MGMT Boston - W13, Q3 23 - Benchling // Joe Haftel, Paperless Parts
Benchling // Joe Haftel, Paperless Parts
Welcome to MGMT Boston where we try to help 585+ of you manage your awareness of top Boston startups and local up & coming operators putting in the work. Glad to have you here!
TLDR:
Benchling - a late stage software startup building the “GitHub of biotech” with 200,000+ researchers and 1,000+ biotech companies using the platform
Thanks to the Internet for teaching me about Benchling
Joe Haftel, Implementation Project Manager @ Paperless Parts - a customer focused leader who keeps an open perspective, from sales to project management to implementation, in order to find a perfect fit helping customers implement software to grow their businesses
Thanks to Jess D. for the intro to Joe
Other Resources:
MGMT Boston Operators Club - e-mail me directly to learn more!
The Endeca Effect: Overview / Markets / People / Products / Conclusion / Bonus - Steve Papa Alumni Learnings
Q3 Startups Highlighted: Snyk, FeatureByte, Neural Magic, Notable Systems, Akooda, Posh AI, Propify, Klaviyo, UptimeHealth, Scroobious & PredictionStrike
Q3 Operators Highlighted: Alexa Murray / WHOOP, Kieran O’Driscoll / AtScale, Max Milhan / Rhino, Ries McQuillan / Vested, Dave Barron / HubSpot, Sam Richard / ngrok, Ben Katz / Appex, Wyatt Bramhall / Perch & Pablo Bello / Product Leader
Q1 Startups & Operators Highlighted / Q2 Startups & Operators Highlighted
Benchling
Founders: Ashu Singhal & Sajith Wickramasekara
Founding: 2012
Mission: Unlock the power of biotechnology
Employees: 900 & ~10% Local
Workplace: Hybrid
Stage & Capital Raised: Series F & $350M raised
Investors: Y Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, Benchmark Capital, F-Prime Capital, Menlo Ventures, Spark Capital, ICONIQ, Altimeter Capital, Tiger Global & others
Key Customers: ElevateBio, Beam Therapeutics, Moderna, Giliad, Sanofi
Glassdoor Rating: 3.5
Valuation (estimated): $3B - $7B (raised $100M in a Q3 ‘21 Series F fundraise)
^ this is a useless number. There is no tangible valuation until the business is sold or goes public. Don’t forget it!
Benchling is building a verticalized software platform for biotechnology research. Founded by Sajith Wickramasekara out of MIT in 2012, he was soon joined by Ashu Singhal to help unlock the power of biotechnology and accelerate the pace of life science R&D to build the “GitHub of biotech”. Admittedly, Benchling is San Francisco headquartered but they have a significant Boston base and founding story so…we’re gonna allow it!
Benchling is a shining late stage example of just how large technology enabled opportunities might be. Let’s keep the ambition up in these turbulent times, ok people?
Sajith was studying Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at MIT but was also interested in biology. When he freelanced in the labs, he noticed that his work was limited by the manual limitations of administrative work like data entry in notebooks and spreadsheets. Believing that one of the keys to more successful scientific research was around collaboration, data management, and real time sharing of that data they began building a platform to make software work better for researchers. Sajith dropped out of MIT to make his vision a reality.
The pharmaceutical industry spent over $225B in research and development last year (src) and too much of that time is spent on administration. A McKinsey report states that 45% of diseases will be addressed by biology in the next decade and biotechnology could drive $2T - $4T of direct economic impact per year over the next 20 years (src). In order to streamline lab work and improve workflows to make breakthroughs happen faster, better tools are needed.
In the time since its founding to focus on academic labs and experimental design tasks, Benchling has built a digital workspace for researchers to design and manage experiments, handle complex biomolecular data, and visualize results. Their R&D cloud and system of record addresses a broad range of industries across biopharma, agriculture, consumer packaged goods, life science diagnostics, and more.
Benchling Connect allows customers to bring all their scientific data together, integrating data from lab instruments to help drive end to end data management. They have also built integrated partnerships with DeepMind’s AlphaFold AI program in order to predict 3D structures of proteins and an open source network where researchers, like software engineers on GitHub, can share their research.
Benchling monetizes via a freemium SaaS model where users like academics can try the platform for free, they have signed on 1,000+ biotech organizations with 200,000+ scientists using the platform, and have driven efficiencies for customers like AstraZeneca who report reduced DNA synthesis costs by up to 90%. The company reportedly confidentially filed for an IPO in late 2021.
Operators to Know (Locally):
Ariana Breckner, Sales Development, Lead
Tim Brodeur, Global Head of GxP Solutions
Michael Chi, Implementation Manager, GxP
Madelyn Myers Cossette, Regional Lead, Professional Services
Kristopher Friday, Head of Worldwide Solution Consulting
Holli Kenison, Leader, Optimization Services
Julie Hundley, Implementation Manager
Noah Langowitz, Software Engineer
Ami Mehr, Head of Global Customer Experience
Elizabeth Mueller, Leader, Professional Services
Kaylyn McManus, Support Team Leader
Karl Sandwich, Engineering Manager
Kevin Tolin Scheper, Global Head of Professional Services
Taylor Skolnik, Leader, Customer Success
Eesha Shirolkar, Engagement Manager
Kayla Tannock, Implementation Manager
Federica Torri, Head of Managed Services
My investigative powers continue to need work so apologies to the Benchling team I know I missed many up & coming operators internally
Key Roles To Be Hired (Locally):
If I were interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:
What are the key platform features needed to scale to the next level of customer adoption?
