A start-up which claimed its platform and app could transform science and save taxpayers millions has raised £1 million from angel investors.
London-based Labstep, backed by European investor Seedcamp, has developed a record-keeping tool for scientists that will mean less research is wasted and more discoveries are brought to market.
The funding will be used to double Labstep’s team to 12, launch a marketplace for lab supplies and add features that streamline how scientists will outsource elements of their research.
“Today’s fundraise is a key milestone for Labstep, and a stamp of credibility for our product’s vision and execution,” said founder and CEO Jake Schofield.
The platform lets scientists record, track and share their research in an easy-to-use way, which could end up saving taxpayers millions.
It is on a mission to solve a major crisis in the world of science which renders 50 per cent of results from papers as worthless because they cannot be reproduced.
Schofield added: “With Labstep we know that we are saving scientists time and money; if we can improve reproducibility this will not only have a huge impact for science, but also for the wider world.
“Half of these potentially disruptive discoveries cannot be validated, so even a small increase in these reaching the public could be profound.”
Labstep has users from over 600 universities globally including, Stanford, Harvard and MIT in the US, and Oxford, University College London, Imperial College, King’s College and the Crick Institute in the UK.
Its user base is growing 15 per cent month on month completely organically.
In an interview with BusinessCloud in April, Schofield said despite the experiments taking place in multi-million-pound research environments, the vast majority are still recorded on pen and paper.
“A colossal amount of money is spent on research each year – billions,” he said. “In some cases over half of the output is wasted because it can’t be reproduced.
“A huge amount of time, effort and money is wasted because the results can’t be validated so they’re effectively worthless. It will have a drastic effect on the scientific community if we can improve the statistics around this. There will be knock-on effects for the world at large.”