What does it actually take to go from medical researcher to founder in one of the most relationship-driven ecosystems in the world?

Ratnam Srivastava spent five years as a health data scientist across Northwell Health, Mount Sinai, and Harvard Medical School and kept running into the same wall: getting research protocols approved was a six-month slog buried in paperwork and bureaucratic back-and-forth. So, he decided to fix it. The result is LabOps, an AI-powered platform streamlining research operations and compliance in life sciences, now operating out of the Cambridge Innovation Center.

In this episode, Ratnam gets honest about the messy early days -- a co-founder split at the three-month mark, pitches that went nowhere, and the assumption he had to completely unlearn (hint: full automation isn't the play when human lives are on the line). We also get into what it's like to sell into institutions with serious inertia, how he's juggling multiple accelerators at once, and why Boston's startup scene is finally catching up, even if the investors haven't followed yet.

In this episode:

• The specific moment in research that made him think someone needs to build this
• Why "we'll automate the whole pipeline" was the wrong pitch and what replaced it
• Navigating co-IP conversations with major research institutions
• What programs like I-Corps and Evolve Accelerated actually give you (beyond mentorship)
• His no-fluff first move for anyone sitting on an idea right now