MessagingLab Karl Schmieder Names and Markets Disruptive Technologies

Interview: Jeff Boily, BIOWIZARD – Part 1

2010 March 22

by Karl Schmieder

One of the features I’ve wanted to add to the MessagingLab blog is interviews with

entrepreneurs in the life sciences and biotechnology industries, and individuals doing great

things in marketing and branding that could be applied to the life sciences and biotech. The first

interview in this series is with Jeff Boily of BioWizard.

BioWizard’s motto is “Research Made Simple.” BioWizard gives life sciences researchers

tools and functionalities designed to increase the accessibility and dissemination of information.

In the biomedical research community, there is an unmet need for tools like BioWizard’s

because information is growing exponentially and it is becoming increasingly difficult to stay up

to date on information within even your own field.

Jeff and I spoke earlier this year. What follows is Part 1 of our interview. I’ll publish Part 2 early

next week.

JEFF BOILY: I’ve been a biotech-pharmaceutical executive for over 30 years and started my

career as a sales representative. I came up through the commercial ranks, doing sales, marketing

and licensing both at Fortune 500 Pharma like Abbott and Wyeth, then working for a public

biotech in the UK. Subsequently, I’ve been involved with four life sciences startups.

For over 12 years, I’ve been a CEO, leading the transformational change of organizations and

taking them to the next level or getting them ready for raise financial capital with VCs/Private

Equity or IPOs. I’ve also come into early stage startups where you’re starting from ground zero,

establish funding and business objectives. Prior to BioWizard, I was President and Chief

Executive Officer of Rogers Medical Intelligence Solutions, a clinical intelligence and consulting

firm that provides innovative services to the top 50 biotech and pharmaceutical companies,

largely in R&D , M&A, and marketing. After five years, we sold Medical Intelligence Solutions

to a New York private equity firm.

In September 2006 MentorTech Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund focused on

companies originating at the University of Pennsylvania, were evaluating Biowizard as a

potential investment. I was asked me to meet with the founders and discuss the market. One

quickly realized this was an outstanding group of scientists and entrepreneurs who were studying

at the University of Pennsylvania perusing their Ph.D. and/or M.D. degrees.

They created BioWizard; largely out of frustration in doing their academic research in the life

sciences. They found that they had to scour the web for sources of research information. That

was especially true with getting literature out of PubMed as well as product information. They

wanted to create a service that would incorporate Web 2.0 innovations in the science literature

field.

They started BioWizard in August 2005 to solve these research issues, and wanted to see what

else they could do with the platform.

Long story short, I came on board as the Chief Executive Officer helped redo several business

elements, secured initial venture capital financing, then began to market our services to life

scientists around the world. To this day, some 85 percent of our users are either Ph.D.s or M.D.s

in various academic, research institutions and pharmaceutical biotech companies around the

world.

SCHMIEDER: Could you tell us what is it that is appealing about the site? What makes

scientists and researchers come back to BioWizard?

BOILY: From a content perspective, BioWizard makes it possible for a user to monitor our site

and use our proprietary search engine to search PubMed a service from the National Library of

Medicine, search several peer-reviewed journals in the life sciences arena, then, if you find an

article that you believe is relevant to the Biowizard community, or an article you wrote, you

could post it on our site for other users to vote on. It’s very similar to the social bookmarking site

www.digg.com in that it creates a community by tagging content, but it’s aimed at a very

specific audience.

For example, let’s say you found an article in one of 18 scientific and clinical categories on the

clinical side of the subjects BioWizard tracks, you would post it. If they liked it and thought it

contributed to overall knowledge, they could vote on it or could start discussions around the

article. In fact, posing questions to our scientific and medical community regarding articles and

their applicability to other areas occurs regularly.

This ability to post an article and to have people vote on it is very appealing and has been an

innovative idea for sharing content in the life sciences community.

And BioWizard makes it easy to join the community. All it takes is a very simple registration

process. We do not require names, if you want to remain anonymous. We found anonymity has

been very important to our users as many users prefer to keep their academic or professional

affiliations anonymous. We’ve learned that asking for too much information actually impedes

the sharing of knowledge.

SCHMIEDER: How does the model that you described fit into kind of the bigger universe

where peer-reviewed articles are moving onto the Internet. Does BioWizard fit into that debate?

Or, is it something that’s grown from that?

BOILY: Not really. To post an article on our site, it must already be in one of the approved peer-

reviewed scientific or medical journals within the PubMed database. The gatekeeper is PubMed.

The articles on BioWizard come from those thousands of journals. The editorial review process

established by each of those journals is what dictates the BioWizard content and all of these are

all peer-reviewed journals. Someone can’t decide to write an article for a “non PubMed

approved journal” and post it to BioWizard. It doesn’t work that way. In addition, Biowizard is

also a LinkOut provider of PubMed.

SCHMIEDER: What is the ratio of people who come to the site to search PubMed compared to

those that actually come to the site and post articles so that people can vote on them or interact

with the articles? Are they one in the same?

