I used to think our competition was another startup. I was wrong.
I used to think our competition was another startup. I was wrong.
In practice, the real competition is the status quo.
It’s “this is how we’ve always done it.”
It’s the quiet belief that new tools are risky by default, and familiar workflows are safe by default.
Some of the most revealing customer conversations I’ve had weren’t about features. They were about comfort.
Not “can this work?” but “what happens if it’s wrong?” and “Do we really want to change how the team works?”
And I get it. In regulated environments, caution is rational. Nobody gets rewarded for adopting a new workflow that later becomes hard to defend.
But here’s what’s interesting.
Over the last year, I’ve felt a real shift.
The emergence of LLMs nowadays being used by almost everybody - from lab chemists to directors has changed the baseline expectation across industry.
Even teams that were skeptical of “AI for chemistry” are now more open to the idea that software can enhance a chemist’s skills rather than replace them.
Not because LLMs magically solve chemistry but because they showed how much capability you unlock when tools are easy to use.
They’ve reshaped how people think about knowledge work. About turning scattered information into structured workflows. About reducing the friction between “what we know” and “what we do next.”
And it highlights a gap I think about a lot: the gap between what chemists could do with the right tools and what they’ve been trained to expect from software.
That’s the challenge I find most motivating as a founder.
Changing a workflow without disrespecting the reasons the old workflow existed in the first place.
Curious to hear more about our work at @ReactWise? Drop me a pm, always happy to exchange.
