Our guest for this episode is Byonoy Chief Sales Officer Colten Wimmer, to talk to us about the Absorbance 96 Automate device that won the New Product Award at SLAS2023!
Wimmer walks us through the design and applications for the product which is the world's first on-deck plate reader. Discover how Absorbance 96 Automate's small footprint and z-axis serviceability facilitates its easy integration, allowing servicing by a wide range of robotic systems, from traditional decks to state-of-the-art modular systems.
Key Learning Points:
Learn more about the Absorbance 96 Automate by visiting: https://byonoy.com/absorbance-automate/
Full transcript available on Buzzsprout.
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About SLAS
SLAS (Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening) is an international professional society of academic, industry and government life sciences researchers and the developers and providers of laboratory automation technology. The SLAS mission is to bring together researchers in academia, industry and government to advance life sciences discovery and technology via education, knowledge exchange and global community building.
Upcoming SLAS Events:
SLAS Europe 2024 Conference and Exhibition
SLAS 2024 Microscale Innovation in Life Sciences Symposium
SLAS 2024 Sample Management Symposium
SLAS 2024 Data Sciences and AI Symposium
Our guest for this episode is Byonoy Chief Sales Officer Colten Wimmer, to talk to us about the Absorbance 96 Automate device that won the New Product Award at SLAS2023!
Wimmer walks us through the design and applications for the product which is the world's first on-deck plate reader. Discover how Absorbance 96 Automate's small footprint and z-axis serviceability facilitates its easy integration, allowing servicing by a wide range of robotic systems, from traditional decks to state-of-the-art modular systems.
Key Learning Points:
Learn more about the Absorbance 96 Automate by visiting: https://byonoy.com/absorbance-automate/
Full transcript available on Buzzsprout.
Take our Podcast Survey!
We want to hear from YOU to ensure we keep providing valuable content that reflects what our listeners and the SLAS community are interested in! Take our brief survey to help us learn how we can improve New Matter.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BD7BC82
Stay connected with SLAS
About SLAS
SLAS (Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening) is an international professional society of academic, industry and government life sciences researchers and the developers and providers of laboratory automation technology. The SLAS mission is to bring together researchers in academia, industry and government to advance life sciences discovery and technology via education, knowledge exchange and global community building.
Upcoming SLAS Events:
SLAS Europe 2024 Conference and Exhibition
SLAS 2024 Microscale Innovation in Life Sciences Symposium
SLAS 2024 Sample Management Symposium
SLAS 2024 Data Sciences and AI Symposium
00:00:04 Hannah Rosen:
Hello everyone and welcome to New Matter, the SLAS podcast where we interview life science luminaries. I'm your host, Hannah Rosen, and today we are joined by Colton Wimmer, chief sales officer at Byonoy. Byonoy won the SLAS2023 New Product Award for their Absorbance 96 Automate. Welcome, Colton.
00:00:23 Colton Wimmer:
Yeah. Thank you very much, thanks for having me. Pleasure to be on.
00:00:26 Hannah Rosen:
It's our pleasure to have you. So to start us off, Colton, can you just kind of give us a little bit about your professional background and your areas of expertise?
00:00:35 Colton Wimmer:
Yeah, sure. So, I originally studied biochemistry, although my stint as a biochemist was quite brief as I realized pretty early on that my interests lay more in industry and sort of, you know, particularly on the business side of things. What does it take to, you know, run a company, build up a business? So I sort of ended up starting working at a startup. Which was this company actually, Byonoy, and sort of I've been doing that for the for the last while, basically since my transition I guess from science to more the science based industry like, put it that way. So, I would say my professional background is mostly on the business side of things now, although, like I said, it is good to have those fundamentals in biochemistry, yeah, as a foundation for the work that I do as well.
00:01:21 Hannah Rosen:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm always shocked when I meet people who work in, like, sales who have no idea about the science behind the product they're selling. It always baffles my mind. Like, how can you sell something if you don't understand what it is you're selling? So I think that probably gives you a bit of an advantage.
