Lab Donkey

Be part of the future of lab automation—before everyone else 👀 Lab Donkey is pioneering solutions that labs genuinely need by making automation smarter, simpler, and truly adaptable. We're at a pivotal moment and seeking early adopters to partner with us!

Until then, tschüss!

If you’re curious about how we can help give your automation the kick it needs, get in touch here 👇 labdonkey.com/contactus

Hallo Hamburg! Lab Donkey has touched down in Deutschland, ready for #SLASEurope2025 🇩🇪 This year’s theme, “Interconnecting lab automation,” is perfect for us, as we are transforming the life sciences landscape with intuitive, flexible, and accessible automation for all.

Let’s keep the fancy equipment with our partners, where it belongs. Our strengths lie in software, automation, and adaptability, allowing us to operate efficiently. We’re not here to look impressive but to be useful and create practical solutions for the real world 🤝

We prioritise value over vanity and make the most of our resources. While we could spend £5,000 to £8,000 a month on office space to look more impressive, that would mean charging our partners more without enhancing our software or automation capabilities.

We don’t hide the fact that we’re a small company. We’re proud of it 🏅

We designed this visual tool to help validate the process step by step without all the noise. It allows scientists to validate each phase, ensuring they remain in control throughout. Because, after all, you can’t automate science without scientists 🤷

We build automation that’s transparent, adaptable, and scientist-led. One of our favorite features? Scientist’s View. A clear and intuitive view of workflows—free from automation jargon and backend complexities.

*Yes, we do also sell automation, get in touch for a demo 🙏 labdonkey.com/contactus

Lab Donkey manages error recovery, data handoffs, scheduling conflicts, and edge cases quietly, reliably, and transparently, allowing the scientists to focus on their work. We don’t just sell you automation, we tackle the donkey work, so you can focus on the real work.

We don’t sell automation, we sell time* ⏰ Time to focus ⌚️ Time to think ⏱️ Time to do some science

We’re done pretending that lab automation is fine the way it is. The truth? If your automation system forces you to manually override, fix, or restart it constantly, it’s not automation. It’s expensive manual work 🤷

This is what we offer: ✅ Error handling that prevents failures before they happen—and recovers when they do ✅ A scheduler built for scientific workflows, not just manufacturing-style automation ✅ An open, adaptable system that works for your lab, not the other way around

If lab automation were effective, scientists would spend less time fixing it and more time running experiments. At Lab Donkey, we’re not just fixing these issues—we’re rewriting the rules.

We see it every day: ❌ Workflows that break over minor errors with no way to recover ❌ Scheduling systems that can’t handle real-world complexity ❌ Automation software that locks users into rigid templates instead of solving their actual problems

Today’s lab automation is broken because it’s stuck in the past ⌛️ It’s slow, rigid, and forces scientists to work around the software instead of the software adapting to them.

Read our CTO's full post here ⬇️ linkedin.com/feed/update/ur…

1️⃣ We restart because we know what’s possible 2️⃣ We restart because “good enough ” isn’t good enough 3️⃣ We restart because if we settle, we’re just another company selling the same thing as everyone else

The hardest thing in software development is throwing it away and starting again. In the last seven months, we’ve done exactly that with our scheduling engine. ELEVEN TIMES 😩