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We Transform Your Ideas into Experimental Results

Use Otto’s platform to collaborate or outsource all or some of your experimentation. Work with leading contract research organizations, agile core facilities, automated laboratories, and talented academic researchers. Get access to cutting-edge instrumentation and expertise, while avoiding the pitfalls of traditionally capital-intensive and time-consuming research processes.

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Successful collaborations are powerful catalysts for scientific discovery. For academia, Interdisciplinary and interinstitutional collaborations can have positive impacts on grant and publication success. In industry this can translate into faster and more diversified R&D.

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Services
Otto's curated marketplace gives you an edge
Whether you’re the founder of an early-stage biotech company looking to acquire preliminary data or an academic researcher who wants to recover costs from an underutilized/expensive piece of equipment, Otto’s marketplace allows you to efficiently engage with the scientific community to accomplish your goals.
No equipment too far from reach. Expand your R&D potential by accessing experimental services that use expensive or rare instrumentation.
Unlike other scientific services marketplaces which rely on delayed quote systems, each listing on Otto aims to be as transparent with pricing as possible. Moreover, Otto’s marketplace includes providers with automated services to save you valuable time and money, while increasing the reproducibility of your experiments.
Otto’s collaboration section of the marketplace helps you engage with the scientific community to find collaborators across fields and institutions with diverse skill sets.
Otto takes security very seriously and takes industry standard precautions to ensure that our users’ information is safe. Moreover, our rating/reviewing systems allow you to view a provider’s rating by other users in addition to any certifications/accreditations the provider states on their profile.

FAQ

Most frequent questions and answers
The transaction process is typically a 5 step process.
  1. The buyer identifies a listing they’d like to purchase and they place a request for it. 
  2. The provider of that listing receives a notification of the buyer’s order and can choose to accept or reject the request. 
  3. When the provider accepts the request, the buyer is notified and their card is charged. The funds charged on the buyer’s card are now held by Stripe (our PCI-compliant payment processor).
  4. The buyer will then have the option to mark the order as complete or dispute the order. When the buyer marks the order as complete Stripe moves the funds to the provider’s account.
  5. The provider and buyer both have the option to give feedback to one another. 
Yes! Users on Otto can both buy and provide services if they’d like.
Buyers can mark a paid transaction as disputed after the transaction request has been approved and before it is marked as “completed”. If a transaction is disputed, Otto will immediately contact both the buyer and provider to better understand the situation. At Otto’s discretion one of three things may happen: 
  1. Otto provides a full refund to the buyer
  2. Otto provides a partial refund to the buyer
  3. Otto doesn’t refund the buyer and allows the provider to receive payment 
We take the concerns of our customers very seriously and we aim to provide the best customer experience possible. Consequently, it’s most likely that a disputed transaction will receive either a full or partial refund.
Learn more about Otto’s Terms & Policies or feel free to contact us for any clarification.
Yes, with exceptions. Intellectual property (IP) is addressed in Section 7 of the Purchase Order Terms and Conditions, which apply to all purchases made through Otto. The Buyer generally receives all right, title, and interest to Work Product, which includes anything, including IP, created by the Provider with respect to an Order. However, if a Provider incorporates the Provider’s “Prior Inventions” (as defined in Section 7) into Work Product, the Provider retains IP ownership over those Prior Inventions but gives to the Buyer a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use those Prior inventions, as specified in Section 7. For additional details, please see the Purchase Order Terms and Conditions.
This highly depends on the experimental services that you’re purchasing and which provider you’re purchasing them from. However, Otto’s current platform requires that all transactions must be marked as “completed” by the buyer within 85 days of the provider accepting the request. Consequently, almost all listings you’ll encounter will be services that vendors can complete within 85 days. 
If a service or experiment that you’d like isn’t listed on the marketplace, you can make a request for that experiment/service. This request is easy to make and will be seen by our network of providers as well as the Otto team. Follow the steps below to request an experiment/service.
  1. Click the blue “+Post a new listing” button located on the top right of the page.
  2. Click “Request an Experiment”.
  3. Complete the webform by adding a title and a detailed description of the experiment/service you require. You can also add a location and photos if relevant. 
This will depend on what samples/materials you’re sending, why you’re sending them, whether you’re affiliated with a research institution, and where you’re located. Also, keep in mind that local, state, and federal laws will apply. Often, providers may have specific instructions on how to package and ship samples/materials to them. Consequently,  consult with the provider you’re outsourcing to and look into local/state/federal regulations that may apply. Moreover, if you’re at a research institution, consult your institution’s guidelines as well.
Below are some links to external resources which may be helpful to consider.  

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