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I am excited to announce LabCentral’s new CEO as Maggie O’Toole, our previous Chief Operating Officer, which we announced via press release. An early member of the LabCentral team, Maggie is truly a co-creator of the LabCentral that exists today. 

Maggie has helped design and build LabCentral from the very early days. She was the first external employee outside of the core Biolabs team to work on the LabCentral idea, joining the effort from our space at One Kendall Square before we even had our 700 Main Street site secured. She brought her creativity and spirit to LabCentral from Day One and has been a great leader and mentor to many on our team. 

When we first started working on what is now LabCentral, we went through numerous iterations and experiments of our own in developing this concept. We initially began experimenting with this model at Biolabs in 2010 when the “sharing economy” became a thing and when software companies could start leveraging cloud-based capabilities, which was a catalyst for enormous growth in that industry.  

We wanted to emulate that same “force amplification” for the biotech industry. In fact, the early project name for what became LabCentral was “Bio-Cloud”. (I’m so glad we went with LabCentral instead!) We wanted to create an alternative to the capital-heavy model that puts high hurdles in front of innovators by requiring large up-front investments of time and capital, and make building biotechs more like building software. Because what builds value for biotech startups really is just the data they produce – not in the hardware they possess. So we broke up the labs in the smallest functional unit, to “minimize friction” for them and started offering bench-by-bench rental options with access to unmetered shared equipment and resources. 

As we did our work, we realized that part of the benefit of this shared lab model is that it’s actually fun to be around other teams, working side by side, sharing equipment and meals, while pursuing their own projects. This did not seem like much at the beginning but in retrospect was a huge revelation and a real breakthrough. Where previously people had assumed that “you can’t share lab space” with other smart scientists due to the risks of patent infringement, IP leakage and people stealing your good ideas. We found that the opposite was true, and that smart people working together could actually enhance each other's productivity and amplify their networks.  

It was this basic idea of placing community first that set us apart from other incubators. As we continued to practice this model, additional insights have emerged, for example about the importance of design and architectural cues for our community: we are now able to design spaces deliberately to enhance “collisions” and to make it easier for innovators to meet/connect while working at our sites.  

Maggie has been a steadfast partner throughout this development process, curating the spaces and programs to deliver the intended benefits for our community. She is innovative and funny, decisive and smart at the same time. I could not wish for a better successor, and I have great confidence in her abilities to lead the team and LabCentral into our next chapter as our CEO, and to champion and grow this important work we started together. 

As for my next steps, I will be dedicating more of my time to my two other endeavors, BioLabs and Mission BioCapital, both of which are in growth mode internationally. After 10 years of growing LabCentral, the timing feels right. That said, I will remain actively involved with LabCentral as Executive Chair, to support our pharma and industry partnerships and external strategic connections. And, of course, I’ll still be bringing entrepreneurs’ stories to light in ‘The Dish’ video interview series.   

Looking forward, I am excited to see what lies ahead for LabCentral under Maggie’s leadership. A leadership change poses an amazing opportunity for an organization to renew itself, review its processes and idiosyncrasies and re-energize. We have built a strong team and an incredible culture that I am very proud of. I am confident that LabCentral will continue to thrive and grow, following the evolving science our innovators work on.