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    A Lab-or Of Love: A Laboratory Start-up

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    If you have that insatiable thirst for breaking new boundaries and trying to acquire new ways to develop new technology, the laboratory start-up venture is the approach that will suit your needs. While there are plenty of similarities to a typical startup venture, it isn’t the same as a standard business. Yes, in effect, it is a business, but the goal of making profit isn’t the overriding feature. If you are passionate about developing new ways to find a way to treat a disease or you have a personal interest in helping your fellow human, this is the avenue to go down.

    Creating The Lab

    For every sort of business, the first place to go is to acquire the business funding, and you need to get your business head on at this point to get the lab off the ground. This means getting your business plan foolproof and making sure your executive summary catches the eye of any potential investors. With a lab, this is more than a superstore or ecommerce start-up, this is about developing new methods to combat disease or to find methods to help mankind, in no uncertain terms. R&D is the backbone of any growing laboratory startup, so you need physical proof that the money will go towards beneficial solutions. They are organizations like Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and the Small Business Technology Transfer (SBTT) programs which provide government grants which fund your business, but you will need to meet certain criteria to be considered for the funding. This does, in effect, mean you need to decide on what avenue to go down, but this will be largely dictated by your own passions and abilities to find the appropriate staff.

    Supply Methods

    If you look at www. HeraBioLabs.com services, you can see they are an organization that provides specific supplies for the purposes of research and development, notably using SCID rats as well as engineered cell lines. Depending on your own funding at the start you may wish to align yourself with an organization that can provide the supplies you need right off the bat. Of course, this is good business sense when you need to align yourself with the right companies and organizations that will bolster your name. As your lab grows, you need to prepare for expanding your operation especially to meet certain requirements as the typical start-up lab is usually wanting for a permanent space as many laps startups need to keep reapplying for funding on a regular basis.

    Hiring The Right Personnel

    As an entrepreneur, you should be aware of the specific employment and labor laws. But when it comes to hiring research talent you can go via the conventional channels or through talent acquisition resources such as the BioNJ, which is only available in New Jersey. But there are also ways through sites like on www.Linkedin.com as well as networking through the appropriate events.

    As running a lab start-up is similar to running a business, you still have to have all the feasible organizational methods in place. But you also need to have one eye on the bigger picture, so the one thing to take away from this is to have the right people on board that knows what they’re talking about. So if you, as an entrepreneur, don’t have what it takes it, make sure you surround yourself with the right people so you can build an efficient and productive laboratory.