An Interview With Ken Babcock
They sell too far ahead of their capabilities. They create this dishonesty in their sales organizations — overpromise and underdeliver. That doesn’t mean you don’t sell ahead of capabilities, you just don’t go too far where you can’t deliver. Avoiding that error starts with a culture of integrity and making sure you have a strong enough product to win the market.
As part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Albert Santalo.
Santalo is a computer scientist and internet entrepreneur with experience in high-growth, venture-backed technology companies. He has a passion for designing products and building companies that disrupt traditional business models, and he’s an advocate for empowering entrepreneurs everywhere to build Silicon Valley-caliber technology companies in their local communities. Five years ago, he launched 8base to democratize software development. In spring 2022, it landed a $10.6 million Series A funding round and now helps propel the generational technology wave fueling Miami.
Thank you for joining us in this interview series. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”?
I decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur very early in my life, probably when I was five years old when I began to understand what it meant. Over time, I realized that I wanted to build a large enduring company rather than a lifestyle company — it took me a while to develop the skills and gain the experience I thought I needed to embark on that journey.
I finally mustered the courage to branch out and become an entrepreneur in 2001. I was 32 years old, I had four young kids and a wife who was a schoolteacher. I was the breadwinner, so it was tough to walk away from gainful employment. It was a month after 9/11 and a year after the dot-com bubble had burst. It was a terrifying experience for me to make that transition with so much at stake in my personal life, but it was something I had to do if I was going to live my life the way I wanted to live it. The decision was the most important decision of my career.
I’ve never looked back, and I can’t imagine pursuing my life any other way. It goes back to that decision of saying there’s no better time. There’s never going to be a better time than now to become an entrepreneur.
You’ve had a remarkable career journey. Can you highlight a key decision in your career that helped you get to where you are today?
As a software engineer and management consultant, I witnessed large companies’ struggles, frustrations and shortcomings due to legacy processes. Later, I started two venture-backed enterprise software companies, both of which built complex software as a service (SaaS) products using armies of engineers. There, I observed these teams spending most of their time developing and supporting the non-unique aspects of the software, rather than the parts that made up the true innovation.
I believed we could abstract away these non-unique systems into a platform to the benefit of digital creators everywhere — that was the genesis of 8base. 8base’s mission is to propel creators, whether founders or leaders in larger companies, to get to market faster and iterate more rapidly with far less investment of time and money.
What’s the most impactful initiative you’ve led that you’re particularly proud of?
Both of my previous ventures had significant venture capital to fuel their development and growth. In the early days of 8base, I chose to bootstrap to preserve ownership and focus on perfecting our product and business model in advance of pursuing an institutional funding round. Without a doubt, steering 8base through the last few years, which included the COVID-19pandemic, was incredibly fulfilling and impactful.
I look forward to a not-too-distant future where thousands of entrepreneurs are building their products faster and better using 8base. This includes founders that would never be founders without us — so fulfilling for me!
Sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a mistake you’ve made and the lesson you took away from it?
The biggest mistakes I’ve made are mistakes around people. As an entrepreneur, you appreciate every person that wants to come work with you. There have been times when I either made the wrong decision in bringing somebody in or just didn’t move fast enough to get them out. I’ve learned that you must take your time getting to know people before you hire them. You’re still going to make mistakes, but hopefully less of them. But when you realize that you’ve made the mistake, you have to move fast to get them out.
How has mentorship played a role in your career, whether receiving mentorship or offering it to others?
Mentorship is one of the biggest gifts that anyone can bestow on you. Usually, the people who are best qualified to mentor you are very busy. I’ve been blessed to have people around me who have given me great advice and helped me in the dark times. A person that stands out to me is the late Joe Cangemi, a behavioral psychologist and professor at the University of Western Kentucky. Joe was a leadership expert and consultant to multiple Fortune 500 CEOs. He really helped me to transition from individual contributor, to manager and ultimately leader. Technical people struggle with leadership because they hate to let go of the work. Leadership is all about making stars of your team, not being one yourself.
I also try to pay it forward as best I can. My first two responsibilities are to the company and my family… I try not to spread myself too thin. But when people call for advice, I generally take the call and try to help them out. This is certainly true of the companies building their product on 8base. We put our arms around those companies and try to help them in every way we can — we go above and beyond to help when we can. This is one of the most fulfilling parts of my job — as a founder, it’s so fulfilling to have another founder thank you for advice you gave them that propelled them forward.
Developing your leadership style takes time and practice. Who do you model your leadership style after? What are some key character traits you try to emulate?
First and foremost, I try to surround myself with people who are better and smarter than I am at the things they do. You give them room to do the things they need to do within the constraints the company has at any given time. Then, you create systems around them to trust, but verify, respectfully.
