Today we’d like to introduce you to Frank Feist.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
The BlueCatBio story started two start-ups ago, in 2004, at Munich-based Advalytix where I met my future BlueCatBio co-founders Wolfgang and his wife Kerstin. I had started the US operations for Advalytix in Concord, MA, when Wolfgang and Kerstin’s own start-up merged into Advalytix and provided one of the technologies that Advalytix then sold in the US. Advalytix was later sold to Olympus of Japan, and two corporate mergers later it was time for the team to move on. Wolfgang teamed up with Advalytix’ former Chinese Distributor to establish a Germany based R&D center; one of the concepts they prototyped was a centrifugal plate washer for a clinical diagnostic test. When Wolfgang called me one day in the Spring of 2013 to see if I wanted to help commercialize this prototype, my start-up Noblegen had hit a funding wall, so I was glad to do some consulting. Despite some initial interest in the centrifugal plate washer amongst diagnostic companies no commercial traction followed. But then Bristol Myers Squibb learned about our prototype in a Google search and approached us to try it for an application that would have never occurred to us because it was completely unrelated to diagnostics: BMS was trying to miniaturize cellular assays (they use those as part of their drug discovery effort to test how cells react to pharmaceutical compounds), and they ran into problems to efficiently remove growth media from their assays with conventional methods. They were modifying one of their standard laboratory centrifuges to spin the medium out. While this worked, they were not able to scale it up to high throughput; this is when they came across our prototype via the magic of Google searches. The initial demo worked well enough and they bought a prototype right away. Fast forward to Sept 2014; the Chinese Distributor wanted to keep his diagnostic focus and was not interested in pursuing the R&D market, so I started BlueCatBio initially as a GmbH in Bayreuth, Germany. After lots of work to turn the prototype into a commercially viable product – we called it the BlueWasher – we quickly grew our customer base in pharmaceutical research, with a focus on Boston, NJ and PA, as well as the UK. By mid-2015 we had enough business in the US to start a US Inc. based in Concord, MA. Today, we have an installed base of over 110 BlueWashers in 15 countries, and count 12 of the top 15 pharmaceutical companies as our customers.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
While I had a prototype of the instrument when I started BlueCatBio to demonstrate with customers, it took significant investment to develop it into a commercially successful product; most importantly an intuitive user interface and hardware modifications needed to meet customer needs. BlueCatBio is a “boot-strap”, i.e. no external investment, so one has to be creative to make ends meet as customer payments go straight to development partners.
Please tell us about BlueCatBio.
We make instruments that pharmaceutical companies use in their drug discovery efforts.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.bluecatbio.com
Getting in touch: BostonVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
