Hi, everyone, my name is Paul. I'm the CEO and founder of Spartan Bioscience Incorporated. I'm a medical doctor by training. My specialty was in infectious diseases and microbiology.
For my company, Spartan Bioscience, our vision was bringing the power of DNA testing to everyone. What do I mean by this? The analogy I like using is you guys have seen how mainframe computers went to personal computers, which went to the smart phones that everyone carries around in their pocket. That smart phone gives you instant access to information on anything you want—app store, iphone, all that stuff.
Right now the standard around the world is mainframe DNA analyzers, so everyone's samples across all sorts of applications get sent off to a central lab. It could be in a hospital or in a big lab. Then you wait, days, weeks, or months to get your results back.
We have commercialized the world's smallest DNA analyzer. It's about the size of a coffee cup. It's taken us 12 years of R and D. In the last 12 years we've been competing against over 200 companies around the world. Every big multinational since the human genome project has been investing hundreds of millions of dollars in their divisions to try to make this device. It's GE, 3M, all those sorts of people. Our strategic investors are Canon. The leader in cameras and copiers spent over $200 million and used 200 people over 13 years in trying to make this, and failed. That's why they invested in us.
We reached this about two years ago. Now that you have this—