Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Science Exchange Raises $3 Million to Help Outsource Experiments

If the Internet can let you rent someone’s futon, car or cooking skills, it can certainly help you get your hands on some spare scientists or lab time.

Right? Right. That’s the premise behind Science Exchange, a Palo Alto-based startup that lets researchers buy or sell access to people and equipment they can use to run lab tests and experiments.

Scientists are already used to outsourcing certain kinds of work, either because they don’t have the time or the resources to do it themselves. So Science Exchange isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel — they’re just digitizing it and putting it up for bid on the Web, like everything else.

“We’re not creating an entirely new behavior,” said co-founder Dan Knox. “We’re just making it easier to do.”

So far, Knox said, the thesis is proving out. Since launching in the summer of 2011, the startup has helped people conduct 1,000 transactions, and the volume is ramping up. Four months into 2013, Science Exchange has already equaled its volume from 2012, Knox said.

Since these deals involve expensive machines and/or trained people, they tend to run a lot higher than your average Etsy transaction: Knox said they average $3,000 a pop, with Science Exchange taking between 3 percent and 9 percent for brokering the deal.

Those numbers have been enough to help the company land a $3 million Series A round, led by Union Square Ventures, along with O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. Earlier investors who had helped the Y Combinator company raise a $1.5 million seed round are also back; they include Yuri Milner, Lerer Ventures and XG Ventures.

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

There was a worry before I started this that I was going to burn every bridge I had. But I realize now that there are some bridges that are worth burning.

— Valleywag editor Sam Biddle