Stephan Smith, Founder & CTO - A Marketplace for Science

Invest with Boston's Top Angels: Sal's Syndicates

“Their internal users will see that their access time to an instrument goes down. They can get on it sooner, which is counter-intuitive, but it is reality.”

What if scientists could plan and run experiments much faster? Meenta’s software platform is making the use of high-end research equipment far more efficient. Co-Founder & CTO Stephan Smith is excited by the massive opportunity his startup is addressing.

Highlights include:

Sal Daher’s Intro Stephan Smith’s Bio “Half the time they sit idle and half the time if someone owns one of these instruments, there's still a long wait to get on them. They're not simple devices, but they are crucial for research.” “Used to take 3 months for you to book time on one of these high-end sequencing machines and have all the reagents and everything else lined up and the right people and so forth, and now you're doing it within 2 weeks, 12 days.” Biggest Obstacle: Convincing People That They Don’t Have to Do Things the Old, Slow Way The Unique Challenges of a Multi-Sided Marketplace “…we let our users make a decision based on whether they care about speed, or quality, or price.” How the Co-Founders, Stephan & Gabor, Came Together “…we were 10 minutes into him telling me about the problem and I think the top of my head blew off. I was like, this is what I've been waiting for. This is a massive market.” “We allow them [universities] to make their core labs more efficient by having more samples throw flow through these machines. These machines are able to run actually more efficiently.” “Their internal users will see that their access time to an instrument goes down. They can get on it sooner, which is counterintuitive, but it is reality.” When it Costs $15,000 per Run, You’re Not Going to Run Your Sequencer Half Full. It Pays to Get Others on the Machine to Share the Cost. Sal Daher Talks About Portfolio Company FineTune Learning The Burning Question for All Angel Investors: How Am I Going to Make Money on This Company? Academic Study on Meenta’s Approach to Two-Sided Markets “The bigger problem that I see is how do you provide value for both sides of the marketplace so you don't have a churn retention issue.” How Meenta Keeps Clients from Going Direct and Cutting them Out of the Business “…we assumed the $2,000 order size. Our order sizes are dramatically bigger.” “Our clear North Star is $1.6 million worth of gross revenue per month by December of 2020. That's our goal.” Meenta Is Hiring Geneticists, Field Application Scientists – Screen for High Emotional Intelligence Finding Your Calling Sharing Your Wisdom - Techstars We Are All Fans of Clem Cazalot of Techstars Boston “I would say your podcast helped people learn fast.”