I founded Twenty-Six Systems after working both in life-science instrumentation sales and in a consultative role supporting major pharma organisations.
I spent four years at Optics11 Life, first selling complex scientific systems across EMEA and later managing an international commercial team. I then spent more than four years at Agilent Technologies as Senior Service Product Specialist for Northern Europe, working with commercial teams and major pharma, biopharma, and biotech accounts on complex service programmes.
Across these roles, I kept seeing the same gap: strong science, strong products, but inconsistent commercial execution. Most available programmes are too generic to support the realities of complex scientific sales.
Twenty-Six Systems focuses specifically on that gap by helping life-science instrumentation teams improve how they sell, from generating the right opportunities to converting them with more consistency.
I joined Optics11 Life when the company had around twelve people. My initial role was Sales Engineer for EMEA, covering the full commercial cycle: lead generation, cold outreach, qualification, follow-up, and remote and on-site demonstrations. Systems were typically priced between €40K and €100K.
When the commercial manager left, I took on the manager role and led an international team of around ten people, including two in the United States and a distributor in China. There was no real commercial training structure in place — I had to build one quickly. That became one of the direct triggers for Twenty-Six Systems.
At Agilent, my role had a strong consulting dimension. I covered Northern Europe, supporting account managers in positioning service offerings and training commercial teams on the products under my responsibility. I worked on complex programmes including lab relocation, enterprise asset management, and digital monitoring of scientific equipment.
Enterprise asset management involved major pharma companies outsourcing the scheduling and coordination of their entire equipment fleet. This gave direct visibility on capital expenditure decisions, instrument lifecycle management, and how large organisations think about operational risk and compliance.
Pierre Duval
Founder, Twenty Six Systems
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