Editor note: In our 2022 Startups to Watch feature, the Silicon Valley Business Journal and San Francisco Business Times present startups and founders doing unique things in the San Francisco Bay Area. SummerBio is one of 20 that we have profiled — to read more about our mission and the other startups we're featuring, click here.
As the Omicron variant results in another Covid-19 surge, SummerBio LLC helps school districts and universities with the tests they need to keep infections at a minimum.
The company uses an automated system to quickly process tens of thousands of Covid-19 PCR tests; its lab can process up to 110,000 tests in one day, according to Sasha Seletsky, co-founder and chief business officer at SummerBio.
There aren't nearly enough Covid-19 tests being performed to accurately assess the impacts of new variants like Omicron, he said.
"Most of the labs that are out there have pretty manual processes for testing ... for any lab to do our volume of testing, they need to hire 100,000 people," Seletsky said. "We see our model as being the most effective model, because it's highly automated. We only have 75 people in the entire company and maybe 40 people in the lab. Because it's so space-efficient, you can scale up very quickly."
SummerBio LLC
- Founded: 2020
- Founders: Dave Scheinman, Sasha Seletsky
- What it does: Provides Covid-19 tests to schools and universities
- Headquarters: Menlo Park
- Employees: 75
- Total raised: $8 million
- Investors: Toyota Ventures, Intel Capital, Capricorn Investment Group, 8VC
What was the “aha” moment behind SummerBio? In May 2020, there wasn't enough Covid testing capacity and tests were expensive and slow. We realized a different approach was needed for diagnostic testing in the pandemic — so we designed the entire process with the vision to perform tens of thousands of tests per day, at the lowest possible cost.
How does it work? We optimized the data entry (app based at point of collection), sample collection (gentle nasal swab), sample transport (we bought our own plane to fly samples), sample processing (fully automated with robotics), and result reporting (also done through the app). We now process 100,000 samples per day in our Menlo Park lab and offer the lowest price for unpooled PCR in the industry — $10 per test for our high volume customers (and no more than $25 per test at any volume) — compared to a national average of about $90 a test.
How different is the company you have today? We envisioned that we would need to help with Covid testing for around six months until vaccines came out. We did not anticipate that the pandemic would be long term.
What was the biggest challenge you faced? Building a company to fight a pandemic, in the middle of a pandemic — everything was more difficult and more urgent than it would be in other contexts. Supply chains were unstable, lab space was hard to find, lab staff were in short supply, normal processes for contracting were abandoned, etc.
Why did you base your company where you did? The founding team was based in the Bay Area, and it was the fastest way to make progress quickly and iterate as we learned.
In office, fully remote, hybrid: Which is the best way for you and your team to work? Hybrid, but largely in the office, since we are operating the lab. We test our staff every day.
