How Did You Do That?

After graduating from the University of California, Davis with an economics degree, Laura King got a job in finance at General Electric (GE). She rose quickly through the ranks, and after a series of high-level jobs she was promoted to run GE Healthcare’s $1.2 billion interventional cardiology and surgery business. She also became an officer of the corporation. It was there at the top that King began to question whether there was a better way to satisfy her passion for clinical innovation. "I loved so much of what I learned at GE, there's no comparison," she says. "But I was very far away from what I would consider real revolutionary innovation versus incremental innovation." King started thinking she might prefer running a mid-sized, private equity-backed company, but the startup world intervened. Madison-based Venture Investors hired her to analyze a young company called NeuWave Medical, which King learned had great technology and no revenue. King decided to take a big risk and