Team:MIT E/business

Product

Benchling is a platform for life science data management. It allows scientists to edit, analyze, and share DNA sequence data.

Scientists build with DNA, just like programmers do with code. Major biotech companies account for 2% of the US GDP. Despite this value, there is no version control in life science. These companies have no cloud-based tools for facilitating collaboration and sharing between their scientists.

Tech

Benchling is built with modern web technologies and runs directly in the browser. This greatly reduces friction to on-board users and share sequence data. The majority of our competitors are legacy desktop applications.

Traction

Our alpha is being used daily in labs at Stanford, Harvard, MIT, UC Berkeley, UC SF, and UC Santa Cruz.

Market

Benchling generates revenue from control of community and user data. We charge for private collaboration but keep public-facing activity free. Furthermore, we facilitate ecommerce around DNA such as primers ($1B market) and gene synthesis ($200MM market).

By linking a fragmented user base to our platform and acquiring their data, we can sit in the middle of many massive life science markets such as genomics ($6B) or DNA reagents ($27B). However, the market is evolving. We are in the middle of a shift from traditional molecular biology to synthetic biology, triggered by the falling prices of DNA synthesis. This will increase the biotech contribution beyond 2% US GDP. By capturing users from traditional molecular biology, we can position ourselves to be at the center of this market as it develops.

Ultimately, Benchling is building the collaborative layer for the biotech industry and can be a platform that facilitates these incumbents.