Quietly, Gene Codes continues to grow after almost 20 years in the biz

Gene Codes Corp. was founded in 1988 and launched its first -- and still in widespread use -- product in 1991. At that time, bioinformatics was a fairly new field. Now, with the huge amount of information that scientists are compiling about the human genome, it is an ever-growing industry, and Gene Codes continues to provide a product that is widely used by scientists and academics.

Their flagship product, Sequencher, is DNA sequence analysis software that can be used on both Macs and PCs. Director of sales and marketing Frank White says the software is "pretty widely used by pharmaceuticals, biotech companies and government and university laboratories." The company is continually updating the product -- they average one upgrade release a year. White says, "We have thousands of users around the world and they are loyal."

White says that the company stayed small, focusing just on Sequencher, for some years -- he estimates that in 2001, there were about 6 to 8 employees. Then, the company was asked to develop software to be used to identify victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center, and that number doubled within a year. That product, Gene Codes Forsenics, is now used by two other countries in addition to the United States. White says both Sequencher and Forsenics are  "making a contribution." He says this gives the company's employees a sense of purpose and satisfaction. "We have a product used by most pharmaceutical companies and another that is used in ID-ing victims of disasters. Working here has really made a lot of people feel like they have really made a difference."

White says the company employs about 50 people now. Because the company is privately-held, he declines to give fixed numbers, but says that they are currently in the process of hiring. The company has grown solely from organic sales of its products without the assistance of venture capital. White says Gene Codes has "no desire to go public" and that he foresees controlled growth over the years.

Source: Frank White, Gene Code Corp.
Writer: Kelli B. Kavanaugh