From Side Project to Startup with Bethan Wolfenden

Radical Science

This episode we chatted to Bethan Wolfenden, the co-founder of Bento Bioworks, a biotech startup that has created a 'laptop size laboratory'. This kit allows the user to perform simple DNA analysis and dramatically reduces the cost of the components you'd need to analyse samples, thus lowering the barrier to entry for molecular biology.

This episode is a very candid discussion about founding the company, as we cover the difficult decision to move on from a PhD to develop the company and the challenges of crowdfunding the product (of which they had a successful KickStarter campaign).

We also meander through the burgeoning DIY bio community, how the IGEM competition has informed her attitude towards science done within the confines of academia, and what citizen science can actually achieve (when it's not reduced to data collection).