Ready to Invent the Future Faster? We Are!

At Albert we are both ready and excited for 2023 and beyond. For those that haven’t met Albert yet, our CEO, Co-Founder and fellow innovator Nick Talken shares this quick and personal perspective on what Albert is all about and why you should join us in our pursuit to invent the future faster.

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Why We Built Albert

Almost everything you come into contact with was invented inside a laboratory and many of the challenges we face as a society, such as transitioning to a more sustainable economy, will be solved by innovation.

What we’ve traditionally seen in the last couple of centuries in the chemical and materials science space is that it takes years—and sometimes decades—to go from an idea or problem to something that is commercially available around the world. And it begs the question, why? Why is it taking so long?

We believe that it is taking so long not because innovation is inherently time-consuming, but because there are bottlenecks that pull scientists out of doing their core competencies, either distracting them or slowing them down. Our industry (chemical and materials science) has been underserved for so many years and bringing modern technology to one of the biggest and most important fundamental industries in the world is long overdue.

For example, on the collaboration side, if you have a paper notebook or an excel file, are you really able to share information with your colleagues? Or are you reinventing the wheel over and over again? Having a single source of truth for all information collected throughout an organization eliminates needless reinvention. Having accessible data to collaborate with allows you to build on top of historical data and experimentation—so you can work orders of magnitude faster.

This is why we built Albert – an end-to-end R&D platform. To give innovators the data-driven insights and tools they need to innovate faster. This includes automating tedious and mundane daily tasks and regulatory compliance, leveraging machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), and enabling collaboration so they can stand on the shoulders of those who came before them. This is how Albert fulfills our vision of helping our market invent the future faster.

Our Beginnings

When the Albert founding team was inventing inkjet materials, 3D printing materials, and coatings, we realized we needed more efficient and effective systems to help document and share our data. The need for faster and easier access to current and historical data about materials and past experiments was vital. We also wanted the ability to collaborate easily, both in our own lab as well as with other labs in different locations. Finally, we wanted to automate some of the important but time-consuming processes in the lab.

And it turns out that we weren’t the only people struggling with these challenges; there is a massive community of people out there who are looking for better technology in their lab they can manage their day-to-day processes, collect data, and streamline communications. We started with three users and three software engineers—today we have a team of more than 50 people and thousands of users in 30+ countries.

What Makes Me Especially Proud

I feel proud when I walk into a lab that uses Albert. I see no paper, beautiful labels with barcodes, and the lab is buzzing. There’s an energy in the lab that exists because it is so efficiently run, allowing the scientists to be free to truly innovate. And that’s awesome.

It gets even better when I sit down with a user and ask them why they like Albert. One woman shared that, at her current company with Albert, she estimates her work capacity is about 20x what it had been at her previous company without Albert. While that isn’t going to be the case for everybody, if we can deliver a 2x or 3x increase in output at just one company, imagine the scaling impact that Albert could have for hundreds of thousands of organizations worldwide. When I think about this ability and the impact our end-to-end R&D platform can have to accelerate innovation at scale globally, that’s exciting to me.

“We designed our platform to support collaboration at scale, provide an amazing user experience, and most importantly, empower the users—scientists and their teams in the lab—to be more efficient and effective.”

Our Focus and Goals for 2023 and Beyond

In 2023, we’re coming out of stealth mode. Over the past 5 years we’ve built and continue to grow the value of Albert for the thousands of scientists worldwide who rely on our platform every day.

Throughout our journey we’ve seen an evolving market of people who want to modernize their R&D operations and build the lab of the future. Innovators have a vision for where they want to take their company, but they haven’t yet found a technology partner to go on that journey with them.

Bringing Albert to these forward-thinking chemical and materials science companies and innovators to help them fulfill their vision is really exciting for us. We’ve been doing this successfully with our first wave of customers, and it’s going to be a lot of fun continuing to expand our footprint and value to our market.

Key to Our Success–Our Amazing Team

One of our unique differentiators is the fact that we come from the laboratory within our market, we know the pains and the opportunities.

We are also laser-focused on listening to our customers. I think we do a phenomenal job understanding daily lab pain points and focusing on overall operational challenges and goals. These insight then come back into our development process so we can use our software to remove those pain points. And the proof is in the pudding; that when you talk to an Albert user and they will say the product is a reflection of them and their daily work, which is quite validating to hear.

“Everything we do is shaped around achieving our mission and it is embodied in our values: putting our customers at the center, engaging diverse strengths and perspectives, securing your data and IP, and pushing the status quo to deliver better and faster innovation.”