00:01:39 Colton Wimmer:
Yeah, it is an interesting approach. I've also met similar people at trade shows and conferences and I know it's not our approach. I guess it, you know, may have its charms, but yeah, no, we definitely feel that we need to understand our products. We need to understand the applications, we need to understand our user base and that's sort of an essential part of, you know, being able to tailor our products to the needs of our users as. Well, and sort of really connect with them on a different level as well, right? So, I think if you're discussing something about an assay and of course users, they have questions, there are service inquiries.
00:02:14 Colton Wimmer:
And although we're a, you know, a device manufacturer, it's basically it's pretty much, you know, an inevitability that someone's gonna ask you a question at some point related to your assay. And if we're all just sort of like, you know, engineers sitting here, You know, we can get into a bit of trouble. So, like I said, it's very helpful and I think all of our all of our sales people and even marketing people as well have that scientific background to, like I said, to just give them a bit of a base to connect better with our users.
00:02:40 Hannah Rosen:
Yeah. Fantastic. So, you know, first of all, congratulations to you guys for winning the new product award at SAS 2023. How do you guys feel about your win?
00:02:55 Colton Wimmer:
Yeah. Thank you very much. We were really ecstatic, so it was a huge honor to win the New Product Award. We actually won the new product award at SLAS Europe back in 2019 for our first product, which was Absorbance 96. So, without the automate part. And even back, then I mean the competition wasn't as stiff as it was this time, so back then I remember actually posted it, we were a much smaller company back then, but I posted it on our slack channel that we won the New Product Award. Nobody actually believed me. So they were like, yeah, it's very funny. I was like, no, no, I'm serious. Like, I had to call them and inform them that I was being serious.
00:03:30 Colton Wimmer:
But this time it was definitely real. We were there, we were in San Diego and it was like I said, a special honor to win the New Product Award, especially considering when we were up against. So there was a lot of competition. There were many companies with great products and yeah, like I said, we were sitting there and they announced they announced our name and the announcer said, I'm not sure how to pronounce this, and I already knew we had won because everyone always has trouble pronouncing our name. So yeah, like I said, it was a particular pleasure and really a wonderful surprise to win the award in San Diego.
00:04:06 Hannah Rosen:
Wonderful. And how was your overall experience at SLAS2023 at the conference as a whole?
00:04:13 Colton Wimmer:
It was great. I mean sort of overwhelming in many different ways. I mean, we showed up there with only two people. So I was there, with our CEO, Yusuf and we were like, we didn't really know what to expect as we had been there in 2020, actually as part of the Innovation AveNEW. So and at that point we were also there with two people and it was pretty busy. And we're like, OK, I think we can handle this with two people, but we were completely. Overwhelmed and exhausted by the end of the show and just due to the sheer number of people who showed up to our booths, so it was really surprising and there were multiple occasions where we had a line up of people waiting to talk to us and it was that it was tough to sort of grapple with losing all of those people and dealing with all of the newcomers.
00:05:01 Colton Wimmer:
So we weren't able to speak to everyone. And I mean, we didn't even get to walk around and look at any of the other booths when we were there. So we were at our stand the entire time. But like I said, the overall experience was fantastic, exhausting. It was, I guess, a whirlwind if you want to put it that way because we were just so busy the whole time that we didn't really have time to even think about, think about what was going on. I mean, the response to... and people from everyone who was there was really positive and we had people taking selfies with our products at our booth and, I don't know, was just a really special experience, so I'm really glad that that we got to, I got to experience.
00:05:39 Hannah Rosen:
Sure. Yeah. Well, I guess you're just gonna have to come back to SLAS2024 with a bigger crew to make up for all the booths you missed out on getting to see last this past year.
