When Practichem moved from Madison, Wisconsin to the Raleigh area in 2013, it had two employees. Now it has 13, 10 of them at the scientific instrument company’s Morrisville headquarters. And, says Nick DeMarco, president and founder of Practichem, “We’re hiring.”
The company is launched its first innovative product in February, the Arista SLICE, a compact, web-based biochromatography instrument DeMarco says is a first in the industry on several levels. It is relatively small in size, web-powered, easy to use from any laptop or tablet, has a touch-screen interface, and is energy efficient, he explains.
The software that allows easy collaboration is a big hook he says, but so is its smaller size. “A number one complaint is that this stuff is too big. The Arista Slice is a quarter the volume of current instruments and takes up a sixth of the horizontal bench space at 22 centimeters.” The price has not been disclosed yet, but he says it will “Be less than people expect.”
DeMarco, who went to engineering school in Milwaukee, really wanted to work for Motorola and indeed did after graduation. “But I couldn’t stand it,” he says. “I found a little company and took a liking to the entrepreneurial way of life.” After several years of selling and “hard-core engineering” he launched his own first startup.
He sold that company, Analogix, which was based in Wisconsin, to Agilent for $15 million in 2007. “That’s not bad for a company started on $1,500,” he says. But that experience left him with a bad taste in his mouth for doing his type of firm in Wisconsin’s business climate. When Analogix went to the state for help it came up empty handed and it couldn’t find enough engineers to build its machines.
So, when he founded Practichem, he researched potential new locations such as Austin, Boston, Denver or Raleigh and decided “Raleigh was best for us.” He’s happy with the choice. “My wife is thrilled, my three kids are thrilled and the business is growing. I love this community. It is so supportive.”
Wake Tech, for instance, “Trained our people right in our own building. Employees were trained in chromatography during a three-day course. They sent marketing people over. North Carolina State has been awesome and we did a Senior Design Program with them, all in the space of a year. We wouldn’t have this much help in ten years in Wisconsin.”
The company also hired an engineer freshly graduated from NC State and currently also has an intern from the school.
The key idea behind Practichem “Is to make scientific instruments collaborative,” DeMarco says. “It’s something others have been trying to do since the 1980s.”
DeMarco started a company in 1999 that made chromatography instruments similar to those selling now controlled with normal Windows-based programs. “The number one request for change was to be able to share more information easily,” DeMarco says.
Currently bootstrapped, the company isn’t planning on seeking venture capital unless, DeMarco says, “Things go even better than planned. We’ll stay privately funded as long as we can.”
https://www.practichem.com/
