In the Spotlight: Bitesize Bio’s CEO & Founder
This month’s spotlight is on Nick Oswald, Bitesize Bio’s CEO and Founder. Here’s what we found out from Nick about wine, music, and self-discovery.
How Nick Oswald got here
Nick Oswald never meant to become a marketer. In fact, the founder of Bitesize Bio initially wanted to be a musician. But growing up in early 90s Scotland, that didn’t seem like a viable career path, so he chose science instead. “I liked that science helped me to understand the world, and that it could make people’s lives better,” he says.
That career decision led him through a PhD, biotech roles, and eventually into the isolating world of industrial cloning and protein expression. It was there that the idea for Bitesize Bio appeared: “Using the same techniques over and over, I started writing about my lab epiphanies. Those little moments that help you understand why something works, or more often, why it doesn’t.”
What began as a blog turned into a business, almost accidentally. “I didn’t plan for Bitesize Bio to become what it is today,” Nick says. “I just wanted to help people like the younger version of me: scientists struggling in the ‘upside-down’ world of research.”
Nick’s superpower
Today, Nick leads Bitesize Bio by nurturing growth in individuals, teams, and customer relationships. “My favorite part of my job is when you see something click within another person. When I’m really connecting with a colleague, audience member or customer and it is helping us all to thrive. That’s the good stuff.”
But he’s quick to dismantle the myth of genius. “People often think that Bitesize Bio was some brilliant strategy or a cynical plan. It’s neither. It’s just been a massive (surprisingly successful!) experiment in creating mutual value. And its an experiment that has taught me more about myself than I ever expected.”
Learning about himself and how to grow a business has involved a lot of reading, coaching and introspection. So he feels he has been bombarded with advice for the last 15 years, so much so that he feels saturated, and ready to act on the advice he has piled up.
However when asked what is the one piece of advice that jumps to his mind he said, “Honestly, I’m not sure why it popped up, but what just came to me was something an old boss [a biotech founder] told me once; ‘Never buy the cheapest bottle of wine on the menu, buy the second cheapest’”. Not the most sage piece of advice ever, but useful nonetheless!
Nick outside of work
Outside of work, Nick channels his musical side into Just Jovi, a Bon Jovi tribute band he co-runs as a limited company. “We treat it like a rockstar startup,” he laughs. “It’s our own version of the rockstar dream with less pressure and more fun. This year we broke our personal best for a single gig with a 450 sell-out; the next target is to surpass that!”
For Nick, both music and marketing come back to the same thing: connection. “You can’t force anything. The best results come when you find mutual connection, mutual benefit and when everyone’s in it together.” It’s a philosophy that’s shaped Bitesize Bio from day one and continues to guide its growth.
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