HJC Consulting strives to deliver platinum-level consulting results to its clients while staying aligned with the sometimes mercurial nature of project requirements and priorities. Our golden rule: keep the client happy! Please forgive the chemistry puns, born of our love of the periodic table. 🙂
With a track record of over 10 years of consulting to dozens of clients ranging from start-ups to multi-nationals, the expertise and professionalism we bring to each project has had an impact. Here are just a few comments from our clients over the years, parsed by project type: product development, content creation, and IP landscaping.
Product Development
“We worked with HJC Consulting for almost three years through several development stages of our disease diagnostic product. John was dedicated to our needs, and helped us translate our benchtop protocols to microfluidic cartridge prototypes fabricated by vendors capable of volume manufacturing. His involvement was key to our project.”
— Stanley Lu, Business Unit Manager, Eurofins ARCA Technology, Inc., Huntsville, AL, USA
“As CEO of E-Sana, a start-up developing a PoC blood analyzer for cardiac and other biomarkers, I added HJC Consulting to our team to assist us with the many tasks and challenges involved in translating a bench-top bioassay to a microfluidic format. John really helped us with a SWOT analysis of many approaches, and in distilling our microfluidic concept down to a product specification. Then, he helped us compare several possible prototyping and fabrication houses well suited to our needs, eventually leading to a development project with the best vendor. His support was crucial early-on when several critical milestones requiring a broad skill-set had to be reached, quickly.”
— Cesare Massart, CEO of Somnium, former CEO & co-founder of E-Sana, Paris, France
“John’s microfluidics expertise nicely complemented our own on our first project together. Brainstorming sessions were effective and enjoyable: we carefully considered many different product design ideas together, he researched the open questions, and we quickly arrived at a short list to move forward with. It was easy for our team to work with him, and we’re looking forward to our next collaboration.”
— Ming Tan, Founder & CEO, Wainamics Inc., Pleasanton, CA, USA
“Maddison asked John Crabtree at HJC Consulting to support the design, prototyping, testing and trouble-shooting work associated with our milli/microfluidic consumable development project. John rapidly integrated himself with our team, got a grasp of the bio-assay challenges we were tackling and, within a week or two, was contributing to the project in many ways: design reviews, brainstorming sessions, experimental design, and custom and off-the-shelf components to characterise failure modes and possible pathways to avoid them. Bringing his knowledge and expertise in over a few months helped us get our project back on-track during a challenging period. I’ll be happy to engage him on a future project.”
— Rob Butterfield, Managing Director at Maddison Limited, Fittleworth, West Sussex, UK
“When I first found HJC Consulting, I was simply looking to qualify a suitable fab house for our microfluidic product that was under development in collaboration with a university research team. After getting John Crabtree plugged in, I found that he was sharp, responsive, and very knowledgeable about both the manufacturing and performance/applications sides of microfluidics. Also, his project management skills proved very valuable in keeping the four parties aligned as we applied for a grant, drew up the terms of the collaboration, wrestled with the granting agency, and then got under way after the grant was awarded. What began as simple, short-run task evolved into a multi-year, multi-faceted engagement that really benefited our project.”
— William R. Glover III, Founder & CTO, ZS Genetics, Wakefield, MA, USA
Content Creation
“John Crabtree came recommended as a microfluidics expert through his previous work with executives here at Atomica, and lived up to the promise when I engaged him. John assisted us with a number of BD projects related to our website, social media and downloadable e-books, authoring several pieces currently on our website. His combination of technical depth and honed writing skills is rare, and means his finished product requires much less editing, if any, prior to publication. He is happy to embrace our requirements, and works well with others on our team. I won’t hesitate to pull him in on our next project.”
— Stephen Bohn, VP of Marketing, Atomica (formerly Innovative Micro Technology), Santa Barbara, CA, USA
IP Landscaping
“We hired John to perform an analysis of a very large number of patents and provide detailed findings pertaining to described technical embodiments. John created innovative, automated search tools to rapidly and effectively screen the patents, yielding the relevant nuggets of valuable information we were after. He then presented the findings, including his approach, in crisp, well-organised reports that allowed us to assess the landscape and make informed decisions. The first project was followed by two more, and I’ll call him up next time I need detailed, rigorous work”
— Gregor Ocvirk, Program Manager, Roche Diagnostics, Mannheim, Germany
“In the early stages of developing a new product, we encountered some performance challenges, and came up with effective design changes to resolve them and create a superior product. We hired John Crabtree at HJC Consulting to map out the IP landscape around our product technology so we would have a better feel for where we stood versus our competitors, and what prior art might exist in the scientific literature, on websites, in product manuals, etc. John performed a detailed investigation for us and generated a report that clearly outlined areas he covered, explained the relevance of his findings to our product, and documented everything meticulously. He checked in with us to provide updates on progress and new scope areas, and also to ensure alignment moving forward. We used his research to guide our product development, and also as a key part of the prior art foundation for the patent we filed for this product. His work was first rate; I’d be happy to recommend him to others..”
— John Fulton, Engineering Manager, IDEX Health & Science, Middleborough, MA, USA