Day-to-day software used by scientists remains stuck in the dark ages.
While great strides have been made in biomedical research over the past decade with breakthrough technologies like CRISPR and gene therapy, the day-to-day software used by scientists remains stuck in the dark ages.
On a product-level, legacy lab-software is often difficult to deploy (anyone heard of SaaS?), terrible to integrate (API still means Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient) and shockingly bad from a UI/ UX perspective (think Pong from 1972). On a functional level, it’s often unfit for modern data-types/ data-volumes and lacking in embedded intelligence (i.e. AI/ML). Software may be eating the world in other industries, but it only ever nibbled at the R&D lab.
Thankfully, over the last few years we’ve seen a new breed of start-up emerge looking to overhaul the lab-software stack. These companies are built on modern tech foundations and tend to be product-led with freemium, self-serve versions that delight users not dissuade them. Several F-Prime portfolio companies exemplify these traits: Benchling has thoroughly modernized what a Lab Operating System should look, feel and function like; Owkin is empowering scientists to create predictive models for drug efficacy; and BenchSci (our newest investment) has mapped the world’s biomedical research to improve the efficiency of reagent selection and experiment design.
The DNA of this new breed of start-ups is also fundamentally different. They’re demographically younger (born in the web). They’re educational ‘dual-citizens’ (fluent in Biological Sciences and Computer Science). And they bring a healthy disregard for incumbent vendors in the R&D market (they’re “in the world, but not of it”).
The challenge of commercializing biomedical research is well understood by everyone involved (e.g., high profile clinical failures, experimental irreproducibility and escalating costs of drug development). While better lab software is clearly not THE answer, it is AN answer. It’s an exciting time to be building a company in this vertical and if you’re doing so, we’d love to hear from you.
BenchSci is a software platform that maps disease biology using machine learning models trained on 20+ million scientific publications. Its proprietary ASCEND™ platform helps scientists design better experiments, uncover novel insights, and identify safety and efficacy risks earlier in the discovery process.
Funnel’s product is a Data Core used by 800 forward-thinking organizations across a wide set of industry verticals to automatically import marketing data and make it Business-Ready. The Swedish Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company was founded by Fredrik Skantze and Per Made in 2014. Funnel has 140 employees and offices in Stockholm and Boston.
Founded in 2013, Snapdocs is the industry’s leading digital closing platform. With its patented AI technology, Snapdocs is on a mission to perfect mortgage closings and transform a $2 trillion pillar of the U.S. economy. Powering over 750,000 closings a year, Snapdocs is leading the charge to modernize, streamline, and improve the mortgage process for lenders, borrowers, and settlement. Snapdocs is the only solution with a proven track record of creating a single, scalable process for every closing, whether wet, hybrid, or digital. Every day, over 50,000 mortgage professionals rely on Snapdocs’ technology to automate manual work and digitize paper processes that plague the industry. Snapdocs is a rapidly growing San Francisco based real estate technology company backed by prestigious Silicon Valley blue-chip venture capital funds, like Y Combinator, SV Angel, Sequoia Capital, and F-Prime.
Vendr is an end-to-end SaaS purchasing & renewal management platform. They manage your software purchases and renewals, so you can manage your business.
Logixboard is the digital partner for freight forwarders to succeed in today’s highly competitive market. Our web-based platform empowers freight forwarders to do their work more efficiently, increasing customer satisfaction, and unlock the power of their data. Logixboard is a recent graduate of Techstars and is based in Seattle with offices in Bogota, Colombia.
Sam Bisbee is a Venture Partner at F-Prime with a background in technology, cybersecurity, and operations. He is also the Chief Security Officer at Threat Stack where he’s responsible for the company’s security and compliance programs, in addition to providing security services to Threat Stack’s Cloud SecOps Program customers.
Sam joined Threat Stack in 2014 to build and help bring the product to market. Previously Sam was a member of the Cloudant team (acquired by IBM).
Sandor is a Venture Partner at F-Prime, focusing on enterprise technology and cybersecurity. Previously he served as the CTO of LogMeIn where he drove the technology vision and development of the Identity and Remote Management portfolio (LastPass, LogMeIn Central, LogMeIn Pro, and GoToMyPC) and led the corporate IT and Security teams, navigating through many acquisitions and the merger with Citrix Online.
Sandor earned his master’s degree in Computer Science at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and spent the early part of his career at Digital Equipment.
RiskLens is the leading provider of quantitative cyber risk management software. Its platform is recognized as a mission-critical business application for cybersecurity and risk teams across the Fortune 1,000. RiskLens empowers large enterprises and government organizations to manage cyber risk from the business perspective by quantifying that risk in monetary terms. Clients depend on RiskLens solutions to better understand and communicate their cyber risk exposure in financial terms, prioritize their risk mitigations, measure the ROI of their security investments, and meet regulatory demands calling for the quantification of cyber risk. RiskLens is the only cyber risk quantification software purpose-built on FAIR, the standard quantification model for information security and operational risk. RiskLens was acquired by Safe Security in 2023.
Unbxd applies artificial intelligence and advanced data sciences to connect e-commerce shoppers to the products they are most likely to buy. Unbxd was acquired by Netcore Cloud in 2022.
An Eight Roads investment. Eight Roads is F-Prime’s sister venture capital investment group, with which F-Prime collaborates on investments outside of the Americas and Europe.