Meet LabSuit – a startup from Tel Aviv, we met at our  Startup Lithuania‘s Roadshow/Pitch Battle a few weeks ago. They created a SaaS platform that helps Life Science researchers to manage their orders.

LabSuit won our Roadshow Pitch Battle and will come to LOGIN Startup Fair on 24-25 of May in Vilnius, where you will be able to ask what interests you! But for now, we had a little chat with LabSuit co-founder Alex Domeshek, who told us more about the company.

Hey Alex! So what is LabSuit? How it works, what problems does it solve as a product?

Alex: LabSuit is a platform for online lab management. We created it with my partner Helen, who holds a PhD in organic chemistry. She spent more than 10 years in a research lab. Throughout this time she had to struggle with a problem of finding a right chemical at the right time. At some point when it became really unbearable, we joined forces to solve the pain and created LabSuit, a web-application for Life Science researchers.

Since researchers are quite mobile, and you often see them travel for job, we quickly realized that that lab management problem wasn’t unique to Helen’s lab. Few postgraduate students quickly picked it up and LabSuit, that was created Technion,  Israel made it’s way to European universities along with US institutions.

When exactly did you launch? And what were the main challenges before launching?

Alex: We launched 3 years ago. Before we launched the main challenge was the uncertainty. You never know for sure if what you do will actually serve people and solve their problems. In order to overcome this challenge we had to listen carefully to our users’ feedbacks and adjust quickly to findings.

What are your target customers?

Alex: Our target users are Life Science graduate students all over the globe. In addition, we count in other lab members, who are lab managers, lab technicians, PI’s (principal investigators), e.i. people who work together in a research group. Nevertheless, that’s only one side of two-sided market we operate in.

On the other side there are chemical suppliers who host their catalogs with us. Thus, LabSuit streamlines chemicals purchase process, which wasn’t easy in the past as today with LabSuit.

How you have been doing so far?

Alex: LabSuit is being used by more than 600 research labs all over the globe. As I mentioned earlier, researchers travel quite a lot, so mainly with a help of word-of-mouth, we have managed to build several labs’ clusters outside of Israel: UK, US and in Estonia.

What's next for LabSuit then?

Alex: Today we have a very devoted labs cluster at Tallinn Technology University (TTU). We learned a lot how research labs operate in EU, and we’re planning to leverage this achievement and to expand to other Baltic States institutions, starting with Vilnius and Kaunas institutions and then going to Latvia. In a past few weeks we already got some nice intro’s in Vilnius university.

Main challenges while working on this product and how are you overcoming them?

Alex: One of the main challenges in our business is the new labs onboarding. While researchers are the ones who’re leading the scientific progress, it might be challenging for them to embrace new Internet Technology, such as LabSuit. The are numerous reasons for that, while the main is probably the initial lack of order in lab inventory. We came up with an idea of a Lab Fairy, e.i. a person who comes to the lab and helps lab’s staff to build chemicals’ catalog. While the main LabSuit value proposition is an online software, we decided, to step away from the best practice and send each new lab joining LabSuit a Lab Fairy. And worked really great! As a result, the lab becomes very engaged with LabSuit! Today, Lab Fairy is operational in Israel only.

How are you funded? Do you seek extra funding?

Alex: In three years LabSuit has grown from a small private investment to a self sustainable business. In order to expand internationally, we’re seeking additional funding.

Please introduce your founders, your core team and your broader team?

Alex: Well, LabSuit was founded by Helen Domeshek, and myself.

In addition, a number of broader team members, who are helping us: Greg Domeshek who gives us a hand with copywriting. Vadim Dolgitzer who is running Lab Fairy extension of our startup. Last March a lab of Nobel Prize winner Avraam Hershko joined LabSuit, which itself is very cool fact!

I would also like to thank Hive Gvahim accelerator program that we currently participate!

What do you expect at LOGIN Startup Fair?

Alex: At LOGIN Startup Fair I expect to get to know Lithuanian startup ecosystem, meet potential business partners and of course put a footstep in Lithuanian research institutions. Special thanks to Startup Lithuania team for organizing targeted meetings in advance.

See you soon there! Thank you Alex for your time!

Meet LabSuit and many others startups at LOGIN Startup Fair on 24-25 of May and register your own startup here!