Chuck Witkowski : Protein Discovery

This past Monday night my classmates and I visited Chuck Witkowski at his company Protein Discovery on Gay St. Chuck is a young guy, 33, who started his company fresh out of graduate school in 2004. His initial funding and projects were based on government SBIR grants (Small Business Innovation Research). If you have never heard of SBIR grants you should look into it! Its an amazing program that just hands out free money to small businesses!!! Anyway, Protein Discovery is a life science tools company that makes instruments for scientific research, specifically Chuck's company makes tools to prepare samples for protein analysis. Protein analysis can be used to test for cancer, drugs, drug targets, things like that. Their main customers are academic researchers at universities and national labs as well as some industry researchers at bio tech and pharmaceutical companies.


Chuck's story seemed to really be all about determination and perseverance. During his last 6 months of graduate school he wrote 24 SBIR proposals to try and get funding to start his company. He was granted 2 of them and began work with another recent graduate and a researcher from ORNL to develop the technology he had licensed from the lab. After a while it became apparent that the technology just was not going to work like they had hoped so Chuck returned it to the lab and started from scratch trying to develop something new that would meet the market need they had identified. He was able to get a few more SBIR grants during that time. The company was struggling financially when they finally landed a venture capital deal out of Memphis. The same week that protein discovery finalized a deal with the venture capitalist firm Chucks partner decided to take a more stable job. Chuck thought for sure that the VC firm would back out of the deal but they didnt and he was able to continue work to develop his product. Chuck said the key to Protein Discoveries success was his ability to find and involve people who were smarter and experienced than he was. His management team consists of seasoned entrepreneurs who have grown similar companies. Protein Discoveries first product was called the passport system it was a machine that prepared samples for protein analysis using disposable cartridges. The price point of the product was high at around $50,000. The product did not take hold in the market place like Protein Discoveries Management had hoped and again the company was in trouble financially. Luckily the scientists at Protein Discovery had been working in the back room to develop a smaller and more affordable system. This machine is called the Gelfree. The new system costs around $15,000 and also has disposable cartridges. The business model for this product is similar to the famous HP printer model. The company makes very little on the initial purchase of the machine but receives recurring revenue from the continuous purchase of the sample cartridges. The new product was only recently released but seems to be having much more success in the marketplace. Protein Discovery has also recently been in conversations with a large company about potential partnership or acquisition.