00:05:50 Colton Wimmer:
That's exactly the plan. So we actually, we've already booked our stands. We also got a little bit more space than we had. So we can host all of the people who are interested in our products. And yeah, who knows there may be a maybe another new product being launched in SLAS next year, but we'll see.
00:06:09 Hannah Rosen:
Oh, I love that, I love that air of intrigue just keep us interested. I love it. So can you, you know, kind of just briefly describe for us, you know, what is this award-winning product, the Absorbance 96 Automate?
00:06:25 Colton Wimmer:
Yeah. So, Absorbance 96 was our first product, which is sort of a standalone microplate reader, benchtop microblade reader, and Absorbance 96 Automate is basically a version of that original device or liquid handling systems or for automated systems. So it is the world's first on deck microplate reader module. Well, I'm sure you're familiar with other modules or everybody likes to talk about modules in the automation space, and essentially what I mean is, you know, there are these modules like the small heaters and shakers from like a Qinstruments, or Inpeco, or the OTC has sort of established itself as a brand name as well in automation. Also from Inpeco the on deck thermocycler. And sort of analogous to those products, our device is an on deck module, meaning it sits on an SBS position on deck, but it's a readout module, so it's a microplate reader for assets in 96 well format. And it can be integrated as part of, you know, a liquid handling system. So on deck or with any other sort of automated platform.
00:07:30 Hannah Rosen:
So what makes this Absorbance 96 automate so new and innovative?
00:07:36 Colton Wimmer:
I think the main thing that makes it innovative is probably just the general approach that we take to interacting with automated systems and sort of how we were able to save space with the instrument. So I think those were the two general questions was like, OK, how we want to we we have the general concept we want to integrate this on deck. We want to integrate with automated systems and we just had to come up with sort of an answer as to how to solve that issue and then also how to solve the issue if you're making it a practical solution for the user as well. So I think our first goal was really having a seamless integration experience for the user with our device. So, you know, we didn't want to have any sort of technician come and have to install it for the customer and charge them, you know, an egregious fee. We basically wanted this to be something that the customer could also just sort of put on deck, you know, plug and play as it is with our current device, with the stand alone version.
00:08:38 Colton Wimmer:
And, you know, as I know more, you may or may not know many current microplate reader solutions work with sort of some type of automatic tray, it's a sort of like a CD player. It ejects the microplate from the reader so that the gripper can access it, you know, have to pick it up from the top or coming in the X axis. And our approach was more to say, OK, how can we leverage the already existing machinery of the liquid handler to essentially do that job for us, right? So we have basically a a solid-state technology. So there are no moving parts, no tray, nothing mechanical really inside the device. And we thought, OK, why build in a mechanical tray at another mechanical part into our device, when we're placing the device on deck of some of the most sophisticated machinery in the world, right?
00:09:23 Colton Wimmer:
So I really like that approach. I thought it was very elegant, sort of saying, you know, we can use existing infrastructure or leverage existing infrastructure to create a new product. So that's what drove us to come up with sort of this separable design, right. So the way our device works is the top and the bottom. And the gripper basically takes the top part, moves it off of the bottom part. The plate is then placed on that sort of bottom part of the device and then the top is put back on.
00:09:46 Colton Wimmer:
That's sort of the workflow. This means that there's no additional hardware necessary, so we were able to focus really focus like I said, on the idea of easy integration. So making you know the device incorporated onto a single SBS position, you can use the existing gripper. If that's part of your liquid handling system or any automated system. And what we also tried to do is use the most modern standards. So for example, we implemented a Sila 2 interface for communication with the device. We also have an automatic measurement feature. So basically you use a lab ware description, you can place the reader on an SBS position, press go you without a driver from you know your liquid handling manufacturer or a scheduler or anything, right? So it can just it can just read and read and read and read and read and auto export the data.
