EARLIEST ENTREPRENEURIAL MEMORY: As a 10 year-old, collecting swag from conferences adults in my life attended, and re-selling it to neighbors! SOMETHING THAT MAKES ME LAUGH: When anyone in the room laughs (I don’t need a reason!) SOMETHING PEOPLE DON'T KNOW: English is my fourth language.
Albert Saniger
Building machines to do the heavy lifting online
THE NEW CHECK-OUT LINE IS NO CHECK-OUT LINE. Albert Saniger started his company, nate, because he saw a problem and a solution: “Some sites like Amazon make it really easy to buy something and other sites can be a lot more complex—but what if you could bring that experience to the rest of the web? What if I could? I realized robotic process automation systems are able to automate certain technological tasks...so could I put two and two together?”
Yes, he could. nate is the world’s first and only intelligent machine app that knows how to navigate websites on your behalf. This means a consumer can download the app and—within three taps and under five seconds—they can buy any item on any website. No more complicated checkouts—ever.
Albert believes his success isn’t only due to failing forward—it’s also due to love.
“When I graduated from college, I got an offer to join a very well-known management consulting firm. I’m from Spain and the offer was in Madrid, but I wanted them to transfer the offer to New York because I was in love with a man who is now my husband. I didn’t take that job in order to get me closer to my goal of moving to the United States.”
STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS. Being an LGBTQ tech leader is an important part of Albert’s story. “As many LGBTQ founders can tell you, it can often be a painful experience to represent yourself in this space, which has ultimately made me embrace my label and become a much more active member of the LGBTQ community,” he explains.
“I was raised in a world where, at home or in business school, it wasn’t a weird or bad thing to be gay: I was the president of our LGBTQ club in college; I was out in my community. So early on I decided to brand myself as a very successful LGBTQ professional, for myself and others so I could set an example. I knew I was standing on the shoulders of generations before me who didn’t have these opportunities, and had fought so hard for me to grow up in a world where I could just be me,” he expresses.
nate is a reflection of Albert and vice versa: “There are three key groups of stakeholders I’m responsible for: my customers, my team, and my investors. All three need to be excited, proud, invested and more in your product—but it’s all about “people first.” So I surround myself with people who accept this and accept themselves and accept me. In this way, this all becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy of success,” he laughs.
Albert is excited about the transformation he might inspire in others. “I worry that when people read about me or someone like me they think that I was born to be some genius. The reality is that we’re all human and we’re all capable of fundamental transformation to something great, something bigger than ourselves. I hope people see me and see it in themselves too.”
In Media:
- AI Journal, LinkedIn Live: LinkedIn live with Albert
