925-299-4450
JOE MARKUNAS
Partner – Healthcare and Life Science
"Bridging the gap between investors and science-based clients"
Joe works with life science, biotech, and healthcare clients, their founders and inventors to distill and tell their story through business eyes, bridging the gap between science and finance. He translates the innovative technology into functioning business models so investors can grasp how the offering can be commercialized and operationalized for an ample return on their investment. His 30 years of hands-on business and financial experience, coupled with his strong communication skills, ensure that life-enhancing, disruptive technologies are brought to market that otherwise might end up on the shelf. Joe is also a board director for Monument Impact, whose mission is to actively engage residents in training and tools that promote economic self-sufficiency, health and safety, civic engagement, community connections, and lifelong learning.
Joe has an entrepreneurial spirit. Raised on Chicago’s south side by a loving mother and a fireman and entrepreneurial father, he is the product of Catholic education by which Joe learned early a strong work ethic, the value of a dollar and the pride one gets from giving back to the community.
He started hustling at an early age, caddying for some of Chicago’s more prominent businessmen in the summers of his youth. He learned how business works by listening and asking questions while carrying the clubs for professional athletes, doctors, insurance and steel manufacturing executives and an attorney specializing in airline crash litigation. His exposure to a wide range of industries gave him insights into vast opportunities and business functions. He was especially drawn to accounting.
Joe developed a love for numbers in high school and was captivated by the process of organizing data and information to provide meaningful reports for decision-making and action. While caddying for the Director of the Chicago office of the FBI, it all came together when the director explained to Joe how accounting was used in his line of work. Joe knew then he had found his calling.
His plan after graduation with a B.A. in Accounting degree from The University of Portland in Oregon was to pass the CPA exam and join a public accounting firm. Joe did just that, first in Chicago’s Loop. Later, after relocating to the Pacific Northwest, Joe joined and later became a partner with a Portland firm. Wanting to work with clients as more than just a numbers guy, he formed his own firm a few years later to serve his clients more personally in managing their business and personal interests.
An early client of Joe’s was an emergency room doctor. Joe proved himself as the doctor’s personal CPA, who asked him to perform the accounting for the entire medical group of 40+ emergency room doctors. They came to view him as a trusted advisor, asking his counsel beyond his tax and accounting expertise, including negotiating contracts and examining compensation plans for the doctors. This exposure to healthcare and life sciences gave Joe insights into challenges unique to the medical and life sciences fields. This was a springboard for his work with healthcare, biotech and pharmaceutical clients.
A transformational moment occurred when Joe was introduced to an entrepreneur with a ground-breaking dental procedure and business model that would disrupt and greatly improve dental health care. The founder needed a strong business partner to develop and commercialize a medical device, obtain FDA approval and build global distribution. He had a vision to proactively treat dental disease medically and not surgically, especially in third world countries with populations that can’t afford ”sick-care” solutions. Joe became that strong business partner who brought this vision to fruition operationally and financially.
Excited by the mission and the challenges involved, Joe partnered with the founder to build the business infrastructure and dug into the exhausting work of IP protection, FDA premarket 501K submissions, took on international business development, marketing and distribution, pricing, branding and trademarking. He focused on the business side so his partner could focus on the science and the solutions. The insights he gained from working in all aspects of the business are brilliantly leveraged in his consulting work supporting life sciences, biotech and healthcare clients as well as consulting clients across a broad spectrum of industries.
His clients are frequently involved with innovative, often disruptive, technologies that typically have three core elements in common: 1) the technologies increase access to care, 2)they improve healthcare outcomes, and 3)they greatly reduce healthcare costs.
Joe is also drawn to companies that embody bold and philanthropic ideals and are often funded by “impact investors” – a special breed of investors seeking to make a positive social impact with their investments while also seeking sustainable ROI. These clients appreciate Joe’s ability to not only manage the financial aspects of the operation but also to grasp the scientific side and communicate and translate it to investors. His genuine interest in the technical and product side – along with his natural curiosity -- allows him to study and absorb the science behind the technology.
When working with lenders, investors or directors, Joe communicates these complex science matters in an understandable format. His job at the investor table is to tell the story and bridge the gap between the highly technical science and how it translates into financial opportunity and returns.
A committed professional, Joe is a member of the American Institute of CPAs, Oregon Society of CPAs, California Life Sciences Institute, Oregon Entrepreneurs Network and Oregon Opportunity Network
503-702-1113
Blogs
Force Majeure August 3, 2020
R&D Credits… Don’t Let Your Research and Development Costs for Pharmaceutical and Diagnostic Technologies Sit on The Shelf When You Can Turn Them Into Cash Flow February 15, 2019
New Lease Accounting Standards Curfew December 31… Do You Know Where Your Balance Sheet Is? January 3, 2019