My style is collaborative. That said, if a tough decision must be made, I’m more than happy to make it. We try to drive consensus, but consensus doesn’t always happen. And when we make a decision, we all line up behind it. That’s how I try to lead and run the company. Also, I try to make sure I’m not insulated from the team. I do the best I can within time constraints to interact with the folks underneath the leadership who do the work.
Thank you for sharing that with us. Let’s talk about scaling a business from a small startup to a midsize and then large company. Based on your experience, can you share with our readers the “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business”? Please give a story or example for each.
First of all, at any stage in the company, the people who will help drive success tend to be different. Sometimes those people can make the leap to the next phase, and sometimes they can’t. An example of this would be the early technology person who manages themselves and a small team to get your product off the ground and makes you successful through early product-market fit. But do they have the expertise, or maybe even the temperament, to step away from the technical part and become a leader of a larger team and build a scalable technology organization? You’ve got to be vigilant of that, and you have to be honest with yourself and your team around those requirements. I like to afford team members the opportunity to grow into the role while making it clear that it’s not an entitlement. You reserve the right to bring in more experience, and keep the early people in suitable roles. That’s just part of life in the startup world when you’re scaling.
Secondly, your product will never be perfect, but begin commercialization efforts as soon as you can.
The third thing I would say is you’ve got to build a sales and marketing culture. There are plenty of companies, really good companies, that have been started by engineering types. But the best product doesn’t always win — the best marketed and sold product is the one that typically wins.
Fourth, you want to figure out your key metrics. Then, you want to build the system so you can instrument the key metrics.
And finally, you want to manage those metrics and be disciplined about not managing the metrics that don’t matter.
Can you share a few of the mistakes that companies make when they try to scale a business? What would you suggest to address those errors?
They sell too far ahead of their capabilities. They create this dishonesty in their sales organizations — overpromise and underdeliver. That doesn’t mean you don’t sell ahead of capabilities, you just don’t go too far where you can’t deliver. Avoiding that error starts with a culture of integrity and making sure you have a strong enough product to win the market.
Not paying attention to their company’s unit economics — this is scaling at all costs. You’ve got to understand your cost of client acquisition and then your gross margin. If you don’t get that right, you’ll run out of money before proving your model.
The third thing is making sure you have the growth capital in place and understanding that you will make mistakes. You may not achieve all the success you’ve modeled for as quickly as you’d like. Be sure you invest your money based on milestones. You spend a little money experimenting with what works. When you find something that does work, throw more money behind it, incrementally. But don’t get ahead of your skis in terms of burning through too much capital while experimenting with what will work in growing the company. Remember, the only thing that can truly put you out of business is running out of money. As long as you have capital, you live to fight another day.
Scaling includes bringing new people into the organization. How can a company preserve its company culture and ethos when new people are brought in?
You’ve got to write it down. Describe your core value system, your mission and your vision. Culture is a core part of the company and the way things work across all levels and responsibilities. It has to be part of the recruiting and hiring process, imparted on the team not only as they onboard but on an ongoing basis. If people understand what’s expected from them, then it’s easier to hold them to this core standard.
Many times, a key aspect of scaling your business is scaling your team’s knowledge and internal procedures. What tools or techniques have helped your teams be successful at scaling internally?
Right now, we’re accelerating our growth, doubling down on our product development efforts, innovation research and development, and investment in sales, marketing, and finance. 8base is mostly a remote team, and we hire talent anywhere in the world. We believe talent is universal, and we want to build a great company consisting of truly great team members. So we need to tap into that talent wherever it lives. Collaboration tools, like Slack and Zoom, have helped us stay as connected as possible given the global dispersion of our team; Hubspot and Jira help us stay informed of our customers and products, respectively, in their various stages.
What software or tools do you recommend to help onboard new hires?
As a remote, global company, Docusign is necessary. We use Gusto for payroll benefits and the like. Vanta for security testing and acceptance. Virtual Meet & Greet to introduce new hires to the existing team.
Because of your role, you are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most people, what would that be? You never know what your ideas can trigger.
What comes to mind is what we are doing at 8base. There’s so much pent-up demand from people around the world to pursue their visions and independence through an entrepreneurial path. That path is out of reach for most. It begins with developing the product that they want, which is often expensive and time-consuming. We’re about democratizing access to that with tools that help you get there faster, better and more economically.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
They can check out 8base.com, my blog at albertsantalo.com and most recently my contributions for Entrepreneur’s Leadership Network.
This was truly meaningful! Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise!
About the interviewer. Ken Babcock is the CEO and Co-Founder of Tango. Prior to his mission of celebrating how work is executed, Ken spent over 4 years at Uber riding the rollercoaster of a generational company. After gaining hands-on experience with entrepreneurship at Atomic VC, Ken went on to HBS. It was at HBS that Ken met his Co-Founders, Dan Giovacchini and Brian Shultz and they founded Tango.
Albert Santalo Of 8base On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.