Start-up generation
Founder and CEO of Butler Scientifics
“My childhood, my education and my professional career have always been tied to software development,” says Ray G. Butler, founder and CEO of Butler Scientifics. Ten years ago, he began taking this knowledge to the world of scientific research as director of R&D for a company in the sector. He rounded out his profile with an executive MBA. “This training,” he recognizes, “really helped me understand the complex web of business and the vital importance of human relationships with clients, collaborators, partners and investors.”
Barcelona-based start-up Butler Scientifics develops and markets AutoDiscovery, exhaustive, smart automated exploratory data-analysis software that helps biomedical research teams at universities, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies uncover statistical associations with great potential that are hidden within the data from their studies.
Basically, I don’t want to leave this world without having made a positive contribution. My mother died, like thousands of people each year, of sudden, fatal lung cancer. At that time, I believed science needed more manpower to speed up discoveries and put them in practice through effective therapies. In my work environment at the time, the idea of integrating information and analyzing it in a smart way didn’t get any support, so I decided to strike out on my own.
Without a doubt, to stop doing “what we can” and start doing “what we must”. It seems obvious, but in start-ups it’s easy to fall into the habit of setting goals based on the needs of the market, business or project… and then go find the resources needed!
Entrepreneurship is a process of constant growth, personal and professional. In my case, this growth was mainly motivated by the advice I’ve received from those around me: my team, clients, mentors, family, friends… It’s hard to choose just one as “the best”! I’d say the best advice has been that “the body and mind have to stop to carry on”, in reference to the fact that we have to administer our most basic resources, like energy and motivation.
Having identified the most attractive segments and validated our value proposition with them, and seeing the speed at which new competitors are coming on the market, we believe that now is the time to accelerate growth. Our first goal is to scale up our technology and our go-to-market strategy.
After a highly significant internal reorganization to boost our “investability”, now we’re working on a round of seed capital that will allow us to flesh out the team, optimize the usability and accessibility of AutoDiscovery and evolve our customer-acquisition model.
