Re: [DIYbio] Why are PCR machines and biotech equipment in general so expensive

Hi Ujjwal,

To figure out the business opportunity you need to ask real custom about their needs or, even better, become your own customer. I suggest you find a molecular biology lab and go do some experiments there. Order some gene, PCR it into the plasmid, put it into the bacteria, and somehow quantify its effect.

In my personal opinion, the only value in developing yet another version of PCR is educational. 

On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 7:56 AM Ujjwal Thaakar <ujjwalthaakar@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Josh,

I spent most of the last year learning to make hardware and have a prototype ready. It's not great and market ready yet. Turns out I highly underestimated what it takes to build a product.

Now I'm trying to figure out the business opportunity. What has been your experience at Chai as the original pioneer of low-cost PCR? What has the market response been like and what difficulties have you faced. A lot of people on this forum including me talk about developing open source low-cost equipment but what reality are we missing that you have experienced since you are one of the handfuls to have actually built a successful company out of this.

On Sun, Apr 23, 2017 at 1:47 PM Josh Perfetto <josh@snowrise.com> wrote:

Dennis said it perfectly on all 3 counts.

Ujjwal I thought you were going to develop lower cost PCR. What has stopped your efforts from succeeding?

-Josh

-Josh

On Fri, Apr 21, 2017 at 8:47 AM, Dennis Oleksyuk <dennis@oleksyuk.me> wrote:

Because building hardware is harder than building software. It requires more skills, time, and money. That's the main reason which applies to hardware development as a whole.

Because the number of customers who buy scientific equipment is small. Therefore the manufacturer has to divide the development cost between a smaller number of customers.

Because the cost of consumables and labor for solving a particular problem is usually higher than the cost of the machine. Therefore the buyers are more interested in saving in labor and consumable cost rather than hardware prices.

On Fri, Apr 21, 2017 at 8:42 AM Gerald Trost <gerald.trost@mail.com> wrote:

this is only my honest opinion from my experience:

I bought a open source 3d printer - in industry they had
such things for 3 decades - but they costed

several hundred thousands

the open source thing works fine but for 90% of the time

its in maintenance and I am the machine engineer

I think the open source things are not yet reliable enough.

 

Sent: Friday, April 21, 2017 at 1:57 PM
From: "Ujjwal Thaakar" <ujjwalthaakar@gmail.com>
To: DIYbio <diybio@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [DIYbio] Why are PCR machines and biotech equipment in general so expensive

How do the economics work out and why have we not seen bigger companies bring down the process in the advent of open source equipment as well as new startups building low-cost equipment?

 

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