Beckman Coulter

Fullerton, CA
$2.5 billion leader in drug discovery and health-care diagnostic systems

Infinitek, a start up, used SyncDev to test sell the Biomek® robot. Beckman Coulter soon thereafter acquired the company and made the product a worldwide brand.

Infinitek had developed a pre-production prototype lab robot for use by drug discovery companies like Amgen, Genentech, Pfizer, and Merck. Infinitek’s venture investor faced a major investment to scale the business. Just to be sure he asked, “Is the market real? How big is the market? Does the product fit the market? What are the sales costs?”

The SyncDev kickoff took place on May 1st. Test selling was completed on June 30th with the management, scientific, engineering, and marketing team having demoed and test-sold the Biomek to 35 biotech and drug companies one by one on premises. Most were major brands. The team found thirteen Charter Customers in 60 days. Genentech and Chiron even put cash payments down.

But the SyncDev data indicated that the market was smaller than first thought. The company couldn’t become a $100 million company in five years. The team planned for $35 million instead. The product also wasn’t a prototype. It was a breadboard and still required two more years of development. The investors decided to sell the company.

Forty-five days later, on the strength of their virtual backlog and the team’s newly-acquired market experience, Beckman Coulter (SmithKline Beckman at the time) made the first of two payments to buy the company. Beckman put its sales and relationship management team on it and converted early prospects into scaling customers.

Five years after the market launch the founder of Infinitek, then Beckman Coulter’s head of robotics, said, “We beat our plan by six percent. I know because my bonus was tied to it.” The Biomek® is now a global brand.