In biotech, how you scale your lab can make or break your momentum. Move too fast, and you risk draining your budget. Move too slow, and you miss critical milestones.
The key isn’t just scaling—it’s scaling smart. That means investing in the tools and infrastructure that drive results, without locking up valuable time and capital. For early-stage antibody discovery companies, this balance can be the difference between hitting your next milestone or stalling out entirely.
So what does smart scaling actually look like in practice?
Let’s break it down.
The Cost of Doing Things the “Old Way”
Many biotech founders step into the startup world carrying habits from their previous environments—either academia or industry. Both have their merits, but when it comes to scaling efficiently, they can also create blind spots.
- In academia, resourcefulness often means doing everything in-house: mixing your own media, troubleshooting old instruments, and piecing together processes from scratch. It may save money upfront, but it costs valuable time—and slows down research velocity.
- In industry, the opposite problem emerges: capital is abundant, and the instinct is to throw money at bottlenecks. The result? Overengineered solutions, bloated budgets, and a lot of underutilized equipment collecting dust.
Neither approach fits the needs of a lean, fast-moving startup. Founders need a different playbook—one that prioritizes time, flexibility, and ROI.
Rethinking Lab Infrastructure: Leasing vs. Buying
One of the most overlooked decisions early-stage biotechs face is whether to lease or buy lab equipment. On the surface, buying seems like the obvious choice—own the asset, avoid recurring payments, build out the lab once and be done.
But in reality, purchasing equipment upfront can tie up capital that’s better spent on R&D, hiring, or hitting clinical milestones. And when you’re operating in a field as fast-paced and resource-intensive as antibody discovery, flexibility matters just as much as ownership—sometimes more.
Leasing lab equipment offers several strategic advantages:
- Lower upfront costs: Avoid large capital expenditures and preserve runway.
- Faster access to advanced tools: Get the equipment you need now, not after your next funding round.
- Reduced downtime: Leased equipment often comes with service contracts or built-in support, keeping your team productive.
- Operational flexibility: Scale your equipment stack as your workflows evolve—without being locked into outdated tech.
These benefits aren’t just theoretical. When applied strategically, they can create real competitive advantages for early-stage teams.
A Real-World Example: Scaling Smarter in Antibody Discovery
Jake Glanville, founder of Distributed Bio and later Centivax, took a different approach to scaling his lab. With experience in both academic and industry settings, he’d seen the inefficiencies on both sides—researchers spending hours making their own media, or teams throwing huge budgets at problems without considering leaner options.
Instead of following those patterns, Jake challenged them.
He focused on maximizing time and capital efficiency. Rather than buying expensive instruments outright, he leased them through Excedr. This allowed his team to:
- Access the equipment they needed right away
- Avoid large upfront purchases
- Stay focused on research and development instead of equipment maintenance
The payoff was clear. By prioritizing operational efficiency, Distributed Bio built the SuperHuman antibody discovery platform—a high-throughput system that streamlined antibody screening and development. That platform wasn’t just fast—it was impactful. It became the backbone of the company’s success and played a major role in Distributed Bio’s eventual acquisition by Charles River Laboratories.
Smart scaling didn’t just save money—it helped build something that worked.
What Founders Can Learn from This Approach
Jake’s strategy isn’t just relevant to antibody discovery—it’s a blueprint for any biotech startup trying to do more with less. Smart scaling isn’t about cutting corners. It’s about making deliberate decisions that stretch your runway, speed up operations, and keep your team focused on the work that actually moves the science forward.
Here are a few lessons biotech founders can take away:
- Value your team’s time: Just because something can be done in-house doesn’t mean it should be. Delegate or outsource tasks that drain time but don’t add strategic value—like mixing media or servicing equipment.
- Protect your cash flow: Your capital is fuel. Use it to grow, not to own. Leasing equipment helps preserve runway so you can invest in R&D, talent, and critical milestones.
- Prioritize adaptability: Your workflows will change. Your data needs will grow. Locking yourself into fixed infrastructure too early can slow you down later. Choose solutions that evolve with you.
- Challenge inherited habits: Whether you come from academia or big pharma, default behaviors aren’t always startup-friendly. Be willing to unlearn and reframe how a lab should operate.
Building a successful biotech isn’t just about scientific breakthroughs. It’s also about how well you manage the systems that support them.
Conclusion: Build Smarter, Scale Faster
In biotech, scaling isn’t just about growth—it’s about precision. The way you structure your lab operations, allocate time, and manage capital directly affects how fast you can iterate, validate, and reach critical milestones.
Smart scaling means asking hard questions early: Do we really need to buy this? Is there a faster, more flexible option? Are we using our time where it matters most?
Jake Glanville’s approach at Distributed Bio shows what’s possible when you break from tradition and build strategically. By leasing lab equipment and rethinking how his team worked, he not only saved time and money—he helped build a platform that made a real impact.
For startups in antibody discovery and beyond, the lesson is clear: You don’t need a massive budget to build something meaningful. You just need to scale the right way.