00:10:35 Colton Wimmer:
So like I said, that was sort of the first thing. The first challenge that we had and I would say the first innovation. And the second point was definitely just saving space on deck, right? So how is it possible to build a reader that only occupies a single SBS position on deck? So that was probably the second challenge and definitely one of the innovations that the device contains and thankfully we had already developed the core concept with our previous product as I mentioned, which was Absorbance 96 and we basically had to find a way to adopt the automate version which has a separable lid. And again, the basic idea of the technology is that we where other devices that, you know, they usually work with some type of scanning mechanism.
00:11:16 Colton Wimmer:
Like I said, there's a tray. There's, there are motors moving parts that move things around the plate around inside the device, or move sort of a detector scanning and back and forth inside the device. Whereas we sort of have 96 of everything. So we have 96 effectively create 96 light sources in the topping part device. And then we have an array of 96 detectors in the bottom of the instrument so that you know that sort of Multiplex electronic setup and that allows us to forego any of those types of moving parts. And like I said, sort of create a solid-state system which allows us to save a lot of space, right? So if you're, if you're moving the micro blade back and forth, for example, underneath scatter you automatically need double the area of the microplate. But like I said, if you just have one light source, one detector per well. Blade you can sort of just do everything in parallel and that allowed us to save a huge amount of space with the original instrument with Absorbence 96. And like I said, sort of adopting that technology which brough some challenges with it for sure, making the two units separable things with like alignment, I know that our development team definitely had a few challenges to solve there. But that design in general just allows us to save a huge amount of space on deck, and you know, I think. We like where we say that we're the first on deck microplate reader, right, but technically you put anything on deck, so people sometimes I get people like. No, no, we already have a microplate reader on deck like yes, but if it's taking up 60% of your of your deck, I'm not really, really sure is this. Is that really a practical solution? So like I said, we were really those are probably the two biggest innovations that we had sort of this idea of easy integration and just the fact that it occupies only a single SBS position on deck.
00:13:00 Hannah Rosen:
And I would imagine too that by removing a lot of those moving parts, you're reducing the likelihood of needing to have IT service. You know, the less things that move, I'm sure the less things that can break or you know not work properly. So it, I would imagine that it also makes it a little bit more easy to use and thus needing all that constant service that you can sometimes get with moving parts.
00:13:24 Colton Wimmer:
Yeah, I mean, it does definitely make it more robust as a piece of technology, I mean solid-state, right, we I sort of stole that term from hard drives, right? You had the sort of the SATA disk based drives in the past and then everyone moved to SSD which you know stands for solid-state drive and I thought that OK, that's actually what we're doing with microplate readers as well, right? Sort of adopting a traditional technology that's based on moving parts and we're creating a solid-state version of that. So there really are no moving parts in the device, it's just everything sort of soldered onto the main board and that does mean that it is maintenance free. So that's also our goal with the instruments is, you know, there are no mechanical parts that needs to be need to be changed during the lifetime of the device. The LED's have like 20,000 now or lifetime. They're not going to need to be exchanged during the lifetime of the instrument. So that is that's definitely an astute observation and is something that is a I guess it wasn't our intention when we built the device, but it's sort of a happy coincidence that it turns out that that technology is just requires very little maintenance and essentially no service.
00:14:31 Hannah Rosen:
Love those happy accidents.
00:14:33 Colton Wimmer:
Yeah, exactly.
00:14:35 Hannah Rosen:
Great. So you know you've obviously, already alluded to a few of these, but are there any other advantages to having this sort of solid-state on deck microplate reader as opposed to some of these more traditional plate readers that have been available?
00:14:52 Colton Wimmer:
Yeah, I have spoiled the few of the advantages I guess, but there are still a few I think I haven't mentioned. I think I mentioned the idea or this concept of easy integration. I talked about it more from an innovation standpoint, right? That was something we wanted to make possible. That is just very easy for the customer to integrate into their existing system. But, you know, what does that mean from an advantage perspective, or even from a cost perspective? So I think that's something that's important to touch on, again is the idea of easy integration. Because in the way this currently works like let's say you have microplay reader X and you have a I don't know a Hamilton liquid handler and you go to Hamilton, you say yeah, I have a microplate reader, you know, maybe it's a little older model and say I want to integrate it with my workflow, right? And that starts a procedure that can last quite a long time, that's going to incur a lot of costs and in some cases just won't be possible compatibility issues or various other reasons.
