Michael Macknight was born just at the right time for the late ’80s transition from analog to computer based-instrumentation — or at least that is what his mother says.
In 1986, he and father Tony founded ADInstruments, noting a vacuum in the industry that needed filled.
That vacuum was the digitisation of data from analog laboratory equipment, getting rid of the need for reams of printouts.
Mr Macknight created the first devices in his father’s laboratory; his father was a good target user for the prototypes due to his "enthusiasm" and "non-technical" nature, he said.
"If I made something that he could use, then it was a good indication that other non-computery academics could use the equipment."
People needed products that were flexible. This was especially the case for academics.
"There wasn’t a lot of products around at that stage."
The first people to adopt the product were the "tinkerers".
"The next group that comes along; they don’t want to know how it works, they just want to use it as a tool."
It took people time to adopt the technology, as it would mean moving from physical to digital, something that was foreign at the time.
"The existing methods of analysing data were so cumbersome, you know, measuring things on paper and things, the benefits of getting stuff on to a computer were pretty apparent pretty quickly."
People would often ask if the data would fall off the screen in the company’s early days. He showed people that they could scroll backwards, to which they would respond with amazement, he said.
Expectations had changed since then.
"Still the important thing is, if you can enable someone to do something that they thought was going to be too complicated for them to do [and] you can show that that’s not too difficult, then there’s value in that."
They knew what they were talking about when it came to the products.
Covid-19 had been a challenging time for the business, as it was for many others.
Chief executive Alex Black said revenue dropped overnight because of the pandemic.
"One of the challenges for us was that when universities closed, we couldn’t ship them any of the hardware, any of the physical goods because there was nobody to receive it," Mr Black said.
However, it was not all bad news.
The company was able to grow the software side of the business "significantly" during the time.
They had two software products; one for research and another for scientific education.
PowerLabs and many of its other products are used globally, and in the world’s top 100 universities.
It employed 180 people, with two-thirds of those based internationally in China, Australia, India, Brazil, the United States and Germany.
