Artful Engineering
Recommendations from a Serial Entrepreneur
Serg Albino is a serial entrepreneur with a long career in technology, engineering, and consulting. He has been the co-founder of several businesses, including ecoSPEARS, an impact venture delivering cost-effective and eco-friendly cleantech solutions that destroy persistent organic pollutants from our land and waterways.
In this Q&A session with a panel of alumni and students from the Crummer Graduate School of Business, Serg Albino discusses the origins of ecoSPEARS, shares what he has learned from being a serial entrepreneur, and makes recommendations for continued professional development.
This Q&A session is a follow-up to Serg Albino’s interview with J.B. Adams on the Crummer Connections podcast series. In the interview, he speaks about the influence of an early childhood spent close to nature, the importance of exploring new ideas and taking risks, and the impact of his Crummer education on his entrepreneurial ventures. Click here to read the full interview.
Part 1: Serg Albino on ecoSPEARS and Entrepreneurship
Clara Mount, MBA’20: You talked about how ecoSPEARS was the result of designing a new solution for a problem that nobody had come up with before. How did you come up with that idea?
Serg Albino, MBA’10: The original technology, which is the green spike technology here behind me, was co-discovered by our principal scientist and some of my colleagues at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. I only learned about it because I had graduated from Rollins [College] in 2010, and I wanted to get involved more with the community and the school. I reached out to the Center for Advanced Entrepreneurship and asked how I could help. There was a NASA scholar distinction program that started that year, and that technology was one of the ones we evaluated in the second year.
So that’s how it all started. It started as a Crummer NASA program and then we licensed the technology — and then the rest is history. We’ve attained a few more technologies from NASA as well as built our own. We actually received our patent for the spear spike itself for ecoSPEARS just last week, so that was kind of cool.
Gerardo Abril, MBA’20: Serg, you’ve had tons of ideas over the years. I would love to know, how do you decide when to pursue an idea versus letting go?
Serg Albino: Let me tell you what I know now and what I wish I knew then. What I know now is that if it’s going to be a venture — especially if it’s going to be venture-backed — the market size must be massive. Billions and trillions of dollars, massive. But take the money aside, it really has to be focused on solving true world issues. World hunger, gender equality, racial equality, environmental legacy, toxins — those are all true world issues. I mean, the issue of clean water is probably going to be the next world war if we’re not careful. So if you’re after impact and if you’re trying to really, truly solve a world issue, I think the fruit of that labor is the dollars and cents that come behind it.
I wish I knew that back then, because when you want to raise capital — especially if you want to raise a $2 million round, followed by a $5 million or $10 million round — what gets investors excited is the size of the market. The size of the market also means that there’s a massive opportunity for this business to mature and grow, especially if there’s no finite solution to that issue. Population continues to grow. There’s still going to be world hunger. If we don’t solve world environmental toxins or we continue to make chemicals and release them into the environment, the market continues to grow. And if there’s a lack of investment or there’s a lack of effort to solve it, that’s called the opportunity gap.
I wish I knew that back then because I bootstrapped two companies back in 2012 and 2015. It was crash and burn, but I learned a lot. There were a lot of skinned knees and I think if I didn’t learn those lessons, I would not be streamlined in decision making skills today.
J.B. Adams, MBA’11: Are you saying that you needed to have those crash and burn experiences to get where you are today, or could you have avoided them, or should you have avoided them? Where do you land on that?
Serg Albino: I teach martial arts on the side, Filipino stick and knife fighting. Sometimes the best way to learn is when somebody pulls out a real blade for you because you’re haphazard or lazy about keeping your hands in. Or if you’re not blocking a hook punch, sometimes you need to get shin-checked to make sure that your guard is up all the way every single time. That’s the same thing in business, right? Sometimes you need to be checked a little bit — to feel a little bit of pain — to teach you to keep your guard up or to time things differently the next time.
Gerard Mitchell, MBA’18: Serg, as you just said, you’re a serial co-founder. What does it mean to be a co-founder and how do you manage those relationships?
Serg Albino: It’s like a relationship with your spouse. It’s a long-lasting relationship, so you have to have the right balance of energy and drive. Both of you have to be all-in. It’s not a one foot in, one foot out kind of deal. Actually, Ian [R. Ian Doromal, the ecoSPEARS co-founder] is still here in the next room. He just got done with a five mile run. Now he’s back here in the office cranking some emails out.
It’s also about having a transparent relationship. For both of us, if something’s bugging us at 3:00 in the morning and the phone rings, we’re picking it up and saying, “Hey, what’s up? What can we do?” You need to confide in somebody — things that may keep you up at night as well as things to celebrate. You always have to celebrate wins. At the same time, you want to have that other person in that relationship to help you look at things from a different angle.
