Jeff Galecke, Managing Partner, i5 BioPartners | Onyx Live | ISCT Dublin 2026

"Do you have a clear story – and can everyone across your organisation tell the same one?" After almost 25 years in life-sciences commercialisation, Jeff Galecke has learned that the CGT tools companies that scale are the ones that can explain their value to the person actually doing the work.

• The most common early mistake: hiring a BD manager to chase revenue before the foundational commercial story is built – companies hit year-one targets, then churn trying to retrofit the pipeline and messaging they skipped.
• Tools companies are harder to read than therapeutics: a therapy either works or it doesn't, but a tool can perform brilliantly in one lab and poorly in the next, so impact has to be proven slowly, across many collaborators.
• Lead with value, not science: brilliant core technology often gets buried under the science before the end-user benefit is ever made clear.
• Scaling globally is a distribution problem as much as a technology one – moving from Europe to the US to Asia means partners, cultural fluency and sometimes 30–50 distribution channels to manage.

Onyx caught up with Jeff Galecke, Managing Partner at i5 BioPartners, at the International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy 2026 Annual Meeting in Dublin to talk about why storytelling beats technology in commercialisation, when to build versus partner, and what it really takes for a small CGT tools company to scale across continents.

With thanks to the International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy for welcoming Onyx Live to Dublin.