
Quartzy Collects $4M To Help Scientists Manage Lab Inventory - jayzee
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2013/07/02/quartzy-collects-4m-to-help-scientists-manage-lab-inventory/
======
prayag
HNers tend to talk about good companies solving real problems and this seems
like a very real, important (albeit admittedly unsexy) problem to me. Kudos
for trying to tackle this problem.

~~~
jareau
Love unsexy problems! Congrats to Jayant et al.

------
haldujai
This seems like a really promising idea, and the execution is excellent. My
only concern (as a scientist) would be whether people would continue to use
it. Researchers aren't known for being organised at all, and the system of 'if
what you're using is about to run out leave a sticky note on the lab manager's
bench with the product #' seems to work.

In terms of freezer boxes, my lab used to have a web based system once upon a
time ago but people would forget to update it after they took out the samples
so we switched to a binder tied to the freezer, that worked a lot better with
pages of grids.

I personally like this but I feel as though it might be one of those products
that is attractive while its still new but people will become lazy and stop
using it.

It's easy to forget to update something on the computer when you're busy doing
long experiments.

Do you collect usage stats? It would be interesting to see how usage varies
from a single research group over time and whether or not this decline
happens.

Afterthought Edit: I can see how large groups ( > 25 grad students / post-
docs) might be forced into using a computer based solution for scheduling and
ordering as it's not feasible to use that much paper but is there really an
advantage for small groups (3-8 members) which comprise the majority of
research groups?

To me this is like using Sharepoint to manage documents for a group consisting
of two people, a dropbox or email would be just as effective.

~~~
skosuri
A few grad students and I started something quite some time ago out of MIT
called OpenWetWare.Org that was meant to help organize things like this and
included calenders, lab notebooks, stocks, lab webpages, simple sample
tracking, et cetera using a wiki (when they were all the rage :-). When we had
buy in from the whole lab it's awesome, but as you mention, over a couple of
years, much of that initial enthusiasm faded. In looking at which worked, and
which didn't, it really comes down to how much the PI of the lab cares about
this stuff; if s/he uses, appreciates, and instills it into lab practice, some
of those groups have continued to use it to this day with really in-depth
information. In most others, it tends to fade because it is not a priority and
is usually seen as a waste of time by the PI.

I'm about to start a lab (at UCLA), I'm trying to figure out how best to begin
making such a culture... but it is an interesting problem that does need a
solution.

~~~
haldujai
Impressive! OpenWetWare is extremely useful, my supervisors old lab from when
she was a post doc uses OpenWetWare to store all their protocols and
calculations, it was very useful when she changed institutions for us to get a
copy of those, you saved me a lot of time from having to email people for
their protocols.

In my opinion lab environments aren't really like start ups in terms of
culture, students have their own way of doing things and trying to force them
to do things a particular way is detrimental to their performance and
attitude. Since students are around for at least 6-7 years there is not really
the issue of turnover and the necessity of keeping things uniform so that a
replacement can pick up work right away. Whatever system you use a new student
will still need several months to adjust and learn the basic skills necessary
for research, during that time they can develop a system of their own so it's
not really downtime. As a student I think trying to force such a culture is a
mistake, you'll develop a reputation if you hardball it. Most PIs take the
attitude of we don't care as long as the job gets done and things are labelled
for safety sake. That seems to work quite well.

------
Osmium
Hmm, interesting. I have a lot of samples to organise and keep track of, so I
started using a couchdb database to do so, but (simple though it is) it takes
time I'd rather not spend. That said, it seems like a difficult problem to
solve for the general case. So I'll keep an eye on this with interest.

~~~
jayzee
If you have a lot of samples you might find our interactive freezer boxes
useful: [http://support.quartzy.com/kb/inventory-
module/interactive-f...](http://support.quartzy.com/kb/inventory-
module/interactive-freezer-box-maps-on-quartzy)

[http://support.quartzy.com/kb/inventory-module/managing-
loca...](http://support.quartzy.com/kb/inventory-module/managing-locations-on-
quartzy)

~~~
Osmium
This is actually really cool. I don't use freezer boxes at all, but a map
system like that would work equally well for, say, keeping track of what's in
TEM grid holders[1] which I do use.

This is what I meant when I said in my original comment that I think this
problem is a difficult one, because so many different scientists are using so
many different types of inventory. But I'm sure it's possible, and I wish you
luck :)

[1] e.g.
[http://scienceservices.eu/media/catalog/product/cache/1/imag...](http://scienceservices.eu/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/1600x/0d0c09f1c8bdb43b879ca3fe7208b7e2/g/7/g71137_0_dsc_0748_1.jpg)

~~~
jayzee
That link is super helpful! We started out with the most common layouts and
are now adding more based on feedback. Thanks!!

------
mayop100
Congrats Jayant! This is huge!

------
rch
I suggested this to my lab when I was at M.D. Anderson, and they were in the
process of migrating when I moved last summer. I should check back to see if
they stuck with it.

------
cm2012
Does the company offer a physical solution to the labs, like RFID tags or
something? Or is it all software?

~~~
jayzee
For now it is all software but we are moving towards offering barcode scanners
integrated with the inventory, RFID tags etc...

~~~
aroch
We use Quartzy at the moment but its just so clunky, especially ordering and
facility scheduling. I [used to] work in a facility that almost exclusively
provides user services (for 200-300 researchers and students) and scheduling
of all our equipment is rather important. I've spoken with you guys in the
past about this, and while you say there are plans to do things like weekly
interactive calendars (instead of that silly printable one), programmatic
addition or even an API (I've wound up scraping and using some of your private
calls to build our own calendar app for quatzy)...it has yet to happen. I can
only hope that you'll invest a good portion of this on the UX / software
integration side. Also, your ordering catalog search sucks, a lot. It doesn't
find 90+% of the Hampton products we try to order.

------
crapshoot101
Congrats Jayant - excited!

------
frisco
Congratulations Jayant and Adam!

------
3327
Great HN is turning into techcrunch

