In 2020, a survey of over 1,000 lab professionals found that 81% were managing chemical inventory with Excel, paper, or nothing at all. That was six years ago. The problem hasn't gone away and the symptoms still linger.
A 2024 peer-reviewed study found that universities are spending $100,000 to $800,000 a year just on chemical waste disposal, with unknown and expired chemicals costing 100 to 1,000 times more to get rid of than identified ones. The National Academies confirmed in 2025 that research regulations have proliferated without sufficient checks, and explicitly called for technology adoption as a fix, while noting that smaller institutions often can't afford the tools that exist.
The tools that do exist don't make it easy. Most require months of onboarding and hide pricing behind sales calls. A lab manager can't spend weeks going through a painfully long sales cycle.
This leaves some of the sharpest problem-solvers on the planet, working with the same tools they'd use to plan a grocery list. That's why we built Labsistant. The inventory system your lab deserves.
Origin Story
Matt and I met at the University of Oregon studying computer science. After graduating, we ended up at the same company, where we built two things that shaped how we think about this problem: a point-of-sale and inventory system for restaurants, and then a heavily regulated inventory system, the kind where every transaction has to be tracked, every change auditable, and every record compliant.
We both ended up leaving that company but stayed connected and recently decided to leave our jobs with the plan to build something ourselves. As we explored ideas, one day my partner was venting about our spice rack and how she wished she could organize it better because it was chaos. She started by writing down a list of everything she had in alphabetical order on sticky notes, which we still have stuck to our cabinet today. I, being useful, asked her what happens if we need to add something between two entries.
She then asked, could I build something that could track our spices? When I said I could, she then said, "Well, if you make that, actually don't, because I'm gonna start using it for work and asking you for more functionality." That was kind of the inception moment that led to Labsistant.
Even though I said I would build it, I did what any good product manager does, and I looked at the build versus buy. As much as I love just building things, I also don't want to get sunk into something that doesn't make sense. With that, I started looking into lab inventory systems. With my background and Matt's background, we saw a real opportunity.
A survey of over 1,000 lab professionals found that 70% say their biggest inventory pain point is simply not knowing what they have or where it is. Nearly 1 in 4 researchers report being unable to run a scheduled experiment because the reagents they needed weren't available. 58% lose at least three days of work every month to inventory issues. The median lab loses roughly $9,600 a year to expired chemicals and disposal costs alone, and in for-profit and government labs, that figure climbs past $84,000.
And 40% of all laboratory chemical waste? It comes from chemicals that were never used. They sat on a shelf, expired, and now cost anywhere from 100 to 1,000 times more to dispose of than if someone had simply known they were there.
These aren't abstract numbers. That's a grad student who can't run her experiment on Tuesday because the antibody she needed expired last month and nobody knew. That's a PI watching grant money evaporate into disposal fees for chemicals the lab already had but couldn't find. That's real research that doesn't happen.
Why the Existing Options Don't Work
The labs we're building for aren't short on ambition. They're short on time and money.
Labs default to Google Sheets or Excel because they're free and familiar, but spreadsheets can't handle lot tracking, expiration management, storage hierarchies, or audit trails without inviting human error. The workarounds pile up until the spreadsheet becomes its own liability.
The purpose-built alternatives that do exist are dominated by legacy vendors charging enterprise rates and hiding pricing behind sales calls. A researcher can't even find out what a tool costs without scheduling a demo. And many of these platforms bundle inventory into larger LIMS or ELN suites, handing a lab that just needs to know what's on the shelf a full regulatory compliance suite with a months-long onboarding process.
Modern software like Notion, Linear, and Figma lets you sign up and start working in minutes. Lab software hasn't caught up. There is no tool a postdoc or lab manager can adopt on their own, without a procurement committee or IT review, and start using the same day.
Or at least, there wasn't until Labsistant.
What We're Building, and Why It's Different
Labsistant is a lab inventory management platform. Not a LIMS. Not an ELN. We are laser-focused on inventory, done right, done affordably, and done in a way that respects how labs actually work. Where other software lumps in inventory as a tiny feature, we build our foundation on it to empower labs to have a real pulse on what they have, what they're using, and what's about to expire, so they can course-correct where needed and make long-term decisions backed by data.
A few things we believe strongly enough to build our company around:
Pricing should be on the website. Ours is. Free, $49/month, or $149/month. No sales calls, no hidden fees, no surprises. A grad student or lab manager can evaluate the product, understand exactly what it costs, and start using it the same day. For context, comparable tools charge anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000+ per year, and that's if you can get past the "Contact Sales" button to find out.
Setup should take minutes, not months. Sign up with Google or email, no credit card required, and you're in. We even have a demo sandbox pre-loaded with data so you can explore a fully functional lab environment before committing anything. There is no 6-month implementation, no dedicated IT liaison, no training contract.
Labs should own their data. Every tier includes CSV export. Your inventory data is yours. Period.
The tool should pay for itself. Reagents are expensive. If Labsistant saves even a single reagent from expiring on a forgotten shelf, it has paid for itself for the entire year.
Why We Think We're the Right People for This
We didn't come from the lab software industry. We came from building inventory systems that had to work, systems where compliance wasn't optional and where every transaction had to be accounted for. That background means we think about audit trails, data integrity, and permission models as foundational, not as afterthoughts bolted onto a spreadsheet replacement.
So we have the foundation to build inventory, but why labs? The honest answer is we didn't start with domain expertise. But we've both spent our careers in startups and incubators, and if there's one thing that teaches you, it's how to learn a market fast. That's exactly what we did. We talked to researchers, lab managers, and PIs across academic, biotech, and government labs to understand the pain points firsthand and learn the logic that a lab inventory system actually needs to handle.
If you work in a lab and would like to help us with product research, we'd love to talk to you. Book a call here.
Try It Yourself
If any of this resonates, our demo sandbox gives you a realistic look at what your lab could have, no sign-up required. If you want to go further, there's a free 30-day trial with no credit card. We'd rather let the product speak for itself.
Try the demo sandbox | See pricing
Sources:
- C&EN BrandLab/MilliporeSigma, 2020 (n ≈ 1,000 lab professionals): Taking Stock; Waste Not
- ACS Chemical Health & Safety, 2024: Challenges of Legacy Chemicals
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2025: Simplifying Research Regulations and Policies
- American Chemical Society (ACS): Less Is Better