00:15:48 Colton Wimmer:
So I think our value proposition of saying that you can just place this onto an SBS position on deck and sort of have this plug and play set up with the software. That is a goal, especially with the automatic measurement capability that we have in our software right now. Essentially removing all of those processes that would otherwise be involved in integrating any type of reader into your workflow, especially if you're not already working with some type of flexible schedule or something like that. So I would say that's one big advantage of the device is just being able to implement it very quickly, very easily and without a lot of sort of, I guess you could called them third party or intermediary costs.
00:16:31 Colton Wimmer:
And then I guess the second part of that as well is, which is also connected obviously to easy integration is you don't need any third party hardware to actually implement solutions, so you know in a lot of cases you will see a setup where you have a liquid handler and the liquid handling the heading and whichever other steps are needed for a given assay. Then you'll have a robotic arm, for example, that will take because most of the grippers, liquid handlers can only sort of do, you know Z axis and X axis movements, X, Y, and Z but they can't actually pass a a microplate outside of the liquid handler, right? So you need a separate arm that can do that or in some cases. the liquid handling manufacturers have custom grippers or they have a different gripper in their portfolio that will allow you to do that, so that basically means that either you're going to have to purchase a different gripper for your liquid handler or you're going to have to purchase a robotic arm as the microplate reader is now going to sit external to your liquid handler. Best case scenario, your able to, you know, find the table, put the microplate reader next to your liquid handler. And like I said, the tray can open up far enough inside the liquid handler that the gripper from the liquid handler is able to access the microplate on that tray.
00:17:45 Colton Wimmer:
But again, you're still going to need some way to communicate between both of those devices. And like I said, we basically remove the need for any type of third party hardware, so all of that, like I said, you don't need a robotic arm to connect those two worlds to each other where you have this you don't need to table where you have a microplate reader sitting next to your liquid handler, so you're also saving space within your own environment. And of course, saving up third party hardware. What does that mean? It means you're saving on costs. So even the, try to avoid mentioning brand names here, but some of the some of the grippers that you can purchase that do give you the ability to pass things either off deck or sometimes underneath the deck. They can, you know, cost eighty grand. So providing a reader at this price point that basically allows you to get rid of all those kind of messy bits is definitely a big part of the advantages of our solution.
00:18:42 Hannah Rosen:
I mean, yeah, that's a lot of advantages for sure, but are there any maybe like, disadvantages to using this system?
00:18:50 Colton Wimmer:
Yeah, I think when talking about disadvantages, I guess talking about advantages, you always compare it to something else, right? I think the disadvantages, you sort of have the same thing. So if we compare our device to other single mode on deck microplate reader, the situation looks pretty good, right? So again there isn't, actually, no competition, which I think is also something we faced with our first instrument, or we would always get people like how does it compare to other readers on the market, like what other single mode readers that have this form factor? There really aren't any, we're not really comparable with the traditional ones in such a different technology. But you know, I'm not going to evade the question. So there are there definitely are a few disadvantages I guess.
00:19:37 Colton Wimmer:
So you're going to have to put up with some of the limitations that are inherent in the small size of the instrument. So just to give you an example, it's very difficult to offer UV wavelengths in such a small form factor, so just the nature of the way that the device is built on the way the optical unit works. We would love to offer a device that could measure 260 nanometers or 280 nanometers for nucleic acid quantitation or protein quantification but currently just the design of our object doesn't allow for it, so I would say you know, if you're working with the traditional microplate reader or you know any micro reader that may have a micrometer where you have a little bit more wavelength flexibility or you're working with the system that can get down into those lower wavelengths, shorter wavelengths than, you know, I say that could be a potential disadvantage, right? So there is going to be a more, I guess, a more limited suite of assays or applications that you can cover with this system compared to like I said, maybe a more flexible system.