BOILY: As with all things, this approaches the traditional 80/20 rule. I would say that a very

small percentage of the people who come in actually post articles and open dialogue. A lot of

people post their own articles or research that they’ve been associated with, and then users vote.

Voting is very simple you simply click on the Vote button.

Number of Searches on PubMed

However, the vast majority of scientists come to the site to search for articles and look at what

new articles have been posted in their specific scientific or clinical research area. So the exact

ratio would vary but it’s definitely a smaller portion who actually post and open up

comments.The audience is a global, so we get a great perspective from the people coming into

our site.

SCHMIEDER: Let me ask the million dollar question: How does BioWizard currently make

money?

BOILY: We sell advertising and promotional programs to life science and technology firms that

have a very specific focus on the life sciences vertical.

SCHMIEDER: How do people find BioWizard?

BOILY: We have done quite a bit of Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing to

drive traffic. The URL for PubMed is quite specific, so we have leveraged the technology so

that we show up in organic searches. That way any users looking for PubMed will also see the

BioWizard link. Users can do their PubMed search without having to go to PubMed. However,

BioWizard adds a lot of information and value that is not available on PubMed.

We also use a keyword advertising program and have done a variety of other marketing programs

to help drive users to our site.

Marketing BioWizard.com

SCHMIEDER: Which of those have you found to be more successful for you?

BOILY: Search engine optimization. SEO has been very productive and key in significantly

growing our organic rankings in search. We have found SEO to be very lucrative for us.

SCHMIEDER: I searched for PubMed on Google and BioWizard comes up as the first result on

the second page. That’s pretty great considering the top four results on the first page are

PubMed itself.

BOILY: Right, that’s because PubMed is a major governmental entity. If you actually look at the

number of results , it’s over 30 million. So we’re now on the top of Page 2. That means we’ve

slipped a bit. We used to be at the bottom of the first page. And that was due largely to SEO.

SCHMIEDER: That’s very impressive.

BOILY: Not too bad for a small startup firm.

SCHMIEDER: I’m curious in terms of the direction that you guys are taking. Where are you

going with BioWizard? What are your plans?

BOILY: We’ve decided that to grow and leverage the full value of BioWizard, we would like to

form strategic partnerships. Funding in this particular environment is challenging, as we all

know. Exit strategies are non-existent and M&A has slowed down dramatically. So, we are

looking to align ourselves with a much larger organization where we can leverage our search

engine, our information, and expertise in the life sciences arena. The partner would ideally be a

company that is seeking to offer other services to scientists or researchers and BioWizard could

help them retain their customer base.

We understand the biotech and pharmaceutical industries and we understand academic research,

the organization is made up of Ph.D.s and M.D.s. Our senior staff include a Medical Officer,

Scientific Officer, Chief Technology Officer and President all coming from the University of

Pennsylvania.

SCHMIEDER: You and I had talked about this previously, you mentioned some of the firms that

and types of companies that would make sense for partners.

BOILY: Yes, it’s going to be people who want to reach life scientists. We know some of the

prominent computer companies and software companies have very specific programs directed at

life scientists. They might find a partnership with BioWizard an important way to reach this

audience.

SCHMIEDER: Without mentioning names, could one of the larger computer hardware

companies or a big database provider being interested?

BOILY: Yes, they are all making significant investments into the life sciences because there is a

renewed interest in computation for the life sciences. In addition, all the pure–play life sciences

firms that sell life sciences services and products into the research institutions would make great

partners.

TO BE CONTINUED.

Interview: Jeff Boily, BIOWIZARD – Part 2

2010 March 25

by Karl Schmieder

This is Part 2 of my interview with Jeff Boily of BioWizard. For Part 1, click this link.

Karl Schmieder: Let’s switch gears a bit and talk about the marketing of the life sciences since

you’ve been a part of the industry for 30 years. Could you give us some perspective, especially

in terms of the economic challenge we’ve been going through? What do you see out there in

terms of what’s being successful for a company? What do you think companies are failing to

do?

Jeff Boily: Well, the environment is certainly more challenging overall. So, the major issues

when you are promoting to biotech and pharmaceutical industries has been this downturn. There

have been significant job losses within the research areas and that has certainly impacted a lot of

the programs. For example, many BioWizard’s users are associated with the industry and that

certainly does make an impact.

That being said, research continues to move forward and people still need information and

services. Information is critical in this sophisticated user group. They like to search for

information, find what they’re looking for and move on. They’re not shopping the way

consumers do. They’re looking for tools that save them time yet deliver very specific results.

At BioWizard, we consider the psychographics of life scientists to determine how they search for

information, use the service and what new technologies and new programs they want and would

use. We’ve tried to look at what is critical for scientists to use our services. What influence

fellow researchers have? And we have found they like very specific information.

