"Extreme changes to the global economy also present opportunities if you can tailor your company to suit them."
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
Welcome to your ValiantCEO exclusive interview! Let’s start with a little introduction. Tell us about yourself.
Sean Adler: Consider me one of those people that does a variety of things and channels that into an interdisciplinary design. Might I recommend reading my intro in the previous articles?
NO child ever says I want to be a CEO when I grow up. What did you want to be and how did you get to where you are today? Give us some lessons you learned along the way.
Sean Adler: I did everything from playing the drums to martial arts and rock climbing in high school. I always felt constrained in school when I was growing up and didn’t find my passion until I could choose what to study in college. My initial goal in college was to follow in the footsteps of my parents and do psychotherapy in Chinese and Russian. That led to my interest in becoming a physician and doing medical research because I liked science but hated labs and was good with languages.
Things changed when I actually started clinical work overseas in China. I transferred into biotechnology to focus on the design side after realizing how routine it was. Academia began to resemble a financial trap and the intellectual stimulation didn’t cut it anymore. I decided to focus on channeling that creativity into something that paid. Now I’m an entrepreneur.
Tell us about your business, what does the company do? What is unique about the company?
Sean Adler: GZI is a financial engineering company focused on alternative data. This is from an interdisciplinary design that draws from various data types not used by most fintech companies. We’ve called jumps of over 100% on microcap biotechnology companies across the globe. These were Kempharm in the USA and Ascletis Pharma in Hong Kong, not Moderna and BioNTech. Aspects of genomic data science, financial programming, AI, and private equity included in the data engineering, but we’ll stop at that.
This led GZI to producing results on par with leading hedge funds in 2020 and 2021. Our product uses the same factors that are efficient as a trading operation. We rescale the efficacy into a platform that benefits users. Our goal is to integrate alternative data further into the DeFi space now that carbon exchanges are beginning to appear in Asia.
How to become a CEO? Some will focus on qualities, others on degrees, how would you answer that question?
Sean Adler: Launching a company involves suffering on behalf of a mission you will die for. Success rates for entrepreneurs are low and the number of hours most work at the early stages is well over 60 a week. So motivation is likely the most important factor in the beginning. Degrees help if it pertains to the venture. Often times an academic background is influential, but not everything. There are entrepreneurs who studied environmental science who sold tech startups worth millions. Most VC backed startups come from a business or engineering background. There are also people with degrees in history who’ve partnered with Facebook, so it’s hard to say sometimes.
Attending a notable university helps because of the network around you and the branding power it brings. When push comes to shove, it only gets your foot in the door. Harvard degrees may help someone raise their first round, but their company will be dead at Series A without seven figures in revenue. Ultimately, results and how you get them are what matters.
What are the secrets to becoming a successful CEO? Who inspires you, who are your role models and why? Illustrate your choices.
Sean Adler: The most influential entrepreneurs or investors for me are Brad Feld, Christian Angermayer, Elon Musk, and Jim Simons—in that order. Brad Feld is the most traditional of the four. He was an early pioneer in tech startups during the 1980’s. He’s admirable because of how level and honest he is about the ups and downs of the journey. The embodiment of humanism in the startup industry contrasts with the do or die mentality referred to as “hustle porn”. Christian Angermayer is not as well known in the USA but is in Europe. Angermayer is one of the most interesting entrepreneurs and VCs on the list. He’s done everything from direct movies to launch therapeutics companies. His focus is on cryptocurrencies and biotech—specifically psychedelics and treatments for mental health.
Elon Musk started in the 1990s and launched a branch of scientific entrepreneurship that wasn’t restricted to academia. People often talk about VC-backed companies as dominated by white men from the Ivy League. While Elon fits that mold, he did everything in tech entrepreneurship with degrees in physics and economics. Most people won’t argue that Musk is not a true genius. The companies he has started were original and impossible to imitate. None of them fit lean startup mentality but all succeeded because they were based on a systems approach. Jim Simons started the quant revolution synonymous with the physicists on Wall St. movement. Simons hired scientists or mathematicians instead of MBAs. This led to the creation of the Medallion Fund that’s legendary to this day.
Each went in their own direction and off the beaten path, resulting in something notable. When I say Tech 2.0 is yesterday’s news, it’s because the people who started it did so before anyone cared. They defined tech entrepreneurship in the 1980’s and 1990’s before it was mainstream in the early to mid 2000s.
Many CEOs fall into the trap of being all over the place. What are the top activities a CEO should focus on to be the best leader the company needs? Explain.
Sean Adler: I’m still learning this one and will have a different answer every two years if we keep growing. Tech accelerators will tell you revenue-generating activities are the most important. Academics will likely focus on patentable research producing more revenue over a longer period. It depends on the company and the people within it.
