Web startups and scientific software

If you are a scientific software startup with just a few people, or an informatics service company with hosted software and/or content, working in a co-working situation and using computing services from a company like Amazon, Sun, and or Rackspace can go a long way. You don’t even need to chase down other bioinformatics companies, since you can share resources with other tech startups.

This has me thinking. There are very few life science (or other science) companies that have ridden the current web startup craze (might be too late now). Compared to the number of bioinformatics/modeling companies that came up in the late 90′s, new ones today are pitifully few although there are some that do look cool (e.g. NextBio), they still follow mostly traditional models while leveraging the web for delivery. Yes, scientific software and services is a very hard business, but I can imagine that with appropriate pricing and business models (should do a long thesis about this topic some day), scientific software is more feasible today than it was in the late 90′s. The costs of delivering software and services via the web are lower than ever (and more reliable). Of course, whether there is an actual market, either potential or real for such companies is an open question. Most life science companies like having everything in house, and are paranoid about security. That might just be the biggest barrier

This is actually the great subject of a panel discussion. What are the possibilities? What kind of scope and revenue are we looking at? What are the challenges? Where are the innovative business models? Would love to see this happen at a BioIT World type of conference

The usual disclaimer

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