00:20:40 Colton Wimmer:
And I can't really think of any other particular disadvantages. As, you know, if you start comparing microplate leaders, it's sort of a never ending thing that you can do. It's not really a game I play because you know, for example, there are single mode readers, there are multi mode readers, right? So are you going to compare single mode readers to other single mode readers? Then I would say that's probably we probably covered the only disadvantage, but then if you start, you know, comparing single mode readers to Multi Mode readers, that's a a different ball game, but like so I'm going to restrict it to single mode readers because I feel like that's the competition we're talking about. So yeah, like, that's probably the only disadvantage I'm gonna allow us today.
00:21:23 Hannah Rosen:
That's totally fair. So if people are currently, you know, running their assays, they have their, you know, their protocols all laid out, but then they want to switch over to using this Absorbance 96 Automate, are there any adaptations to the pre-existing assay protocols that they would need to consider in order to use or integrate the Absorbance 96 Automate into their workflows?
00:21:49 Colton Wimmer:
I guess it depends on what you mean by protocol and if you have like a like a workflow defined like an automated workflow defined, yes, a readout is not part of that automated process, right? If that's something that you're doing at the end of an automated heading workflow and you haven't had readout integrated into that automation process, you know, I mean there, there are a lot of cases where you see people that will do a pipetting workflow or they will automate their pipetting workflow on a liquid handler and then they'll walk up it to the liquid handler and then they take the plate and they go put it in there microplate reader, right. So in those situations, of course you would have to adapt the protocol to include the readout step, you would have to integrate our instrument on deck of your handler, but if you already have some type of readout step involved, I guess the only thing you would have to to change would be you know, integrating our reader and, you know, whatever software requirements come with that into your existing protocol, but aside from that, like I said, most assay workflows will have some type of readout step involved and that we can just sort of slide nicely into that into that open slot.
00:23:01 Hannah Rosen:
So, you know, you gave us some of the inspiration behind creating this Absorbance 96 Automate. But, you know, what kind of gave you guys the idea to kind of go into these on deck plate reader arena to begin with? You know, if it's something that never really existed before, you know, how did you guys come up with the idea, and how did you, you know, develop this product?
00:23:26 Colton Wimmer:
That's a good question. Yeah, I think like so many things, so many ideas for products. I always remember a story, one of my professors told was Kary... Kary Mullis? I think is his name, the inventor of PCR and his Nobel Prize speech was, he said something about like, driving down the back country road, you know, like with his girlfriend when all of a sudden it occurred to him that, like, PCR exists, right. And I think those sort of casual conversations, interactions. I think that's where the where the greatest innovations really happened. And in our case it wasn't much different. We were sort of just having a well, we had a contact at an existing partner company who is purchasing our stand alone device and he sort of had a bit of a background in automation and we were having a conversation with him and then there was sort of this, oh yeah, it's pretty small, I wonder if you could put this on deck of a, you know, the liquid handling system and that was sort of like, yeah, that's actually, yeah, that's a good question. And then that basically started everything internally for us like, yeah, OK, we hadn't really thought about doing that small size, it lends itself well to that type of system.
00:24:35 Colton Wimmer:
That's also one thing that that makes us a bit special is, I would say, almost an obsessive attention to detail. So especially when it comes to market feedback, we really hang on the words of every user when they talk about, you know, their assay or their device or whatever challenges they're facing. And I think in this case it wasn't any different, but that's what really allowed us to develop solutions that are aligned with the needs of our users while still leaving a little bit of room for us to, you know, really innovate and take a new approach to to whatever it is that we do so, like I said, that was definitely the background that got us thinking about that as a solution, right, or something that could be possible. And then we had to tackle all the issues and definitely take a bit of a leap of faith that it would actually work right that we could create a device with two separable units.
