I'm a SWE turned diy biologist and among the services I offer is bioprospecting for biotech startups. My most recent client hired me to gather soil samples from different biomes and running assays from my home lab to determine if there are any enzyme-producing organisms of interest.
Glad to hear of your interest in bio! I haven't delve much into the business side, but that is something I'm planning to get into on my YouTube channel and Instagram (both are under EverymanBio).
I'm doing a small enough volume that automation isn't quite needed yet. The process is basically creating a soil dilution, culturing some special media broth and then plating samples the next day. If this small experiment shows promise, there's talk of implementing something like Opentrons.