okay. Diarrhea and constipation are not that big of a deal. Have something to talk about, raise your hand, there's help out there. And we hope to be a little part of that.

That's very encouraging. Well, Matt Mitcho has been my guest. He's the CEO of Gemelli Biotech and a good friend, a long time industry colleague, and great catching up with your Matt.

I'm very grateful and always love talking to you. And I'm excited to continue to stay in touch and you never know, maybe we'll work together again.

Well, and that's the great thing. And again, everybody's looking for silver linings around COVID-19 coronavirus, is in quarantines, but the ability to stay connected, just like the professor, you just talked about, pick up the phone and give somebody a call. I think that's another lesson I take away from many of the conversations, like the one we've had today, where you want to make a connection. They are one phone call, one zoom, one link away.

That's exactly right. And I think that's part of making connections is don't make a connection to see what you can get out of something, make a connection just to be there for someone else. You know, people can see through selfishness. So, you know what, make a connection to be a giver, not a receiver and things will work out.

Great insight. Great advice. Well, thanks Matt, for being on the program and thanks listeners for coming by, we're going to continue our around the world journey to talk to creative practitioners, including creative business practitioners. I think a lot of times people have asked me the kind of authors and writers and songwriters and such that we have on this show, but listen to the creativity of the business model of a lot of the people we talk to as well. There's a lot of lessons to be learned there. So we've gone to Raleigh Durham today. We'll continue our around the world journeys to talk to creative people about how they get inspired and how they organize their ideas. And most of all, how they gain the competence and the connections to launch their work out into the world. So come back again, next time I'm Mark Stinson, and we'll be unlocking your world of creativity. Take care.

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