00:25:21 Colton Wimmer:
Also, you know, finding out that I guess the nature of being a somewhat smaller company as well as we can't do unlimited amounts of market research before we launch a product either, right. So sort of like, OK, we believe there's a market for this, we believe that this has potential as a product, this seems like a good idea to us. So that was sort of the original story. Buying the product, things that that really got it going and like I said, I think it's an ongoing process, right? Like I said, always focusing on whatever it is in any discussion, I think that's what's so valuable about shows like SLAS as well, right? And so it brings, despite the, you know, just like to push towards more online meetings that we've seen in the last few years, there's something about the informal nature of some of the interactions that you have with these events where yeah, I remember, I was out on a conference here in Germany, I was sitting at a table, I was eating my lunch and I was doing some work on my laptop and these two other groups of people came and they I was sitting at a big table and they asked me if, like, would you mind if we sit down and we have a business meeting that we want to do and there was no other seating in the building. So I was like yeah of course you know no worries.
00:26:32 Colton Wimmer:
And then they proceeded to have a conversation exactly about, basically about our device, they were going back and forth, bouncing ideas off each other sort of how to solve this issue? They need, like, a compact ELISA reader that they could take into the field with them. I'm saying now I'm like is this, is this real? I don't know, am I really listening to this conversation? So yeah, I think those types of those types of little interactions, random moments are very hard to to replicate, and like I said, that's why we really appreciate all the trade shows and appreciate everyone going in the effort that everyone puts into them. So yeah, because like I said, it's been very important to us up to now to to hang on the words of our customers and random strangers who sit down at your table..
00:27:15 Hannah Rosen:
That’s so funny. Did you just like, subtly slide your business card across the table?
00:27:18 Colton Wimmer:
Yeah, yeah, actually, they all stood up and I was like, just a second. And then it was funny because they all stood up and I actually, yeah, I used to, you know, for dramatic effect I sort of pulled the little microplate reader out of my bag and I, cause I mean, I had it in my backpack. Then they all sat back down.
00:27:40 Hannah Rosen:
I Love that.
00:27:42 Colton Wimmer:
Yeah, it was a pretty cool moment. It was, it definitely had some comic appeal as well, but yeah, we still work with them today, so it was a good moment.
00:27:52 Hannah Rosen:
That's amazing. I love that. So, you know, speaking of it being, you know, a constant process, what are you guys looking forward to accomplishing in the next year, either, you know, with the Absorbance 96 Automate or are you looking to something else already?
00:28:11 Colton Wimmer:
That's a good question. We are always looking towards new things. It's a chaotic prioritization issue that we constantly face as, everyone here, this is also our strength, I think is everyone has a has so many good ideas. When if you spend any amount of time with engineers, they always have a lot of good ideas and you sort of have to make sure you kill 99% of them. Otherwise you're gonna go down in a fray of chaos. But like I said, there's a lot of idea generation that goes on here. We get a lot of valuable feedback from our user base. I think the most difficult thing for us to do right now is actually to just choose between all of the projects that we want to do. So it's a good position to be in.
00:28:57 Colton Wimmer:
We have a pretty clear path forward for the company as well, which I think is definitely a good thing to have. And of course, it is a good problem to have, right. If you're just choosing between various excellent solutions and product revenues, of course, that part of it is true, right? We are looking towards new things like maybe talk about that a bit more a second, but to come back to automate first of all, it's important not to lose focus, right. We don't just want to launch a product and then and then you know, move on towards the next product that we're gonna put time and effort into automate as well. And we do have a goals there. And I think one of the biggest things in the next year will be for getting this set up as an established system, right? So right now, you know, it is commercially available, but we have to work on the programming because there will be people when they want to integrate it. They want to have sort of a full integration with their handler. So we could work, we need to work on programming drivers with various liquid handling manufacturers to build up, you know, and make create a lab work description, so it's just sort of a a package purchase plug and play integration for the people who want to work like that. We need to build up a substantial user base and what always comes with that, especially based on previous experiences you start to you have a rough idea of the applications that you want to cover, the ones you're going to target the instrument.
