Guest post by Dmitry Bachin, PhD, Key Account Manager at SciSure | If you would like to submit a guest post please email [email protected]

So, you've finally secured investment for your biotech start-up. Congratulations!

Your laboratory is becoming operational, equipment is arriving, and you're still excited about everything ahead. Meanwhile, investors are already asking about milestones, even though half the equipment is still sitting in boxes.

Among the many decisions you need to make, there's another question: Do we actually need Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) software and a sample management system?

Of course, better reproducibility and data organization can save time and money. Some of the best ELN providers also offer special programs for start-ups. But perhaps it's too early? Why invest time in a system when you barely have any samples, and your experimental workflows aren't even established yet?

Spoiler: I think the earlier, the better. Ideally, before your first experiment.

I've experienced this from both sides. Before working with laboratories on ELN implementation, I was a scientist in a biotech start-up myself. Back then, I didn't know much about ELNs, but we had one from the very beginning.

Looking back, I'm very glad we did. Here are three reasons why.
 

• Start-up life is busy enough without searching for everything. 
  Imagine coming back to the lab after a week and trying to remember where everything is? I sure couldn't.
• It's much easier to organize a lab before it becomes disorganized. 
  Different scientists often have different ways of performing essentially the same experiment. That's why it's better to agree on an experiment design before going to the lab.
• Even a small laboratory generates data surprisingly quickly. 
  For the first few months, there were only three of us working in the laboratory. Even after the first rounds of experiments, we already had dozens of samples. Eventually, that number grew into the hundreds.

Imagine trying to introduce sample management software at that point. You would first need to identify everything, reconstruct missing information, agree on naming conventions, and enter all those records. And you'd have to do all of this while continuing the experiments needed to meet your milestones.

I cover more on the full piece on the SciSure blog. Give it a read to find out what happens when a lab waits too long to get organized, and why the real question isn’t how many samples you have today.

About the author

Dmitry Bachin, PhD, is an Account Manager at SciSure. He works with life science labs across Europe on lab digitization, including electronic lab notebook (ELN) implementation and digital lab workflows. Before moving into commercial roles, Dmitry completed a PhD in plant molecular biology and spent nearly four years in industrial biotechnology working on scientific projects. He is based in Groningen, the Netherlands, is a member of the Dutch Biotech Society (NBV), and is a familiar face at life science events across the UK and Benelux.