He Left MIT At 22 To Solve A Problem Investors Didn’t Get. Now His Company Is Worth $6 Billion

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Ten years ago, Sajith Wickramasekara dropped out of the Computer Science program at MIT to build something new: a software company that helps life science researchers better organize their lab work. Today, Benchling is the “Google Docs for R&D” and serves over 200,000 researchers across 700 companies. But back in 2012, that value proposition was less clear. When Benchling first got started, software investors weren’t scrambling to fund digital notebooks in the cloud and, even more so, weren’t familiar with biotech’s problem spaces. That made the initial days especially difficult, but ultimately pushed Wickramasekara and co-founder Ashu Singhal to stay heads-down on engineering and product development. The hard work wasn’t unwarranted; Wickramasekara knew there was something there. In high school and college, he spent his time outside of class working in research labs. And over time, he had become increasingly wary of how much the R&D industry relies on pens and paper. PROMOTED While mo

Innovation Enterprise Tech He Left MIT At 22 To Solve A Problem Investors Didn’t Get. Now His Company Is Worth $6 Billion By Steven Li , Former Contributor. Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Sharing the stories of successful founders Mar 21, 2022, 09:00am EDT Mar 23, 2022, 04:12am EDT This article is more than 4 years old. Benchling co-founders Sajith Wickramasekara (CEO) and Ashu Singhal (President) Benchling Ten years ago, Sajith Wickramasekara dropped out of the Computer Science program at MIT to build something new: a software company that helps life sci

He Left MIT At 22 To Solve A Problem Investors Didn’t Get. Now His Company Is Worth $6 Billion

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