Rayni

University of Chicago, Booth School of Business

Industry: B2B SaaS, AI for Life Sciences

MBA Founding Student Name(s): Sakshi Nag, Divyanshu Sharma

Brief Description of Solution: An agentic AI platform that helps scientists operate their instruments with confidence.

Funding Dollars: $1.8 Million

What led you to launch this venture? I love building tools for scientists. At Fermilab, I built software to control particle accelerators and worked with the top physicists in the world, which exposed me to the everyday problems even the best researchers face. I wanted to build a company that removes the routine obstacles that slow down research. After speaking with hundreds of scientists, one issue kept coming up: getting instruments to work and spending hours troubleshooting them. That’s what we focus on at Rayni.

What has been your biggest accomplishment so far with venture? Our biggest accomplishment is validating the problem and our direction. After hundreds of conversations with researchers, we confirmed that instrument reliability is a widespread, serious pain point. Scientists being happy with our solution only validates that we are addressing the problem effectively.

What has been the most significant challenge you’ve faced in creating your company and how did you solve it? The biggest challenge was getting people outside the field, like investors, to understand how serious the problem is. Instrument failures slow drug discovery, waste priceless samples, and stall research by months, but it feels niche to anyone who has not experienced it firsthand. Many assume scientists all experts with their instruments, so the pain remains invisible unless you get to know them.

We communicated the size and impact of the problem by using concrete examples and simple analogies. For example, we compare an instrument to an oven when you make a pizza: you care about the ingredients and the final taste, not about fixing the oven’s internal parts. Framing it that way made the problem obvious to non-experts and helped them see the value of our solution.

How has your MBA program helped you further this startup venture? My MBA was crucial to building Rayni. Entrepreneurial Discovery with Mark Tebbe taught customer discovery, interviewing, value-proposition validation, and design thinking. Entrepreneurial Selling taught me how to sell as a founder. The New Venture Challenge, one of the best university accelerators in the world, sharpened my pitching and fundraising skills. Between coursework, mentors, and hands-on practice, the program gave me the business judgment and practical tools to turn product ideas into a scalable company.

Which MBA class has been most valuable in building your startup and what was the biggest lesson you gained from it? Entrepreneurial Selling with Michael Alter has been the most valuable class to me. I’d always been a builder and had almost no sales experience. The course pushed me out of my comfort zone and taught practical skills like qualifying prospects, handling objections, and cold outreach. It was highly action oriented, so I practiced real conversations, iterated on a sales approach that feels authentic, and gained the confidence to sell as a founder.

What professor made a significant contribution to your plans and why? Mark Tebbe has been an invaluable mentor. He has guided us through multiple pivots, taught clear frameworks for decision-making, helped shape our strategy as we learn, and always asks the hard and uncomfortable questions that I need to face.

How has your local startup ecosystem contributed to your venture’s development and success? Chicago’s entrepreneurial community has been a major asset. The city has an incredibly diverse startup ecosystem, from supply chain and food tech to quantum computing and AI, so you get diverse perspectives from many industries. The Booth community and the broader Chicago ecosystem are deeply connected, and the people are generous with time, feedback, and introductions.

At Booth I joined Entrepreneurs Unplugged, a peer group of founders who quickly became some of my closest supporters. Faculty who are also leading entrepreneurs and investors in the Midwest have been especially helpful with strategy and fundraising.

What is your long-term goal with your startup? My long-term goal with Rayni is to build a platform that accelerates scientific discovery. Right now, operating instruments is a tedious, error-prone part of research that wastes time and energy. I want Rayni to make instrument operation simple, reliable, and even a little enjoyable so scientists can spend less time troubleshooting and more time doing research.

Looking back, what is the biggest lesson you wished you’d known before launching and scaling your venture? The biggest lesson I wish I’d known is that I do not have to do it alone. A large, generous community exists to help with different parts of building a company. Reaching out for advice, introductions, and support is far more effective than trying to solve everything myself.

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