NDP alum Steve Derico (’05) speaks at a recent Apple iOS development conference.
Notre Dame Prep alum Steve Derico (’05) founded and currently manages a mobile-applications development company in San Franciso called Bixby Apps. Bixby does work for individuals, startups and Fortune 500 companies as diverse as The Nielsen Company and BMW. Derico’s come a long way since he was in school, but in a sense he’s exactly where he is “because” of his high school and university.
“I was able to study computer programming as a sophomore at NDP,” Derico says. “Most students aren’t offered computer science classes until they are sophomores in college. Notre Dame gave me a significant head start.” He recalls all the things he learned in his high-school computer science classes: “I studied Java, Visual BASIC, CAD/CAM, HTML, CSS, all the basic building blocks; it was programming 101.” He credits this early knowledge with keeping him well ahead of the pack.
Of course, Notre Dame Prep isn’t the only academic institution on his resume. He graduated from Grand Valley State University in 2009 with a degree in computer information systems, a field that focuses on computer science and infrastructure and how to apply them in the business world. Derico minored in business at GVSU, so he knew how he wanted to apply his major.
He also knew where he wanted to apply his major.
“When I was a junior at Grand Valley, I spent hours calling every tech company I could think of in Silicon Valley,” he says. “I really wanted a career in California’s Bay area.” He had no desire to do computer work for a Midwest company. Like Meijer, he says, for example, explaining that computer engineering for the most part in this part of the country is ‘primarily mechanical’ in nature.
So with much persistence and some luck, Derico eventually landed an interview with tech giant eBay in San Jose, and quickly earned an internship there. “I was one of about 50 eBay interns at the time,” he says. “Many Ivy Leaguers and graduates from other elite East Coast universities—and one from GVSU!”
Derico’s main job as an intern with eBay was to build software for highly skilled engineers in the company’s huge call center. “I worked with the engineers to identify issues, build codes, manage projects, justify need and cost, and was responsible for presenting, explaining and teaching software solutions to them.”
That work led to Derico being named “intern of the year,” an honor he shared with one other intern, who graduated from MIT. That early success led to a full-time job at eBay. But with Apple Computer’s app store gaining momentum and exploding in popularity at the time, Derico thought perhaps eBay wasn’t for him. He wanted instead to pursue application development for Apple’s iOS.
“In my spare time on nights and weekends, I was developing sample apps, watching Apple videos, learning everything I could about Apple,” he says. Then one day he discovered and watched a Stanford University lecture online about Objective-C, which is the primary programming language used when writing software for Apple’s OSX and iOS. Which made him want to learn even more about it.
“I began ‘crashing’ some of Stanford’s classes. I guess the proper term is ‘auditing,’” Derico recalls. “I actually slept on a friend’s couch in Palo Alto and went to class.” He gained the knowledge he needed, launched his first app, quit eBay and began making many more apps through contract work.
With his business growing rapidly through word of mouth and Craigslist postings, Derico set his sights even higher, knowing that big brands were what he eventually wanted to work with. So he took a 10-slide PowerPoint presentation outlining his app-business idea to Menlo Park in California, where a high concentration of venture-capital companies were headquartered. His pitch worked, he received some funding, and now his company, Bixby, which currently is located in downtown San Franciso, employs seven.
His relatively quick success, Derico says, came not only from hard work, persistence and a great computer-programming mindset, it also came from effective communication, for which he also credits Notre Dame Prep. “In the tech world, you really do need to know how to talk to people. You can have an amazing computer science brain, but you also need to be able to explain and articulate what you know to clients or customers.”
It appears that he’s done very well in both departments!
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About Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy
Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. The school's upper division enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation's best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame's middle and lower divisions enroll students in jr. kindergarten through grade eight. All three divisions are International Baccalaureate "World Schools." NDPMA is conducted by the Marist Fathers and Brothers and is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy, visit the school's home page at www.ndpma.org.