It’s much easier to be supportive of your team when you are small and easy to begin losing things in the crossfire as a company grows. What a company needs to survive at the earliest stages and what a company needs to flourish as it evolves are different, but there is overlap. The irony lies in the company’s initial defining features influencing it throughout its lifetime. It may become more subtle but it never fades.
The Covid-19 Pandemic put the leadership skills of many to the test, what were some of the most difficult challenges that you faced as a CEO/Leader in the past year? Please list and explain in detail.
Sean Adler: My previous interviews document this in more detail, but I’ll summarize again below.
Half of GZI’s story pertains to COVID and its irony. I had to pivot every year because of external circumstances and that led GZI to become what is it today. The initial focus was on molecular pharmacology in 2018. Securing IP as an American citizen in China during the trade war was impossible. 2019-2020 was about tweaking biotech to fit finance as I learned to program in bioinformatics.
March 2020 through January 2021 was a nightmare I’ll never forget. My coworking space was in DC’s Chinatown and I fought it out as windows in downtown DC boarded up after the initial riots. Explaining to one of the professors at Hopkins that a tank was blocking off the subway after the riots in summer of 2020 comes to mind. DC was a total catastrophe and everyone was in awe.
The people who could leave did because it was that bad. If buildings weren’t on fire, then a helicopter was flying around the streets to steer away protestors. I was late to a pitch practice in Janurary of 2021. The lights went out as I explained how my coworking space changed because the National Guard blocked it off after the invasion of congress. People on the other side of the zoom screen started laughing. Everyone was dealing with it so they empathized.
What are some of the greatest mistakes you’ve noticed some business leaders made during these unprecedented times? What are the takeaways you gleaned from those mistakes?
Sean Adler: Managing a fragile company culture instead of an antifragile one was the greatest mistake. Extreme changes to the global economy also present opportunities if you can tailor your company to suit them. Adapting to them isn’t the easiest or most enjoyable thing but it is to the benefit of a company to do so.
Infrastructure heavy sectors like hospitality and banks were affected the most. Companies reliant on agile processes or a scientific basis benefitted due to systematic factors. A snake eating it own tail represents financial markets because the Wall St. types structure things like credit default swaps and subprime mortgages. If you’re interested in the inefficiencies of the financial sector, look no further.
In your opinion, what changes played the most critical role in enabling your business to survive/remain profitable, or maybe even thrive? What lessons did all this teach you?
Sean Adler: Learning to balance a team was the most important change in 2021 since managing people was new to me. As a solo founder with an engineering background, I believed I was the most important person in the company at the earliest stages. The truth is that it’s quite the opposite now. Having a team and partners worth fighting for makes everything easier.
It’s also something people can sense, and other people know when you value them for who they are. That is what creates an unbeatable team. The initial members of a startup will define it throughout its lifecycle, so working with people you care about makes a huge difference. Hiring the wrong people and trying to change them cost us in the beginning.
What is the #1 most pressing challenge you’re trying to solve in your business right now?
Sean Adler: Stabilizing the company as we grow and refocusing on product is the biggest issue. Growth feels like your company and entire life explode to the point where the scale is like nothing you’ve ever experienced. There must be lists of 1,500 people across the globe we’re supposed to contact on a weekly basis and I couldn’t take every meeting if I wanted to. We hired out a team to do sales and marketing for us. A lot of my time goes to managing that as we put the finishing touches on our app.
I’m disappointed there wasn’t as much time for product as I would’ve liked but one of our advisors was dead right when he said businesses are a human phenomenon. We can perfect the product but the modifications are irrelevant without people who care to use it. It’s part of a feeding cycle where companies bond with their employees, partners, and users.
You already shared a lot of insights with our readers and we thank you for your generosity. Normally, leaders are asked about their most useful qualities but let’s change things up a bit. What is the most useless skill you have learned, at school or during your career?
Sean Adler: I’m flattered you think this is insightful and being generous with my time. We appreciate the opportunity to do these interviews. Cursive is by far the most useless thing I ever learned in school. They put me in time out in second grade because I told the teacher my father said cursive was useless and I’d never use it aside from signing my name. They were not pleased but he was right and most of my cursive is in Docusign these days.
Thank you so much for your time but before we finish things off, we do have one more question. We will select these answers for our ValiantCEO Award 2021 edition. The best answers will be selected to challenge the award.
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make, this past year 2021, for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
Sean Adler: Cutting my salary in 2021 to pay employees and cover company expenses was uncomfortable. Expenses for closing funding came from me, which is ironic for someone not taking a salary. The social isolation didn’t end until vaccines were released in May 2021 and everything was managed virtually.
It got GZI on the map so it was worth it.
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.
