Hey, I’m Dom - here's my story (so far..)
~1990's - The Beginning
I grew up in the Chicagoland area, always curious about business and coding (well not so much at that age). But once I got older I loved the idea of building something from scratch, especially if it could live online, reach people, and solve a problem.
~2000-2005
For a few years, I lived out in Southern California. It was a different pace, more sun, less snow. It was amazing, sunshine everyday, birthday on the beach, driveway hockey games in the evening. Probably spent everyday outside playing sports.
~2010-2016
After moving back to the Chicago-area, one of my first experiences launching something was a product called Squirrel Grease. I launched it on Amazon during my senior year of high school / freshman year of college. The idea came from my dad, who was constantly battling squirrels at his bird feeders. It was a ridiculous but real product, and my first taste of combining curiosity, coding, and eCommerce. We launched on Amazon plus our website, and actually sold some (still unsure if it was just my family buying, big Italian-American family..).
I wrote a "Post-Mortem Review" of the experience a few years ago. It dives into the whole process from inception to "launch".
Beautiful branding brought to you by yours-truly (I'm better now - I hope)
~2016-2018
I went on to graduate from the University of Iowa in 2016 with a degree in Computer Science / Informatics. I also took a lot of design classes and minored in entrepreneurship. I landed a programming job right out of school, but I never stopped exploring building things. I was doing a lot of work with Shopify and watching the Viking TV show, so it felt only natural to launch an eCommerce store that sold "Vikings" themed products. It definitely wasn't a success but it was another great experience in business, marketing, and products.
I actually was able to sell some viking-related items..
~2018-2020
In 2018, I took a leap and started a Master's in Biotechnology, a decision that pulled me deeper into the life sciences world. Around the same time, I started working with my dad analyzing public biotech companies for a series of funds he started/managed. We were manually tracking and managing lots of data and analyses across dozens of companies. At this time I also got heavily into options trading.
~2020+
We began using tons of spreadsheets and building crude internal tools to manage all the biotech data and analyses. After a few years, and by the time I wrapped up my MSc in 2021, we had become very familiar with all the data and decided to launch BPIQ (here's the story). BPIQ is a biotech data platform that helps investors stay on top of new data, PDUFA decisions, and other market-moving events.
Original BPIQ website home page
We launched step-wise, starting with a very minimal product and building up to a more robust web application. At each step I had a major hand in the software development (all aspects really - small team), drawing on what I learned not just from my degree work, but from an intensive full-stack software engineering bootcamp I completed in 2020 (focused on Python/Django and JavaScript/React).
Current BPIQ web application
Launching and growing BPIQ has been one of the best learning experiences of my life thus far. Product, marketing, people. I would also consider it a success in terms of starting and growing a business.
In ~2022 I launched a coding course for the Python web framework Django. Working with the ZTM team creating this course really openned my eyes to how content should be structured for teaching.
In 2023 the BPIQ team launched an adjacent product, BiopharmIQ that provides data on public and private biotech companies for sales/marketing and BD teams to get more leads.
This website is a place for me to share what I’ve learned along the way. Here you’ll find:
- Practical coding tutorials for investors.
- Personal posts about the story behind starting BPIQ.
- Occasional updates on what I’m up-to-and-working-on now.
If you're an investor who codes, a founder trying to build something from scratch, or just someone curious about how tech and biotech overlap, I think you’ll find something useful here.
Feel free to subscribe to get new posts and tutorials when they drop. I send emails once or twice a month. Nothing spammy, just useful stuff.
Thanks for reading.
— Dom