Based on that information, we added a feature that allows our users to save all their search

algorithms, then be notified immediately via email if when a new article is added into the

PubMed database that meet their search criteria. That way, users could develop sophisticated

search algorithms, that saves time and improves results. Specificity is key, they are not looking

for general information or news that is not specific to their research interests.

General articles or news elements in oncology is not of significant interest to this group.. For

example, they want recent published data on squamous cell carcinoma in head and neck cancer,

etc . And, they’re doing very specific things with the information they receive. So, they do not

like wasting their time. This is a more impatient group. They like to come in. Get what they

need and move on.

So if we can provide the services and tools that solve their problems, allow very specific

searches, then they will come back to BioWizard and we increase the stickiness. This is really

central to what we have done as a small firm.

We know that our audience is not interested in a lot of banner ads. Some of those have worked.

But it has to be appealing from a scientific or medical content perspective. In general, the

standard web banner ads don’t work very well with this audience. That’s why we haven’t

promoted Biowizard via banner advertising because we haven’t found it to be effective.

SCHMIEDER: Is there anything else that you have found to be effective that maybe our readers

wouldn’t think of as being obvious?

BOILY: Yes. We’ve used Second Life and have participated in various programs on that virtual

world. We’ve created a persona and were very surprised by the number of people in our target

audience that participated. Even more surprising were the residual effects of people going back

and looking at the content. We’ve found Second Life to be a worthwhile program and recently

we’ve seen other firms doing virtual life science events in that world.

BioWizard's innovative marketing strategies include the use of Second Life

It allows users to look at these programs at their convenience as opposed to being locked into

specific schedules and traveling, especially with the downturn in the economy where it’s been

some limitations on travel.

SCHMIEDER: That’s very interesting because interest in Second Life wanes in the mainstream

media, but consulting firms like McKenzie have been using it as a global marketing and

recruiting tool. Given that your audience is very highly educated, I’m not surprised that a place

like that would be a good place to find a lot of them at once and make it easy for them to know

what you’re doing and how it’s going to help them.

BOILY: Second Life caters to a younger audience, but it definitely has a serious group of

scientists who were very interested in our program.

SCHMIEDER: How did the ROI on that program compare to others? It sounds like it was very

successful.

BOILY: We were pleased based on the number of people that were exposed to BioWizard and

the impact our web traffic. Since we are a small firm, we need to really focus our promotional

dollars as efficiently as possible. We don’t have the luxury for broad programs. So, of the

various marketing programs we’ve tried, we found that one certainly did yield some positive

results.

SCHMIEDER: That type of program probably doesn’t come top of mind for most marketing

people but it sounds like it made a lot of sense for BioWizard.

BOILY: As with all marketing programs, you look at what’s innovative and can drive users.

We had mixed feelings whether this would work or not, but it certainly produced positive results.

We’ve also done virtual bio conferences – where combinations of speakers do recorded

broadcasts for their audiences and you can circulate, and have a virtual booth, if you wish, during

these conferences as well. We’re finding many other life sciences firms are using this type of

marketing.

So there is a movement to this to try to get to the target audience with specific information that

they want and when they want it as opposed to mobilization people all over the country, which is

what we all used to do.

Another marketing program we found interesting and brought us some interesting results is a

very direct program aimed at university students in graduate school and undergraduates as well

to try to promote our site. Since they’re the ones doing research, they’re very interested in new

resources. We ran programs and retained what we call College Ambassadors for BioWizard. We

got them to hand out pamphlets and BioWizard t-shirts. The t-shirts were in big demand. That

was an effective way to get our message out to an audience that is very key to us and they helped

spread the word. We’ve done this for a variety of institutions across the country.

SCHMIEDER: Again, that makes a lot of sense, you’ve got the right message aimed at the

audience that will be using the product.

BOILY: Correct. We’re also tied in with a number of the academic libraries. We were part of

the Medical Library Association and had a lot of our users and a variety of contacts within the

academic world. We’re able to link ourselves to various academic libraries. That also

strengthens our presence in a key environment. We view BioWizard as an information/education

tool, where you come to find scientific and medical information for your own research or for

educational purposes. So those are some of the grass roots marketing efforts we’re promoting at

various academic centers and the virtual world promotions we’re doing.

SCHMIEDER: It sounds like a great way to reach your audience. I’m sure that word of mouth

is a big part of your efforts. Is there anything else that you wanted to tell me about life sciences

marketing in general?

BOILY: Well in marketing to the life sciences, you need to keep your user audience in mind and

that audience is very demanding and very sophisticated. They know what they’re looking for.

The value of your offering is critical. With BioWizard, we’ve tried to build valuable features

throughout the site, keeping the user in mind. So, whether it is to save a search or two, find or

share an article, we’ve tried to make it simple. Tools that simplify either research and the

communication process will increase the chances that your audience is going to come back to

your site and continue using your program.

SCHMIEDER: Thanks Jeff for spending the time with us today.

BOILY: You’re welcome.

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