And you have to nurture that relationship, just like any relationship. You can’t just take away from the pot because if both of you guys are doing that, there’s nothing left in the pot. You have to be giving to that pot; that way, when you do need to dip in there, it’s bountiful.
Gerard Mitchell: Give us a sense of what you’ve learned through your period of raising money for ecoSPEARS.
Serg Albino: It starts off with a really big market. It starts off also with having the right mentors. It starts off with having the right investors or lead investor. Terrence Berlind and David Scalzo were first mentors and advisors before we even started talking about money. Dr. Pete McAlindon at Rollins was a mentor of mine as well. It’s having the right sets of folks that can guide you and shape you. As a founder, especially if you’re going to evolve with the business, you have to be coachable enough that you can elevate your game one level at a time.
We had a great session with Katapult Ocean. Our mentor there is Chris Rangin and he took us through an investor readiness program. He actually crafted this game that’s like a cross between Monopoly and Dungeons and Dragons, called Scale Up. It’s focused on entrepreneurship and business. [The game] taught us how to build a business focused not just on growth as you scale up, but also on value creation for your investors. If you can say, “My business here is this big, I’m already planning for five rounds of capital raise, and we’re going to end at an IPO” — that’s a forecast. If you’re already planning that way, you’re already showing potential investors in the early round what the plan looks like. It always has to be crazy enough, but [with] off ramps for earlier investors if they don’t want to ride along for the full year or the full amount.
So: good set of investors, good set of mentors. And God — God is always on your side. That’s what you always have to thank at the beginning of the day and end the day with.
Part 2: Advice from a Serial Entrepreneur
Gerardo Abril: Besides the opportunity gap you described earlier, what would you say is the greatest lesson you’ve learned from being a serial entrepreneur?
Serg Albino: You just can’t give up. You have to keep at it. You’ve got to have tenacity. Everybody that we hire here has a chip on their shoulder. Nobody likes to lose around here. If we come second on an accelerator pitch, Ian and I are pissed off about it and say, “How can we do this better?” We really try to have that chip on our shoulder to be really, really good at what we do. You can’t give up. And even if you win, you’ve still got to keep going. Make yourself better.
Kyle Sawyer, MBA’22: I have a lot of fellow classmates who are eager to graduate, get out into the real world, and put their business plans into action. What is the most important quality you think an entrepreneur should take the time to develop?
Serg Albino: Learn to tie the business model into the financial model. If they cannot answer the question of “how does the business make money — it’s called a hobby. It’s not going to do too well. There are all these social enterprise accelerators, right? There’s a lot of heartstrings. That’s why I’m more adamant about asking them: “How do you make money? How does the business make money? Take me through the process. How do you sell? How do the customers buy? OK, now, how do you scale that? How do you shorten the sales cycle?” You have to learn to do that. I would say learn to build the financial model first, before you go neck-deep in the fun stuff like marketing and technology development.
J.B. Adams: In an earlier conversation, you told me that you practice application of the Entrepreneurial Operating System, also known as EOS, which is described in the book Traction by Gino Wickman. I am someone who also practices EOS. What I want to hear from your point of view is how did you find your way into using this system? Did someone suggest it to you, or did you stumble upon it? And what strengths do you think it provides to entrepreneurial teams?
Serg Albino: I first learned about it when I started my entrepreneurship journey within the UCF [University of Central Florida] Business Incubator Program. When I transitioned from the research facility to the Winter Springs facility in 2013 or 2014, I was struggling with adopting management theories into startups. It’s two different worlds. Back then, at Rollins, there was no entrepreneurship track; for me, it was sustainability and technology and operations. It was very hard to match what we learned in the MBA program into startups. Startups are just A and B testing — yes or no — does it work? — try it again. The principles were so different.
So I started that journey of Traction by Gino Wickman, and I haven’t looked back ever since. I think it’s been a Bible for entrepreneurs on the business side because we strive for a Level 10 meeting every week. It involves a lot of planning and strategy, from a ten-year target, three-year, one-year, and quarterly. Then it’s a quick gut check every week. Your meetings are streamlined, and it promotes transparency. That’s what I love about it, too, because if I was not true to my word, my interns will check me at the meeting. It’s no holds barred at that point.
J.B. Adams: What does a Level 10 meeting mean?
Serg Albino: You strive to end your weekly meetings at a level 10 [on a scale of] zero to ten. Are you always going to get it? No, not at all. In the past three years, we probably only had four Level 10 meetings. We’ve hit some nines and tens, but — especially if the meeting is with twelve people — there’s always that one. Everybody will score a ten and somebody gives a nine and you’re like, “What the heck! Why is it a nine?” and they say, “Well, we rabbit-holed too much,” and we’re like, “OK, that makes sense. We’ll try better next time.” So we put that in the notes: “Do not rabbit-hole next time.” Now everybody knows to strive for a level 10 and don’t rabbit-hole. In the next meeting, if somebody is going to start to rabbit-hole, somebody will call them out right away because everybody wants the L10.
