Pros
Pros: The intellectual property and technology is astounding. A protenaise shell that protects DNA/gene samples through the high heat and pressure processes of PCR testing. Makes for a fast, reliable Point of Care test. The teams of scientists, operators, engineers and support staff are some of the best people. Solving difficult problems and amazing work ethic. This is the first company where I became friends with coworkers outside of work. I enjoyed coming in every day and shaping the future of a growing engineering department in a new company. Tom Moran and Tom Trace executives in engineering and quality respectively are some of the brightest, noblest individuals. I'm proud to have had them as mentors and friends.
Cons
Cons: There were red flags from the beginning. There were no departmental budgets, everything was funneled through the CFO. There was a warehouse filled with millions of parts in outdated/prototype revisions. The fortune spent on inventory before the product was developed is astounding. There was no business or legal skills in the early executive team. We ended up footing an incredibly overpriced bill for two lines of production machines that were designed by a roller coaster design group Setpoint/JRAutomation? My team spent the bulk of our time solving machine design issues that wouldn't have happened if 1)MicroGEM had made a solid contract for deliverables with Setpoint that was by deliverable and not by the hour 2) The contract had stipulated and Setpoint had used their med-device design division. MicroGEM spent 10s of millions of grant money that hadn't even been received yet and significantly underestimated the time for FDA EUA processing. Every message from Jeff Chapman, the CEO to investors, employees, vendors, and customers was lies or half truths. Stuart Hellyar, the CFO personally approved and signed on all purchases; the standard Net 30 terms typically, but then MicroGEM would just not pay to those agreements and would rarely respond to inquiries even into collections. MicroGEM owes vendors going back 3 years now. We got EUA and engineering and operations were working a lot of overtime through the summer of 2022, in a non-compliant facility. A pair of swamp coolers in the roof were the only AC keeping the facility in the mid 70s, high humidity and breeding mosquitoes spawning all over our med device production machines. All in the name of selling as much product as possible and with promises from the CEO that all the extreme effort would be paid back, though never with any certain detail to how. Then we learned that while our paychecks were having 401k contributions deducted, these weren't going into our 401k accounts from May of 2022 onward. A lump sum in August was supposed to make those back-paid but the lump sum was much smaller than expected. In August 2022 dental claims began getting denied, again an item that was being deducted from paychecks but not going where the paychecks stated. End of August 22 the CFO quietly left the company, it still hasn't been formally announced. In September hourly paychecks were weeks late and salary paychecks were never paid. End if September MicroGEM announced voluntary furloughs. Mid-October the CHRO left the company, this still has not been formally announced. At the beginning of November, the DOL arrived as part of the unpaid paychecks complaint investigation. The beginning of November, MicroGEM voluntarily ceased all US Operations. Jeff Chapman continued overpromising and giving half-truths to potential investors. The ship wasn't just sunk, it was scuttled with everyone still onboard by the Captain and First-Mate. I wouldn't be surprised to learn of fraud charges against the CEO and CFO.