Episode 106: Coachability: What It Is and Why a Founder Should Care

Coachability in its simplest form means that an individual is receptive to feedback and will act to improve their performance in response to constructive criticism. For founders coachability is a critical quality as they are rapidly learning beyond their past experience and the founding team is a key part of an investor’s evaluation of their start-up’s likelihood of success. A coachable founder has a willingness to learn and the ability to change for the better, positively impacting themselves, their employees, and their investors while driving success for their business. Being labeled “uncoachable” in contrast comes with the assumption that an individual will not adapt to changing needs and circumstances in their business and is unable to recognize and act on personal growth areas. Who would you rather invest in? We’ll discuss ways to cultivate a growth mindset and demonstrate coachability for the benefit of the founder and their start-up.

Biography

Helen McBride, PhD is currently an Entrepreneur in Residence at Caltech, focusing on life science start-ups. Previously, she was at Amgen for 13 years in roles of increasing responsibility across research and translational sciences. After joining Amgen’s Discovery Research organization as senior scientist and principal scientist leading target discovery in the Inflammation space, she moved to the Discovery Toxicology group to focus on the application of imaging to drug safety and the development of improved cell models for predictive and investigational toxicology. Her last role at Amgen was as Director, Biosimilars Research where she was responsible for functional and nonclinical pharmacology assessment within the Biosimilar Business Unit, contributing to the approval of 3 biosimilar medicines and the regulatory submission of 3 more, spanning multiple therapeutic areas including oncology, inflammation and hematology. Helen now assists Caltech and JPL founders with multiple aspects of life science start-up creation including ideation, value proposition, and fundraising.

Helen received her BS degree from Texas A&M University. She earned her PhD in Oncological Sciences at the University of Utah and performed her postdoctoral studies at the California Institute of Technology focusing on neuro-developmental biology and biophysics prior to joining industry. She is an author of over 30 publications spanning diverse topics including imaging, molecular, developmental and cell biology, immunology, and oncology.