Part 3: Serg Albino’s Crummer Experience
Clara Mount: You mentioned the sustainability program at Crummer. I’m wondering how that program changed your understanding of what it means to be a sustainable business.
Serg Albino: My concentrations were in operations and technology management, so I had to pick two courses [for electives]. To be honest with you, [the course description] said “trip to Costa Rica for a week.” I was like, “Whatever this sustainability thing is, I’ll be in Costa Rica for a week.”
I worked at NASA Kennedy Space Center at that time, so we did a lot of things [with sustainability]. When you send stuff out to space, it better have sustainability in mind. It better have repurposing in mind, because if you build a several million dollar payload and it can only do one thing — what are you going to do, push it out of the space station once it’s done? No, it has to be used in different ways. It’s the same with the materials that you use. Are you being sustainable in sourcing materials? But also, are you cognizant of what happens if it has to burn on reentry?
So I thought I knew what the word sustainability would mean until I went to Costa Rica and took the program with Dr. Keith Whittingham. It just completely opened my eyes. My view on sustainability and the green movement has completely changed since that program as well. There’s a great book by the co-founder of Futerra here in the US called Green Giants. That class and Green Giants really prepared myself and Ian to speak with impact investors in Europe because there’s a whole other investment realm focusing on impact investment, which is all about sustainability, CO2 reduction, climate change, all that jazz.
Gerard Mitchell: As founder, what class do you wish you had taken at Crummer?
Serg Albino: Oh, that’s easy — Negotiations. I don’t know why I never took Negotiations, but Professor Grimm always had these 7 AM investor talks every two weeks or so. He taught a lot of negotiations in that program, but I never got a chance to [take the course] at Crummer. I wish I had Negotiations.
Gerard Mitchell: Do negotiations come up a lot in ecoSPEARS in your business now?
Serg Albino: Not really in a sense of the traditional back-and-forth negotiation, but it’s more of the art of the deal, how to position things as a whole product. Professor Bob used to always say, “People love to buy but hate to be sold, so you give them options.” That’s part of the deal. That’s the art of the deal in negotiations. It’s not necessarily the negotiations that we all think about in the movies, where they’re going to go back and forth and they have litigators.
Part 4: Serg Albino on Professional Development and Workplace Challenges
Kyle Sawyer: You mentioned Traction and Green Giants as two books that have helped you throughout your career. Are there any other books or speakers that have inspired you throughout your life?
Serg Albino: One of the best books that I’ve ever read is Crossing the Chasm. They use a World War II analogy of D-Day and how you prepare. Entrepreneurship and marketing and negotiations is warfare, so you better put your war paint on, prep your team, get your technology the right way, go for that beachhead market, and then build a base of operations and continue to penetrate the landscape. That’s a great book.
The other one is The Hard Thing About Hard Things. It’s really just about all the things that could go wrong in a venture. The second time I read it, I still had cold sweats. Reading the first two chapters, I was just like, “Holy smokes!” It’s so vivid the way he describes it. When I first met with Dr. Pete [McAlindon], I basically said, “I don’t care to learn about your successes. I care to learn about your failures and show me the landmines.” That’s what that book teaches you.
Gerardo Abril: Let me ask you — day to day at work, what is your greatest challenge?
Serg Albino: These days, it’s a lot of long days. I’ve focused a lot more on getting rest, so I’m usually in bed now and can pass out before 12:00. Before, I used to go until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, and my mind wasn’t sharp at all the next day. I thought grinding it out in that regard was the hustle, but it’s really not. You’ve got to be smarter.
It’s more about finding time for myself to plan or to do my own work instead of being pulled into directives or helping others on my team to get things done. I have had to learn to say no or “not right now — let’s schedule a time tomorrow.” Now I actually have to learn, “Can we schedule a time in three weeks as opposed to the next two weeks because the next two weeks are slim?” It’s very hard to do that when you’re a founder, you’re a startup, and you’re the CEO.
The Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida is consistently ranked as the number one MBA in the state of Florida. Crummer offers a variety of educational programs to prepare students to become global, innovative, responsible, business leaders.
Special thanks to our student and alumni panel for participating in this Q&A session:
Clara Mount, MBA’20
Gerardo Abril, MBA’20
J.B. Adams, MBA’11
Gerard Mitchell, MBA’18
Kyle Sawyer, MBA’22
