Comment · Sat, October 23, 2021 · ND Owner
Reddit AMA | In-House Lab Edition
Original post in this thread
NootropicsDepotGuru · 77 points
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We are very excited to announce that Nootropics Depot will be conducting its first-ever Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), which is a semi-live Q&A session, about our In-House Analytical Laboratory and we would love for you to join us! See below for full details and get your question(s) ready. We hope to see you there!
WHEN
STARTS: October 20th | 9am AZ MST
ENDS: October 22nd | 9am AZ M…
What they were answering
Baby-punter · 1 points
Can you tell us more about how this in house lab will benefit customers and your reasons behind needing an in house analysis lab.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
So to adequately answer that question, I have to go back to all the way back to when I started all this. Around a decade ago I was just a nootropic and supplement enthusiast like all of you. I was experimenting with trying to improve my own cognition and mood. I started out on Longecity like many early people did, but then came over to /r/Nootropics early on. I read as much research as I could, and tried to gain enough knowledge for me to feel comfortable participating in discussions. After I felt I was knowledgeable enough to at least participate, I started commenting a lot and helping people on Reddit. The other moderators noticed this and invited me to become a moderator of /r/Nootropics. I accepted, and after a while I decided that I needed to do something about the testing and quality control standards of the industry. Anyone that was around back then can tell you it was like the wild west. We were buying from the available vendors at the time, most of whom were just individuals buying untested chemicals from China and packaging things in their living rooms. The quality control wasn't just bad back then. It was nonexistent. Nobody knew if what they were consuming was the correct molecule, much less pure and free from contaminants. Multiple people from the community actually went to the hospital after taking nootropics that later turned out to be completely different chemicals. I knew something had to change.
This is when I started the /r/Nootropics community testing program. I raised donations from the community, and then went out and purchased nootropics that people thought were fake or impure, and I would send them to labs and call out the companies selling bad products. That's the entire reason I even got into this industry. I couldn't believe that the standards were so bad, so I decided to try and change it. After a while another Redditor reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in starting a company that actually did things right and sold properly tested products. I agreed. As time went on we got deeper into the lab testing side of things. I learned about analytical chemistry, and hired qualified people that helped me to understand the science behind proper testing and quality control. As time went on, we worked with more and more labs. The deeper we dug, the worse things we found. It wasn't just the vendors out there doing things improperly. The labs were as well! We were not only getting poorly acquired data from labs. We were getting completely fraudulent data! I got into this whole thing to advance the lab testing and quality control standards of the industry. How could I do that if I couldn't even trust the labs we had available to us? On top of that, even the trustworthy labs were limited in what they could test. They didn't always have the methods available for the things we sold, which meant I couldn't sell it until they or another lab built them. This is why I knew that the only way I was going to change things was to build my own lab and take over as much as I could. I hired qualified people that were as passionate about analytical chemistry and doing things right as I was, and we built out our capabilities over the years. Not only were we able to take over our regular QC work, and verify that the science was being done right, but we expanded our capabilities by doing our own method development.
So that is the reason I built out an in-house analytical lab. I just couldn't trust the available labs out there. I knew most labs don't actually care about what the results are. They get samples in, run the tests, then give the results. If the results are pass or fail, it doesn't matter to them. I slowly realized that I was really the only one that truly cared about whether or not our products were as they should be. It's my name and reputation on the line. Nobody is going to care as much as I am. Moreover, I use all these products myself. I am putting them in my own body, too. The entire reason I started this whole thing was to ensure the lab testing and quality control standards of the industry got better. Being able to personally verify the validity of everything that goes into that is crucial. This is also why our lab benefits customers. We will always do everything humanly possible to verify and ensure our products are always as they are supposed to be. If we are not 100% sure, I will hold things back till we can do more testing to ensure we are. That's the promise I made when I started this company, and one that I will do everything in my power to ensure is kept for as long as we operate. I think most people don't realize the biggest enemy in this world isn't willful deceit. It's apathy. People just not caring enough to ensure things are correct and verified is what leads to most of the issues out there. I care, and having or own lab that I can oversee ensures me the ability to make sure things are done right every single time.