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.”