Delivering entrepreneurial know-how, leadership, and coaching to market-defining organizations.
How we got here
Gerrit McGowan
Dr. Roozbeh Farahbod
I'm Gerrit, and I’ve been building businesses long before I even knew how to spell "entrepreneur". From a pre-teen selling rare trading cards and rock n’ roll memorabilia - to a teen throwing epic warehouse raves - to a 20-something kayaking down whitewater rivers and making videos to sell to commercial rafting trips - I’ve been venturing and adventuring for as long as I can remember.
In my late 20s, while finishing grad school, I founded Syntegrity Group, a strategic planning consultancy that was acqui-hired by EPI Inc. two years later - where I would spend the next 6 years as its youngest partner. But like many ambitious young entrepreneurs before me, I eventually stumbled upon a tech-shaped solution to a big problem, leading me to found my first venture-backed company, Kula.com. Kula's enterprise SaaS converted loyalty points from big names like Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, JetBlue, and Red Robin into tax-deductible donations to millions of schools and nonprofits worldwide. This is where I developed the concepts of Democratised Transactional Giving and Cause-Related Loyalty Marketing.
Since exiting Kula in 2013, I've continued to follow my passion for business innovation through venture-building, startup coaching, and angel investing. I founded Effectuate Apps, a custom software development shop (acquired by GSIX Inc in 2016). I built the ICELab (in partnership with the State of Colorado) - a coworking space, incubator, accelerator, and gastronomy concept that served as a hub of innovation and entrepreneurship in the rural Rockies. Then in 2019, I moved to the Rhine Region of Germany, where I did my PhD research on entrepreneurial peak performance, founded the WHU Accelerator, and launched the Most Awesome Founder Podcast. Ready for a post-COVID scenery change, my wife and I moved to Berlin where I spent two years as Interim CEO to several cool new ventures - RVS DACH and Ayun Healthspan.
Today, I'm living with my family on the shores of the Bodensee in Lindau, Germany. When I'm not startup coaching, angel investing, or cooking up my next venture concept, you’ll likely find me hiking and snowboarding in the Austrian Alps or kayaking/standup paddling some of the world's most epic whitewater rivers. As Oscar Wilde once said, “Life imitates art”. But since I can’t draw, paint, or play music very well, innovation will always be my creative outlet and business will be my canvas.
With over 26 years of experience in delivering innovative software solutions, I've been pushing the boundaries of convention throughout my career. Since early 2022, I've served software companies as a Technical Advisor, Interim VP of Engineering, Fractional CTO, and leadership mentor.
I designed and managed the software stack for tooz technologies' smart glasses (patent pending), led the creation of a cloud-based software development platform at Huawei, invented an intelligent test data generation tool for SAP HANA (patented), and developed tools for modeling decision support systems at Defence R&D Canada (winner of SFU Dean of Graduate Studies medal in 2010).
As a proponent of servant leadership, I strive to empower my teams, believing that empowerment is crucial for high-performing, engaged teams. Over the past 17 years, I've passionately mentored, helped, and empowered software engineers. I've supervised BSc, MSc, and Ph.D. theses for over a decade, became a team lead at Huawei, established and led the software department at tooz technologies, and spearheaded a 3X growth of the engineering department at Userlane in just under two years.
In my spare time, I enjoy reading, making music, building DIY home automation services and sensors, exploring the possibilities of the Internet of Things, and contemplating the future of our minds beyond our bodies.
The Birth of Gestalt
Sometimes we ask ourselves how we didn’t start Gestalt sooner, because our paths have been crossing long before we even knew each other. As early as graduate school (at rival universities, no less), we were frequenting the same haunts across our beloved city of Vancouver, Canada. More than a decade later, we were treading similar paths along the cobbled streets of Munich, Germany, yet never met.
It wasn’t until the winter of 2019 that we finally met as mentors for the Techstars Bosch-Siemens Future Home Accelerator in Munich. During this time, we not only had the opportunity to coach some truly exciting new ventures, but we also began to foster a relationship that would grow stronger each time we reconnected.
Fast forward to 2023 when Gerrit was building a new brick & mortar healthcare clinic for a venture builder in Switzerland. And while the design and planning was going well, it became evident that the technological backbone needed to manage a lifestyle medicine/longevity clinic like that simply did not yet exist. So rather than attempting to jerry-rig a tradtional clinic management system to suit its needs, Gerrit reached out to his old friend, Roozbeh, for guidance.
Over the coming months, Roozbeh would comb markets across the globe for potential SaaS products for this distinct use case. And when nothing turned up as a viable option, he began to architect a new, bespoke solution. Over the coming months, now as Interim CTO, Roozbeh designed a groundbreaking, scalable EHR and clinic management system unlike anything the market has seen to date.
Eventually that project wrapped up, but one thing had become clear - that we both knew that we work incredinbly well together. And as both of us understood from decades of experience, the chance that a business lead and a tech lead could collaborate, communicate, and understand each other so well was a rarity in our worlds. So rather than moving on to our next projects and hoping opportunities to work together would arise again, we made the decision to join forces as Gestalt - a whole that cannot be described merely as the sum of its parts. Together we now provide our clients with a unique combination of decades of entrepreneurial experience with and a quarter centry of world-class engineering talent.
Thus was the birth of Gestalt.
Gestalt’s expertise lies in zero-to-one: uncovering underserved challenges, commercializing innovation opportunities, and introducing groundbreaking products and services. We deliver a customer-centric, lean startup approach that moves fast, breaks things, and serves up a big plate of passion and energy - delivered at mach speed.
Whether you have a new venture studio project, a portfolio company in need of senior leadership, or a founder seeking a sparring partner or sounding board, reach out to us. We can help transform your crazy concepts, bold ideas, and innovation dreams into scalable, commercially successful realities.