Chuck Donnelly and Julie Morrison - SaaS for Pre-Clinical Trials

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RockStep Solutions improves efficiency by 70% according to one client. This is why the startup is getting word of mouth traffic from clients running in vivo drug trials. Founders Chuck Donnelly and Julie Morrison tell their story and share valuable wisdom about this intersection of software and bio.

Highlights include:

• Sal Daher Introduces Chuck Donnelly and Julie Morrison, the Founders of RockStep Solutions
• RockStep Provides a SaaS Solution for a Sector of the Drug Discovery Space That Is Poorly Served by Existing Vendors
• “The problem that we're solving is data chaos in drug discovery.”
• “…we have one of our customers that's projecting a 70% efficiency gain.”
• “We bring value to the pharmaceutical companies by speeding up that pipeline, reducing the number of errors that happen.”
• “While I was at Jackson Lab… We recognized that there was this gap, if you will, that we just talked about. The NIH actually funded us.”
• “One full day of my work week was designed to take all my data out of paper and put it into Excel even.”
• "But they don't actually have any money." I said, "I'm not sure it matters at this point because I'm so passionate about the problem they're solving."
• “I can tell you that these equity-only deals work very rarely…”
• On co-founders: “You have to be aligned on your personal values because this is a marriage. In very many ways it's similar.”
• “There's no question, your family is part of this company. You will not have a work-life balance.”
• “Ultimately, if we don't get the pricing right, we're not going to succeed. You have to get your pricing right.”
• “…they're just academic customers paying, I think our cheapest is $50 a user. Right now, in industry we're getting $1,800 per user. That's how different our pricing has scaled up.”
• “We spent about a year and a half, two years, perfecting the product that we have out in our biopharmas today.”
• “After a year and a half of doing that, we ended up with a product that is totally, uniquely positioned in the market…”
• “…if she had gone in thinking that she already knew it and she just was trying to validate it, she would be coming in with her own biases, almost telling the people, "This is how it should be done."”
• “If you have a toxic person or persons in the company, that goes through the entire company. You cannot; it will kill your company.”
• “…a hire that almost tore the company apart, to be honest. It was a salesperson forced on us by an investment firm.”
• “...we can teach anyone anything for the most part…But you can't really change someone's culture or their personality, their willingness to dig in.”
• “First thing is that it takes a lot longer to raise capital than you might think. The other thing is that you're going to probably need more money than you think.”
• Deep Wisdom on Grants: “All told we got three grants, total of 1.85 million… from the NIH. That was all great non-dilutive funding and life is good. But I would caution anybody who wants to continue living off of grants, don't do it.”
• “We could have written another grant, but it's not going to be a market-driven product anymore, it's going to be a grant-driven product.”
• “The market still needs to stop using paper and spreadsheets.”
• “…it's hard. I spend a lot of my time raising money.”
• “…our sweet spot really is the small, mid, to large biotech and global pharmaceutical companies.”
• “…it feels good when you start seeing people coming to you on word of mouth.”
• “…there are fires burning every day. It's overwhelming. The big mistake you can make is just trying to put every fire out because you're not going to make any progress.”
• “…don't do it unless you're ready. This is the hardest thing you will ever do.”
• “…manage burnout. Burnout is very real.”
• “I would say another really important tip is you can't do this alone.”