Berlin, Oct. 17, 2013 – Vogel Ventures, IBB Ventures and the business angel Jan Bohl invest a high six-figure sum in labfolder.
labfolder is developing a digital laboratory notebook for scientists – „the Evernote for researchers,“ as the three founders Simon Bungers, Florian Hauer and Mathias Schäffner state it. In research laboratories, scientists have to document their experiments and plan and record their results accurately. Still today, paper notebooks and loose collections of digital data are predominant. labfolder allows documentation on a unified digital platform, where digital scientific data can be used for simplified analysis and communication. labfolder is currently implementing novel algorithms for easier search and comparison of laboratory processes. Thus, labfolder will be able to suggest optimized experiments based on data available from previous processes.
For further development and extension, labfolder attracted three renowned partners and raised a high six-figure investment.
Vogel Ventures is the investment vehicle of the German expert media company Vogel Business Media. As an international publisher, more than 100 print media such as Laborpraxis (www.laborpraxis.de) and Process (www.process-worldwide.com) and over 100 established industry platforms online are part of their portfolio. Vogel Ventures invests primarily in start-ups that develop innovative B2B solutions for the markets addressed by Vogel Business Media. „labfolder innovates a business sector that we observe with the greatest attention in our expert media: Pharma IT, healthcare IT and IT Lab. The combination of science and digital business was our decisive point for this investment,“ says Matthias Bauer, Board Member of Vogel Ventures.
IBB Venture Capital, one of the most active early-stage financers in Germany, invests in labfolder with their VC Fonds Technologie. IBB Venture Capital was convinced by the team who offer both technical knowledge from research and IT as well as founding experience. labfolder clearly adds value for scientists, and introduces modern concepts in the field of research and development: „With labfolder there is now a modern digital lab notebook available which integrates the latest trends and technologies to allow users an intuitive and comfortable working experience. Also, information security and confidentiality are ensured by the use of professional data centers in Europe“ Clemens Kabel, General Manager at IBB Venture Capital explains.
Business angel Jan Bohl, one of the first investors in start-ups such as SoundCloud and antibodies-online, brings in expertise from different areas. First and foremost, Jan Bohl will support labfolder in the areas of academic sales and internationalization. „The U.S. is one of the largest research markets in the world. Here I see a huge potential for labfolder. „
With the raised capital, labfolder now aims on growing the team: from 6 current employees, the team is expected to grow to 10 by the end of the year and to 15 employees by mid 2014. Currently, labfolder is recruiting full-time front-end and Java developers, as well as offering internships.
Also by the end of this year, the first market version of labfolder, which is currently in an open beta stage, will be released to build a broad user community. „Our goal is to design a tool for millions of laboratory scientists in the world that supports them in their daily work at the bench: labfolder is easy to use, facilitates collaboration with other scientists and simply makes a lot more out of your data. Our new platform is significantly different from the difficult-to-use documentation and archiving systems that currently dominate the market,“ says labfolder CEO Simon Bungers. „labfolder will be the operating system for laboratory research. All the brilliant minds at the institutes, universities and research companies that solve complex tasks every day with high-tech equipment deserve better than a lot of paperwork and software that has been developed without really looking at the needs of the scientists.“
Bildrechte: Profund/FU Berlin
labfolder is a documentation and planning tool for laboratory research. At www.labfolder.com scientists can easily plan their experiments, document their data and collaborate with other scientists. labfolder is free for individual scientists and small research groups. Once labfolder is ready for the market, premium groups will be introduced with which research labs can acquire more space, more group members and advanced collaboration functionality for a monthly fee.
In 2013, the labfolder GmbH with its headquarters in Berlin was founded by Simon Bungers (PhD molecular biologist, Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine, Göttingen, previously co-founder of www.sox-n-boxers.de), Florian Hauer (PhD biophysicist, MPI for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen) and Mathias Schäffner (software architect, previously co-founder of praktium.info which was sold to Absolventa in 2009).
Already in 2012 at an early stage, labfolder had raised an EXIST founder´s fellowship from the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology and was supported by profund, the founding support programme of the Free University of Berlin. labfolder received awards in several business plan competitions, including Science4Life, start2grow and the Business Plan competition of Berlin-Brandenburg.
Kontakt:
labfolder GmbH
Simon Bungers
Malteser Str. 74-100
12249 Berlin
01776014270
contact@labfolder.com
http://www.labfolder.com