You can also go to www.redherring.com and do a search on Chemdex, I got six results.
This could be huge. The current process for scientists to get something easy like a beaker is truly ridiculous. The most brilliant minds of our time acquire supplies like it was the 1950's.
The Amazon of beakers
By Georgie Raik-Allen
Red Herring Online
April 7, 1999
While Internet hype swirls around major consumer brands like Yahoo (YHOO), Amazon.com (AMZN), and eBay (EBAY), there's also real money to be made by Web companies that are transforming the way various industries conduct business.
Startups are emerging in major industry groups to collapse supply chains, eradicate the middleman, and create new electronic exchanges for trading goods.
In the $7 billion laboratory supply space, that company could be Chemdex, a 18-month-old startup that recently launched an online trading hub and has raised $30 million to take it to the next level.
Galen Partners III, an investment firm focused on emerging health care companies, led the second round fo funding, which included strategic investors Genentech (GNE) and J&J/H&Q health.net, Goldman Sachs, Invesco, Amerindo Investment Advisors, Bowman Capital, CMGI @Ventures, and Bay City Capital, as well as former investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and E.M. Warburg Pincus.
RESEARCHER MARKET
Chemdex launched last November as an e-commerce play that lets scientists buy research materials from about 160 suppliers. Researchers buying materials the old-fashioned way need to flick through dense manuals of products, then fill out and manually process order forms for separate suppliers.
Like many online trading hubs, Chemdex takes a 5 to 10 percent cut on all transactions conducted through its site, which compares to about 40 percent transaction fees in the offline world. Many online hubs also charge buyers a setup fee -- a charge Chemdex may introduce in the future.
According to CEO David Perry, Chemdex spends $200 to $300 acquiring each customer, each of whom has an estimated lifetime value of $75,000.
Analysts guess the Internet business-to-business (B2B) market has the potential to grow to between 10 and 20 times the business-to-consumer market. Forrester Research recently predicted that by the year 2003, B2B commerce will be worth $1.3 trillion in the U.S. alone.
Unlike in most consumer e-commerce, each B2B purchase can be worth thousands of dollars and revenues ramp quickly. Audience sizes level out sooner, and advertising is highly targeted but a less significant portion of a company's revenues.
It has been reported that Chemdex expects to make $10 million in its first year of conducting business and go public before the end of 1999. The company could not be contacted today for reasons that "could not be commented on," suggesting that IPO plans may have been pushed forward.
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