Laboratory space, equipment & expertise
BenchSwap
Founder & CEO · 2026–present
Laboratory space that fits the research
I started BenchSwap after struggling to find a few hundred square feet of lab space in San Diego while whole laboratory buildings sat empty. Traditional leases are built for multi-year commitments, yet nimble research teams often just need a place to run a project for a few weeks or months—with the flexibility to add an incubator or a shaker if the protocol calls for it, or bring in a specialist for a few hours of advice without building a whole facility of their own.
I built BenchSwap to pull those pieces together—bench space, modular equipment, cold storage, and scientific support—around a team’s next milestone. I incorporated the company, recruited an operations cofounder, engaged an EH&S specialist, built the financial models and partner network, and directed AI coding agents to build our website and software prototypes. That work has progressed from an initial concept to a live public beta, our first placed customer, an agreed recurring placement fee, and our first invoice.
Modular access built around the experiment
The goal was to bring Airbnb-style flexibility to how modern science gets done—letting a university spinout, a grant winner, or an early startup step into lab space for weeks or months, layer on shared or dedicated instruments, and bring in specialist input or contract lab support when it doesn’t make sense to do everything in-house. Because an experiment keeps running between visits—living cells stay in an incubator and samples stay in cold storage even on days the researcher is elsewhere—BenchSwap starts with what a team wants to prove, what gear it already owns, and what fits its budget.
Turning outreach into our first commercial arrangement
To reach teams before a conventional lease search, I tailored offers for founder communities, university programs, real-estate brokers, and equipment suppliers. Our first placed customer came directly from an introduction I wrote for a San Diego founder community. When host terms, equipment timing, and a high minimum insurance quote made contracting directly impractical for a single small placement, I pivoted—introducing the team to a host facility that could lease to them directly, negotiating a recurring placement fee on the rent, and issuing BenchSwap’s first invoice.
Alongside space placements, I specified modular equipment packages for suppliers to price, proposed a shared move for a group of biotech startups, and agreed on referral terms by email with a laboratory-services partner while preparing the final agreement and site listings.
Disciplined economics and adaptable software
My financial models kept us from spending ahead of demand—delaying hiring until revenue supported it, requiring customer demand before taking on vacant buildings, and separating our core space-and-equipment service from future procurement and lab-management ideas. On the product side, directing AI coding agents let me rapidly prototype modular space, equipment, and specialist configurators, learn from researchers how lab setups differ from simple property listings, and launch a guided, experiment-first intake on our live site so we could focus on closing real arrangements first.
Experience used here
Company building · Customer discovery · Channel & partnership development · Commercial negotiation · Financial & capacity modeling · Product specification · AI-assisted software development