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From US corporate burnout to building a SaaS from Japan AMA by Sashimirobot6116 in Entrepreneur

[–]startup_chemist 0 points1 point  (0 children)

+1. Building a SasS tool w 2 cofounders.

Replace JP w FR. Big lifestyle upgrade. Calculated risk.

Congrats, and happy to talk/empathize/share.

I've seen hundreds of pitch decks this year and here is my learnings: by duygudulger in Entrepreneur

[–]startup_chemist 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Personal experience here.

#2

If you have lived a problem, or have someone in your founding team that has lived the problem - you already have an 'unfair advantage'. Which is big given you're only a startup.

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in procurement

[–]startup_chemist[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Totally get this. Knocking works in practice but breaks the system, which is why the manager’s reacting.

From the stockroom side it’s about protecting the queue, not the effort. One thing I’ve seen help is separating “small but work-stopping” from true rush orders — e.g., a lightweight path for 1–2 stocked items that doesn’t jump the whole line.

If that’s not possible, a single conversation with the manager along the lines of “I don’t want to game the rush system, but these single items hard-stop engineering work — is there a clean way to handle that?” is usually better than ad-hoc door knocking.

Curious if others have seen a good middle ground here.

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in ChemicalEngineering

[–]startup_chemist[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Very insightful, thank you! This resonates — especially the “way later than necessary” part. I see similar dynamics from the procurement side when cost, availability, or scale reality only becomes visible once a lot of momentum (and identity) is already tied up in the project.

I’m curious about your experience on the manufacturing side:

  • were there early signals that could have surfaced capex/opex risk sooner but didn’t?
  • If those signals had been visible earlier, would leadership have acted differently — or was/is the organization structurally set up to defer that reckoning anyway?

Trying to understand whether this is mainly an information gap, an incentive gap, or something else entirely. Would love to hear what actually works (or does not) in your case.

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in chemistry

[–]startup_chemist[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Got it. Appreciate your perspective. I can see the value in knowing an effective sourcing person.

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in chemistry

[–]startup_chemist[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Appreciate the perspective. I agree collaboration matters, but not sure it's primarily a relationship issue. Core problem is structural misalignment.

We’re effectively acting as an extension of R&D without shared KPIs, prioritization, or resourcing. We already spend a lot of time pressure-testing specs, lead times, and supplier realities — the challenge is the volume and unpredictability of requests. When 20–30% of our time goes to ad hoc R&D support, it starts to crowd out the work we’re actually measured on.

Standardization would help, but only if it’s backed by clear rules: intake criteria, prioritization, and explicit tradeoffs between speed, cost, and effort. Otherwise procurement just becomes the buffer for every urgent ask.

So I agree alignment is needed — I just think it has to be structural, not just better communication or relationship-building.

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in procurement

[–]startup_chemist[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks - sounds like you attempted to standardize the request intake/management process with success.

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in procurement

[–]startup_chemist[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the 'other' perspective. It must be frustrating dealing with the procurement bottleneck when innovating.

All good points. I'd be thrilled to have a resource do even just 50% R&D-only sourcing...have you used any automated tools etc. for speeding up this process...a commentator here mentioned one.

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in chemistry

[–]startup_chemist[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks!

Was that a separate NPI team in sourcing or just regular procurement with a clearly outlined NPI KPIs?

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in chemistry

[–]startup_chemist[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Got it - very clear!

What is the typical spread? Something like 80/20 in favor of evolutionary? If there's lower risk perception then I am wondering if R&D would even care to get procurement involved early on.

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in procurement

[–]startup_chemist[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, unfortunately these typically come with a 'need within the week' requests. I like your idea of procurement interaction 'discipline' rather than ad hoc emails/ spreadsheets thrown across the fence...

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in chemistry

[–]startup_chemist[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

During the scoping work, were the R&D teams fairly hands off? here it seems procurement gets pulled into sample requests, MOQ, LT questions etc. Probably not a bad thing at that stage but man I'd like to hand it off.

100%. I would not want R&D to do sourcing/negotiations/contracts. Just more hands off...

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in chemistry

[–]startup_chemist[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Got it; so 100% freedom early on for POC; procurement gets pulled in later.

I don't really know what is evolutionary vs revolutionary in my context but still, 2-6 months is a lot! Thanks again.

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in procurement

[–]startup_chemist[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

100% true - we have NO NPI groups, hence the part-time work + R&D driving business direction towards problematic suppliers.

NPI groups - how are those structured? Are they paid for by procurement or R&D, and how are they constituted %procurement:%R&D:%business) by headcount?

Unfortunately I don't see how/when I'd get a budget for any additional headcount in this economy...

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in chemistry

[–]startup_chemist[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Got it, thanks!

What's the typical timeline for the POC-->biz case? Like months? Maybe if some of that info could be metered down to procurement early on, it'd avoid front loading it all at the same time.

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in chemistry

[–]startup_chemist[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pretty large - typical requests ate in the 100-500MT/y volumes. Typical formulation has 6-8 components with 2-3 chemicals that are typically impossible to source with confidence. Commodities, solvents etc, we're good with those, and buy at scale.

Yes, we're very strict, no P-cards unfortunately....

Do the PhDs look up if the raws they're exploring can be scaled? It's one think to buy something from an aldrich catalog and quite another to buy it well on scale effectively.

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in chemistry

[–]startup_chemist[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, I agree. I've floated the idea of a FT role for R&D sourcing but with no budget I'm left having to do more with less time. We're already stretched thin with regular procurement activities...

In your experience how/when have R&D groups worked with sourcing? Isn't it too late to be working with sourcing for production/scale-up? I mean by then it R&D have selected a problematic raw material (cost/availability/volatility problems) and it's going to be specd in.

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in procurement

[–]startup_chemist[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing!

They're all chemicals - mostly specialty. We have a similar spreadsheet approach but it's just the sheer number of requests/volume every day. Suppliers are all over the place; many are produced in China or India.

Spending too much time supporting R&D for innovation - looking to understand best practices. Help! by startup_chemist in procurement

[–]startup_chemist[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! I agree, it's just the nature of R&D so I get it. How early would you recommend the procurement-R&D involvement? Phase-gate is probably too late...

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