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Alex Ward is the Founder and Managing Director of start-up company, Razorbill Instruments, that designs and manufactures precision instrumentation for cryogenic research.
At the time of entering Converge Challenge, Alex, a PhD student from the University of St Andrews, had just formed the business alongside his two fellow scientists, Jack Barraclough and Clifford Hicks. Although it was still in its infancy, Razorbill Instruments shone amongst the competition and was awarded 2014’s third prize, shortly followed by a SMART: SCOTLAND grant from Scottish Enterprise.
“We were up against some really strong opposition so were absolutely thrilled to be placed third. The money allowed us to develop our prototype into a product and the legal and accountancy support was hugely beneficial to get the company on its feet! The branding support was also particularly useful... it’s unusual for an early stage company to be able to spend money on branding, but having a professional-looking logo and website can make a huge difference to how seriously your company is perceived – credibility is so important in almost every young company that are doing something new.”
The Royal Society of Edinburgh awarded Alex an Enterprise Fellowship from October 2014 to help develop his technology business. In November 2015, they launched their first product, a compact cryo-compatible strain cell, which saw impressive sales.
The company officially celebrated its third birthday in October 2017 and are excited to announce that in addition to the launch of a suite of new cryogenic research products this year, Razorbill Instruments are also working to adapt some of their technologies for use in space for wide-ranging civilian and defense satellite applications. This will allow the company to service a much larger market and will fuel its continuing growth.