What are the biggest opportunities and challenges for the year ahead?
How are new team members onboarded? What is the mix of in person vs. remote for a software company building for a biotechnology customer base?
What are the most important roles you’ll be looking to add in for the rest of 2023 // teams that need the most help?
We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about Benchling you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team bring more biotechnology research into the digital age. Humanity applauds your efforts. See you around local research labs, the Internet, and beyond!
Joe Haftel, Implemenation Project Manager @ Paperless Parts
Career Summary / Building Cross Functional Relationships / Career Learnings
Joe Haftel is a customer focused leader who keeps an open perspective, from sales to project management to implementation, in order to find a perfect fit helping customers implement software to grow their businesses. As the Implementation Project Manager at Paperless Parts, Joe is helping machine shops throughout the U.S. digitize and adapt to meet the needs of tomorrow.
Growing up in Nashua, NH as the youngest of three children, Joe learned a lot from his two talented older sisters. His parents were both engineers who studied and met at RPI. Fortunate to have grown up in a technically minded family, he wanted to use his knowledge to help mentor others. He attended UConn and graduated as a Molecular Biology major. From an early age he sought out mentorship and finding ways to give back. Even today he volunteers as a high school football coach on the weekends to help others grow. Startups offer a similar promise.
Realizing as he neared graduation that a career in biology wasn’t quite a perfect fit, he went to Bentley to get his MBA or “Undergrad Part 2” as he calls it. From Bentley he transitioned into startups, working for a local seed stage startup called Avrio AI. Avrio AI was building an AI recruiting software platform and Joe started as one of their first BDRs, working closely with Marketing to bring on their early customers. The team of 10 worked tirelessly but the product was not quite ready for primetime.
He wondered if he was even cut out for startups or tech sales. Next, he found an opportunity with Zoovu, an commerce platform building a product finder for online retailers. When they encountered some COVID headwinds, Joe joined Datadog’s commercial sales team. He loved the fast growing environment and learned a ton about prospecting, but he was still seeking a slightly different role that allowed him to work with customers over a longer time horizon.
Wanting to gain more experience in the realm of project management, he pivoted to a role at Beth Israel Medical Deaconess Center. He loved the problem solving elements of this larger organization and realized he thrives in problem solving environments with limited resources - i.e. startup environments.
Joe returned to the venture backed growth stage via a fast growing Boston based vertical software company serving manufacturers called Paperless Parts. Paperless Parts is a manufacturing quoting software platform that is helping the rapidly reshoring manufacturing industry with the digital tools it needs to grow.
As an Implementation Project Manager, Joe gets to be the primary customer contact on Day 1. He helps put dedicated plans in place to onboard customers and lead the training of the platform for new clients. He gets to demonstrate his product knowledge and act as a liaison between engineering, customer teams, and clients as they move from implementation to fully ramped customers.
Joe will lead client calls, establish configuration specs, and make sure that timelines & expectations are clarified. Joe is responsible for ensuring that customers are properly positioned before they are introduced to the Customer Success team. He’s responsible for building out their growing handover processes, already having completed 50+ customer implementations. Through those experiences he’s built relationships and processes to ensure that their product is best positioned to provide a white glove experience and get every ounce of his effort from the time investment.
Success Lies in Building Cross Functional Relationships
The best advice Joe has received that he’d give to himself or anyone else getting into startups is to make yourself cross functional from the very beginning. Joe has made a personal effort to meet all the sales people he works with across implementation so he can understand the go to market side of the business as well as the various challenges and opportunities within the team.
He makes himself available as a go to resource to become more well rounded and trusted on the front lines with clients. In order to do his job best he must understand the perspectives of his colleagues in sales, customer success, engineering and product. By knowing their perspective, the roadmap priorities, and responsibilities of his counterparts he can better facilitate actionable conversations with clients and lead with transparency by leveraging the full knowledge of the organization.
3 Career Insights / Learnings
Keep an Open Perspective - “Whatever role you start out with, don’t think that’s the only role you’ll have. Be open minded and be understanding about what you like in each role you’re doing. And be open to opportunities. Be transparent with your manager too. Understand your pros and cons of what you like and don’t like in your role.”
Know the Values - “Make sure you know the company values. Even if the job is good or the pay is good, it’s important to have an idea of the leadership group and their priorities to better understand the company and its values too”
Vocalizing Optionality - “Understand the potential paths forward. Coming in open minded and being able to assess what you really want is critical. If you come into a more generalized role like a BDR role, be aware of what’s going on outside of your day to day and talk to management to put it out in the universe what you’re looking for”
Eventually, Joe would love to lead a Services team, running implementations and working with customers. He’s always thinking cross functionally about how he can help support his sales & engineering counterparts. As he continues to gain skills he’ll look to take on more leadership opportunities and ideally the opportunity to build out his own team one day.
For more about Joe you can find him on LinkedIn or commuting up to New Hampshire to coach leadership & win some football games on the weekends. Thanks for sharing Joe. Excited to see the manufacturers and future solutions oriented customers you help digitize in the years ahead.
Any feedback for me? One thing you liked? One thing you didn’t? Local startups or operators to highlight? Just reply to this e-mail!
See you next week!
-Matt