"A supportive culture is important to an extent, but I’d argue too much support is harmful"
Meet Sean Adler, a scholar turned entrepreneur. While pursuing a clinical program in China during 2018, he began to sense a significant divide between academic and functional knowledge. This influenced the decision to give up his scholarship from the Chinese government in spite of their generosity, so he could pursue an entrepreneurial career. Sean started GZI during his time as a graduate student in biotechnology at Johns Hopkins while he gained experience with the investing side of entrepreneurship by screening ventures for a number of groups across the United States.
Sean outperformed some of the largest hedge funds in the world during the coronavirus crash of 2020 after the initial development of quantitative trading strategies for international biotechnology companies during the coronavirus crash of 2020, which led to GZI becoming a top-ranked Founder Institute portfolio company with a multimillion-dollar valuation. In addition to his tenure as CEO of GZI, he sporadically participates in startup mentorship programs with the NASDAQ Entrepreneurial Center and Founder Institute.
Sean’s professional background is versatile across domains in startups and investments but is most concentrated in international tech startups, biotech, and fintech. This includes skills like data science, statistical programming, managerial business, genomic data science, and Mandarin Chinese. He is generally very busy, though, nevertheless, feel free to hit him up if you think you’d get along or if something about his profile speaks to you.
Check out more interviews with entrepreneurs here.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET FEATURED?
All interviews are 100% FREE OF CHARGE
Table of Contents
Thank you so much for giving us your time! Before we begin, could you introduce yourself to our readers and take us through what exactly your company does and what your vision is for its future?
Sean Adler: In plain English, we resell trading data used to beat the stock market under a subscription model. Alternative data is one aspect of our operation that’s the most relevant and easiest to market.
Biologic cryptocurrencies to asset-backed cryptocurrency swaps for genetic avatars in the metaverse could be interesting, but is completely nuts at the moment so we’re letting it wait. Facebook is using retinal data for advertising in virtual reality and Worldcoin gives you cryptocurrency for your retinal scan, so it might be workable.
NO child ever says I want to be a CEO/entrepreneur when I grow up. What did you want to be and how did you get where you are today?
Sean Adler: I used to tell our house manager that I would operate a lemonade stand in spring and summer, then sell hot cocoa in fall and winter. I must have been seven years old at the time but I had started small ventures throughout my childhood.
My middle school teacher laughed when I told her she couldn’t tell me how to run my company after I outsold the school store. She proceeded to tell me her daughter had an MBA and that they were forcing me to shut down. It makes sense in hindsight.
Tell us something about yourself that others in your organization might be surprised to know.
Sean Adler: I used to play drums in punk and metal bands during high school, say 2006-2009. Back then you could find me running around in a mosh pit on the weekends. There might be an old band photo with me in a spiked vest if you run a Google search for “Sledgehammer Autopsy”.
Many readers may wonder how to become an entrepreneur but what is an entrepreneur? How would you define it?
Sean Adler: A true entrepreneur is someone who makes something out of nothing. The majority of entrepreneurs are borderline crazy, but smart enough to make it work. You have to be if you think you can compete with the corporate gods from a garage or studio apartment. Early startup leaders like Brad Feld have said, “Great entrepreneurs do.” That sums it up and you’ll know it when you see it.
What is the importance of having a supportive and inclusive culture?
Sean Adler: GZI supports an inclusive culture. A board diversified across gender and race outperforms a homogenous board. Inclusivity broadens your audience because perspective changes with experience. More diversity has the potential to create a diverse consumer base.
A supportive culture is important to an extent, but I’d argue too much support is harmful. My coach used to work with us until we passed out and referred to compliments as the kiss of death, but the people who stuck with it became remarkable athletes into their 40s. That philosophy sticks with me today because too much support doesn’t push you to grow but not enough will burn people out.
We’ve been discussing new recruits and how to train them. The consensus was to grant them access to company materials and allow them to optimize as they want, so long as it works. Providing creative freedom to entrepreneurial types yields better results.
How can a leader be disruptive in the post covid world?
Sean Adler: I don’t think I can answer this for everyone, but can break it down. First, take note of where the world was, is, and can be. While COVID was a black swan, what it did was amplify issues that were present before it while accelerating trends in technology.
GZI’s developed its method in 2019 and derived it from historical data on companies like Jazz Pharma in 2007. When you look at the chart on their website, you’d notice their share price dropped to $0.60/share in 2009 before spiking at $170 in 2015. The difference is that part of Moderna’s rise was hype and their price decreased from $500 to $150 in spite of booster shots.
This is why we mentioned vaccine stocks resembling Apple and Microsoft during the dot com boom. Apple, Microsoft, and Moderna are all innovative companies, but prone to the market nonetheless. Tech startups were disruptive in 2009, but scientific entrepreneurship will continue to disrupt. Jason Calacanis tried to explain Uber as “Atoms to bits” since the mobile app was modifying an infrastructure-heavy segment like taxis. Scientific ventures and emerging deep tech are “Bits to atoms”. The scientific laws remain, but the data itself is malleable. That’s how encoding cryptocurrency hashes into DNA was possible.
If a 5-year-old asked you to describe your job, what would you tell them?
Sean Adler: I’m a 21st century Nostradamus that tries to predict the future and monetize it.
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
Sean Adler: Crowdfunding and transitioning from a hedge fund to a platform will benefit consumers in 2022.
GZI was in due diligence to start a hedge fund or ETF until August 2021, but we received offers to crowdfund as a startup so we reverted back to a SAAS model. Becoming a tech startup was difficult for a few reasons. GZI was efficient as a fund and our performance was on par with leading funds that managed billions. Trading numbers were our claim to fame but that changed when we began scaling up an app. Our goal now is to transfer the efficacy to an app, which makes it available to more people.
Crowdfunding equalizes the playing field since an investor’s net worth can be under $1m. The regulatory burden is higher when you are selling shares of your company to hundreds or thousands of people, but it gives everyone a chance. We’re happy to provide that chance since access to private corporations was impossible for unaccredited investors before crowdfunding.
Leaders are usually asked about their most useful qualities but let’s change things up a bit. What is your most useless talent?
Sean Adler: Hypermobility. People at fitness classes referred to me as Gumby when I was a kid because my joints were flexible. I’m still doing the splits in my late 20s because of it but have serious doubts that anyone on my team finds it useful unless I attempt some Jack Ma stunts on stage.
Thank you so much for your time but before we finish things off, we do have one more question. If you wrote a book about your life until today, what would the title be?
Sean Adler: “Who would’ve thought?”
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Sean Adler for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Sean Adler or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
Disclaimer: The ValiantCEO Community welcomes voices from many spheres on our open platform. We publish pieces as written by outside contributors with a wide range of opinions, which don’t necessarily reflect our own. Community stories are not commissioned by our editorial team and must meet our guidelines prior to being published.
