Member Monday: Domenic Aluise, CEO & Co-Founder
Milestones/Accomplishments: Domenic has been able to reach several milestones in his early career, such as placing 4th overall at the Formula 1 in Schools World Final, winning several national engineering championships with the Technology Student Association, won the University of Florida’s Big Idea Competition as a freshman engineering undergraduate, and became a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity.
Favorite Influential Person: Elon Musk is Dom’s favorite influential person because Elon Musk’s vision to solve the problems that the norm views as “too big” and the innovation that he enables his team to make everyday impacts the future for the better. Dom aims to have a similar vision and impact the world in a way that will better the future of humanity.
Favorite Company: Dom’s favorite company is Amazon because they are a company that originally had a single focus of selling books but eventually expanded their business structure into electronic goods like the Kindle and Amazon Web Services through elite focus and attention to detail. Their growth strategy for the future has a limitless potential, and they tackle new markets on a yearly bases.
Vision: Dom believes that this RDM team can make a significant impact by succeeding on their first mission: uncovering ideas and bringing them to market in a formulaic way. By optimizing the product development approach, he believes that RDM will enable today’s society to stop leaving ideas on the shelf. He hopes to live up to the moral example set by his strong family, leading through his future life as a good husband and father, and living up to his fullest potential.
Biggest Struggle: Dom’s biggest business struggle included learning how to self-identify and communicate the tasks that will push the company forward. He says, “In early life and throughout higher education, we are constantly managed by someone in a higher rank helping us along, such as teachers, professors, parents, etc. That all changes when we decide to start our own businesses. You are the leader and the manager of your own self, and that learning curve between the ages of 17 till now is steep, much steeper than I thought going into this.”
Advice For Future Entrepreneurs: Dom’s advice for future entrepreneurs includes taking a step back from the love of the idea to make sure that the idea is completely figured out. In product development, whether it be an app or physical product, the longest and most expensive type of work is re-work. It is extremely important to think about all of the details at the beginning, perhaps even before spending any resources out of pocket, such as operations, overhead costs, contribution margins, the timeline and budget, and future customers. These will lead to the creation of a successful, long term business.
2020 Goal: Dom has the personal goal of graduating from the University of Florida with his undergraduate degree in Industrial and Systems engineering. His business goal is to double RDM’s current team by year’s end.