Sajith Wickramasekara was not on this episode. A recording of them was played into it, so these
are their words but not an appearance on the a16z Podcast. It still counts as said, and it is kept out of every score on their page.
Saji Wickramasekara, co-founder and CEO of Benchling, describes how bottom-up adoption by academic scientists failed to translate into enterprise sales until Benchling added centralized data features.
“And actually though, at first, like we really like struck out trying to sell anything to these companies. Like scientists have used Benchling in school. They liked it, but they weren't going to buy it. The business, like the value wasn't there. And that's when Benchling really started to grow. It went from kind of productivity suite for end users to building this single source of truth for the business”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Sajith Wickramasekara
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Wickramasekara: 60% of Benchling customers' laboratory instruments are unconnected
“The last time we kind of ran one of these benchmarking exercises was that For our customers, 60% of their instruments are not connected.”
Sajith WickramasekaraDec 12, 2024▶ 10:31Mastering Your Data with Sajith Wickramasekara
Insight
Wickramasekara: Vertical software markets are less competitive, risking loss of focus
“One thing actually that's probably worse about vertical companies is you, the markets are not as competitive as horizontal companies, and so you can get a little unfocused at times”
Sajith WickramasekaraDec 12, 2024▶ 22:47Mastering Your Data with Sajith Wickramasekara
AssertionSupported
Wickramasekara: Biologics and advanced modalities now dominate biopharma pipelines
“Biologics, advanced modalities are now majority of the pipeline. We actually have approved cell therapies, gene therapies. We're the first gene editing medicines approved.”
Sajith WickramasekaraDec 12, 2024▶ 4:14Mastering Your Data with Sajith Wickramasekara
Opinion
Wickramasekara: Pharma researchers do not lack tech literacy
“I think there's sometimes this, like, unfair caricature that people in pharma, like, don't know how to turn on a computer and that the industry just, like, doesn't believe in technology and so forth. I don't think belief in the technology is, like, lacking. I …”
Sajith WickramasekaraDec 12, 2024▶ 5:27Mastering Your Data with Sajith Wickramasekara
Insight
Wickramasekara: Biological research software requires highly flexible data models
“The data and the technological needs of serving biology are very, very different. You have an incredibly complex multidimensional data model that's happening while the instrumentation lab is now, you know, vastly generating more, more data than ever, ever befo…”
Sajith WickramasekaraDec 12, 2024▶ 5:54Mastering Your Data with Sajith Wickramasekara
Disclosure
Wickramasekara: Benchling has 800 employees and spends $100M annually on R&D
“We are, 800 people today. We, I think about 40% of our team works in R&D, probably spend a hundred million dollars a year on, on R&D.”
Sajith WickramasekaraDec 12, 2024▶ 6:33Mastering Your Data with Sajith Wickramasekara
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 1,000 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.