Some brief thoughts from a researcher turned programmer.
1) At first glance, I'm having trouble discerning what this might be used for or who its targeted to. Every discipline has different terminology, so I imagine what might work for Chemists might not work for Engineers. In our lab, we didn't have very many chemicals, but we had certain instruments setup with finite lifetime values.
2) Also at first glance, I thought this was a lab notebook replacement or supplement. Now that would have been awesome. Going back over my _many_ pages of notes over the years was a pain in the ass, especially when it came down to writing proposals and papers. I'm sure there is a huge opportunity in digitizing this to make lab notes searchable, reference-able, more organized, and even more secure.
3) To reach students, I would suggest to hitting up large conferences. If you're based in SF you're in luck because most of the big conferences my colleagues and I attended were in SF, NY, or Boston.
Re: point #2: An electronic lab notebook system (that researchers will actually use) is, literally, the holy grail of laboratory informatics. This particular grail sits at the end of a road littered with the corpses of dozens of failed attempts; all either too complex, too simple, too hard to use, not generic enough, too generic, etc. etc. etc.
Someday, somebody'll figure out how to do it, and when they do, it'll be amazing... but I'm not placing any bets on when it might happen.
hmm... Interesting. Well we basically helps groups manage their orders and inventories, in decentralized settings like research labs. We started targeting life-science researchers, given our background, but we have seen some interesting uptake in unexpected verticals.
For example, the Traffic Directorate for the City of London is using Quartzy for managing their assets. So we decided to go with more general copy but it is important to be on message and we will tweak it to be more clear about who could benefit.
A startup solving a practical problem, in a niche that nobody has really dealt with before? I call that a recipe for success if I ever saw one. Best of luck, guys!
The challenge that we have is to find a way to reach these scientists. They rarely, if ever, read techcrunch or hacker news and the standard publications in that space have a long publication cycle.
Ideas to reach out to life-science researchers welcome! One guerilla thing we did last week was to get coffee sleeves with "Quartzy, Caffeine for you Lab". We went to the coffee shop near the research buildings at Stanford and put in these sleeves next to the milk and sugar!:)
My wife is a lab manager and says "this won't work because my lab won't take the time to walk to a computer and enter information when they want to use a chemical."
I setup a similar app for my lab when I was starting my PhD. It worked for a while because it was the easiest way to generate a purchase order. But over time, it became harder and harder to get people to keep using it, let along keep things up to date. It's all about how to keep things simple and to make the system easier to use than what they use now, which is likely nothing.
Well, that and I never wanted anyone else touching my enzymes. Anyone that ventured into my enzyme box without telling me was harshly dealt with.
I just realized that the above statement sounds strange if you're not a life sciences researcher... :)
We are busy working on an iphone app in 3 weeks and then an android app in a month. Its the most requested feature so your wife is absolutely right that some people may not want to walk to a comp to enter this stuff. The plan is to then integrate with a company like "red laser" so you can just scan the stuff into your inventory. That would be cool!
Quartzy should look into helping labs sell used lab equipment. It's hard to find a lab that doesn't have some good, functioning lab equipment that is no longer being used. They could set up an exchange that allows the trade or sale of equipment to other labs.
Really good point. I have often wandered the corridors in research labs seeing equipment just lying there collecting dust. I suspect that there will be issues around selling stuff but it is something that we are definitely looking into. Once you have an engaged user base there are a few directions we could take this in.
Very interesting! The real challenge for Jayant and Adam will be getting their tendrils deep into existing sales processes in labs.
It's a sector that's prime for disruption - much like Octopart before them, these guys are primed to disrupt a messy space. Looking forward to recommending it to the local labs.
Thanks! If you poke around the demo account you will see that Charles Darwin has a dissection kit in his inventory and Mendel talks about his love for peas in his profile: http://sandbox.quartzy.com/profiles/gregor123
We spent way more time that we should have in making those fake profiles in the sandbox for Curie, Mendel, TH Morgan and others!
I'm interested in knowing how the "Science is hard. Quartzy is easy." widget at the bottom is working for you. Do people know to click that? I only figured it out after attempting to scroll down in vain several times.
How about having a sticker printer print out QR codes to attach to stuff, then a smart phone could be used to check things in/out? Mind you a lot of stuff has accession [bar]codes that could may be be used for that.
[+] [-] physcab|14 years ago|reply
1) At first glance, I'm having trouble discerning what this might be used for or who its targeted to. Every discipline has different terminology, so I imagine what might work for Chemists might not work for Engineers. In our lab, we didn't have very many chemicals, but we had certain instruments setup with finite lifetime values.
2) Also at first glance, I thought this was a lab notebook replacement or supplement. Now that would have been awesome. Going back over my _many_ pages of notes over the years was a pain in the ass, especially when it came down to writing proposals and papers. I'm sure there is a huge opportunity in digitizing this to make lab notes searchable, reference-able, more organized, and even more secure.
3) To reach students, I would suggest to hitting up large conferences. If you're based in SF you're in luck because most of the big conferences my colleagues and I attended were in SF, NY, or Boston.
[+] [-] stevenbedrick|14 years ago|reply
Someday, somebody'll figure out how to do it, and when they do, it'll be amazing... but I'm not placing any bets on when it might happen.
[+] [-] jayzee|14 years ago|reply
For example, the Traffic Directorate for the City of London is using Quartzy for managing their assets. So we decided to go with more general copy but it is important to be on message and we will tweak it to be more clear about who could benefit.
[+] [-] someone13|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prayag|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jayzee|14 years ago|reply
The challenge that we have is to find a way to reach these scientists. They rarely, if ever, read techcrunch or hacker news and the standard publications in that space have a long publication cycle.
Ideas to reach out to life-science researchers welcome! One guerilla thing we did last week was to get coffee sleeves with "Quartzy, Caffeine for you Lab". We went to the coffee shop near the research buildings at Stanford and put in these sleeves next to the milk and sugar!:)
[+] [-] yellowbkpk|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbreese|14 years ago|reply
Well, that and I never wanted anyone else touching my enzymes. Anyone that ventured into my enzyme box without telling me was harshly dealt with.
I just realized that the above statement sounds strange if you're not a life sciences researcher... :)
[+] [-] jayzee|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jayzee|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anandkulkarni|14 years ago|reply
It's a sector that's prime for disruption - much like Octopart before them, these guys are primed to disrupt a messy space. Looking forward to recommending it to the local labs.
[+] [-] arkitaip|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jayzee|14 years ago|reply
We spent way more time that we should have in making those fake profiles in the sandbox for Curie, Mendel, TH Morgan and others!
[+] [-] pkamb|14 years ago|reply
Why not just go with a long scrollable page?
[+] [-] jayzee|14 years ago|reply
Our old page was: www.quartzy.com/current/ so I would say that everything from there is an improvement :)
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nabraham|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seto28|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thankuz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hjtyjty|14 years ago|reply
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