Riley del Fierro began his coursework toward an MSIM degree at the same time as he was co-founding Pricesmith, a SaaS company that leverages AI to improve  pricing management for B2B distributors. The company builds products that address two factors in pricing: managing extensive catalog pricing at scale and expedient price execution. 

Fascinated with the interaction of people, processes and technology, del Fierro leveraged what he learned in the MSIM program while co-founding the company: “I was initially interested in a [career] pivot into the world of cybersecurity. While our company developed, I was learning more about the extensive vulnerabilities that are present in even the most robust SaaS solutions,” he said. 

“The amount of time [iSchool] professors spent investing in our success directly contributed to the growing performance of our company. Professor [Andrew] Reifers clarified many things regarding securing personal user data that would not necessarily be apparent.” 

Del Fierro noted that consulting and technical project management courses at the iSchool helped him understand how to prioritize time and manage resources effectively. “While our company is largely a SaaS company, there is a significant consulting and services portion that goes into a successful implementation,” he said. “These courses allowed me to bring conversation to the table that I would not have been able to before.”