Mecerlab

Category: Contestants2

 

Name: Anastasia Zavitsanou

NYU affiliation: Medicine

NYU status: Doctoral

Did you enter last year?: No

Do you have any teammates?: Yes

How many, including yourself?: 3

 

Concept Name

Mecerlab

 

High Concept Statement

Airbnb for scientists

 

Status Quo

One of the most frustrating activities in bio research is wasting time searching for antibodies, reagents, mice or an apparatus needed because under-ordered, pending receipt of an order, an unanticipated extension of an experiment or some other unexpected situation. Biomedical researchers face this problem every day.

 

Competition

Our customers try to address this problem in multiple ways but ineffectively:
1) institutionally established mailing lists, walking from lab to lab, phone calls
2) Eagle-I: search engine for lab consumables
3) Scientific community platforms: academia, research gate (indirect)
4) lab inventory management tools (labguru, quartzy)

 

Solution

We will create a platform for scientists to connect will fellow scientists to exchange resources and expertise.  Importantly we will build communities within our technology based on institutional background and research background. We will also have an integrated lab inventory management system to track lab consumables within inventory. We will use semantic searching of inventories to successfully connect scientists in need with scientists or supplies that have the resource.

 

Revenue Model

MecerLab is for free but there are three main sources of revenue: 1. scientists can exchange resources for free but expertise for a fee. if one knows a technique (ex Dna transfection) can be paid to teach someone within the same or nearby institution. MecerLab will get a percentage of that 2. Supplies will pay for their products to be advertised and organizers of scientific meetings will pay to create a sub-community within the platform 3. Mecerlab will also acquire a percentage from the amount paid when a scientists buys directly from a supplier

 

Which platform would you like to launch your app on?

iPhone

 

Which category best describes your app?

Medical