Andrea Riposati is the COO of Dante Labs, a DNA testing company. He started working for the company in 2013. In 2018, Dante Labs generated $100 million in revenue. Here, Andrea Riposati shares the story of how he and his team grew Dante Labs into a large company with high margins, with over 100 billion cells produced yearly. All while still staying true to their mission: To democratize DNA testing as a service by primarily focusing on accuracy, simplicity, and value. Many of Riposati’s best insights come from his engineering experience rather than management. Dante Labs also invested heavily in automation and manufacturing, which helped them become profitable faster than other companies. Their highly automated factory allows them to scale quickly while raising quality.
Making Genomics Testing Accessible to All
Andrea Riposati and his co-founders at Dante Labs were inspired by democratizing DNA testing. Riposati says that many people, especially in Silicon Valley, were interested in their mission, but only some believed it was possible. Most companies try to make DNA testing more accessible by scaling. But Riposati wanted to try something different: “I pursued simplifying the process rather than just scaling up an existing process.” They wanted to ensure that people in developing countries could access the technology. These people had never heard of DNA testing before but knew their children could suffer from genetic disorders. Andrea Riposati believed that making DNA testing more accessible to all would solve a global problem and help people who had already been diagnosed with genetic disorders.
Dante Labs: Accelerating Science to Save Human Lives
Dante Labs is focused on making it quicker for researchers to do DNA testing. They’ve helped people worldwide, but mostly in developing countries. These countries also typically have less healthcare access and more testing hurdles. However, they are still able to use the technology. Riposati believes DNA testing will save lives: “It’s the future of medicine; people should commit themselves to this cause even though they may not make money off it.”
Follow Andrea Riposati at Twitter: http://Twitter.com/andreariposati