00:30:24 Colton Wimmer:
But there are always new applications that come to light and I think in the past as well, there have been cases where applications that we did not have on our radar at all, and you keep getting orders or like the same device configuration like OK, what's going on here? What are you guys doing with the instrument? And then you reach out to them like, ah, OK. And I that's one part that I always enjoy being more on the market side of things is getting to see that happen overtime our products. And so I think that's something that definitely happen automated and we've already been get a lot of increase or things like strain development and the agricultural sector, I think that's also something, you know, we tend to have a sort of a very research heavy focus together, actually also a lot of practical applications for our technology in other sectors as well that we made out of auto so and that's going to be a big thing. And of course just focusing on commercializing the products and like I said, learning from our users, industry partners and establishing the device as a solution on the market.
00:31:27 Hannah Rosen:
Did you want to talk a little bit about some of those other products that you've got? Are they secret right now?
00:31:33 Colton Wimmer:
I'm just thinking. I can speak very vaguely about various things. It's a talent. No, I can. I yeah, I got half an hour of product filibuster for you. But no, like I said, we do have a very clear product strategy and I think what we saw in SLAS as well, there were so many people there who were excited about our future products, so we had, we went home, we did a sort of analysis of all the inquiries that we got it like, OK. It was sort of 40% this application 40%, this application 5% different application than you know. We see that there's a huge massive explosion in the NGS market as well, which we've seen in the last maybe three years. Obviously a bit of that was spurred on by Corona as well, but like I said, that's definitely a market that's interesting for us. And we saw that, you know, it was unfortunate and in some cases we did have to disappoint some people at SLAS because they would see that there was an on deck microplate reader and like, their eyes would get wide and they come like, can this do the specific application? Like, not yet.
00:32:48 Colton Wimmer:
So yeah, like I said, that was really helpful to get a feel for different markets. What's going on? What people are interested in doing in the direction the wind is going in. So that helped us a lot. And like I said, we have, we have a suite of products now that we've developed. We have the Absorbance 96, the standalone instrument that you can use in the benchtop device. We have Absorbance 1, which is a cuvette version of the absorbance technology. Now we have the automate version, which is the version for, you know, for the handling systems for any automated system which sort of, you know, completes the suite of products for absorbance, right? But as you can imagine, absorbance is not the only light based measurement technique that exists. So we will now, like I said, make like a bit of a foray into exploring new possibilities in other in other modes, as they say so. I guess I'll leave it at that, otherwise I'll probably start going in circles talking more and more about less.
00:33:53 Hannah Rosen:
No, it's, I mean, it all sounds very intriguing and I think that there will be many people who are going to be excited to see what you guys bring to SLAS2024 for sure. You know, before we wrap up, if there are any researchers who are out there listening and they are now super interested in using the Absorbance 96 Automate, is there anything that they need to know before they can get started with using this product?
00:34:19 Colton Wimmer:
The wavelength range is between 400 and 1000 amperes. You can have up to six wavelengths in the device. That's very important before you submit an inquiry. And other than that just get in touch with us. We're happy to have a conversation with you about whichever application you're interested in. We're happy to talk about integration regardless of whether or not you want to purchase the driver from whichever manufacturer, we will send you a demo unit free of charge, let you try it out, play around with it. So yeah, I would say those are the two things be aware of the of the specifications and don't hesitate to to contact us and feel free to to to grab one and try it out.
00:35:02 Hannah Rosen:
Well, Colton, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been so exciting to get to learn more about your product and your company. And yeah, we really look forward to to seeing Byonoy at many, many future SLAS, events and seeing what new exciting products you guys have.
00:35:19 Colton Wimmer:
Thanks a lot, Hannah. We're really looking forward to SLAS next year and yeah, we'll see you there.