6 Entrepreneurial Lessons from Bryton Shang — Founder/CEO of Aquabyte
PiE Readers,
Welcome back to another entrepreneurial story to kick off a new season of PiE! Today, I am bringing to you the story of Bryton Shang, Princeton Class of 2012 and Founder/CEO of Aquabyte — a software tech company with a mission of revolutionizing the salmon farming industry and creating sustainable food production through machine learning and advanced computer vision technologies.
Through installing a high-tech camera in netted salmon pens, Aquabyte experts are able to record real-time data about each fish such as their size, change in appetite, lice recognition, etc. based on unique spots on their bodies. This invention enables farm owners to easily access information that is otherwise hard to gather from underwater and maximize profits from their farms.
I had the opportunity to chat with Bryton about his company and am glad to bring to you six important lessons about entrepreneurship from Bryton’s story.
1. #OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCES
Before founding Aquabyte, Bryton dabbled in different fields upon his graduation from Princeton with a degree in Operations Research and Financial Engineering (ORFE). He started off at an algorithmic trading company in New York that was shut down shortly after three months. After that, he, along with the directors of that company, founded their own trading firm. That was when Bryton started to become more involved with entrepreneurship.
Besides these experiences, Bryton also became the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of IQ License — a tech company that enabled licensors and licensees to acquire and manage their key business partners. After this company failed to raise a Series A, he became the CTO of another company that developed artificial technology (AI) for cancer detection, based in California.
During his time on the West coast, Bryton ran into an opportunity to incubate Aquabyte out of New Enterprise Associates (NEA) — one of the largest venture capital (VC) firms in the world. Without having worked at several startups and met people that eventually introduced him to NEA, Bryton might have never been able to muse on the idea of Aquabyte and make it a reality.
Even though his path to Aquabyte is anything but linear, it is this diversity in experiences from a variety of fields that ultimately took Bryton exactly where he is meant to be.
2. #VISION
Bryton’s entrepreneurial journey was inspired by the realization that the food industry remains one of the most environmentally unsustainable practices out there, contributing up to 37% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, this process, especially beef production, is still widely popular due to the fact that it is easier for farmers to control on-land growth metrics of their cattle and timely intervene if they detect abnormal development.
This was, unfortunately, a challenge for salmon farm owners since there was no cost-efficient and time-saving method to regulate underwater activities at the time. For this reason, even though aquaculture is obviously the more environmentally-friendly solution to the global food problem, many are reluctant to participate in the industry.
3. #NETWORK
Bryton met the alumnus who offered him the CTO position at his own company through the Princeton alumni network. Years later, it was also this alumnus that invited him to incubate Aquabyte at NEA. Even though Business Today and the various investment banking opportunities that Bryton took advantage of during his Princeton years were not strictly related to his current expertise, it is the connections he made that count. These people eventually became important nodes in his career network in unexpected ways.
Until this day, several members of the Aquabyte’s talented team are also affiliated with Princeton in one way or another, which proves how the people that share your undergraduate experience may have impacts well beyond those four years of your life.
4. #PERSEVERANCE
For Aquabyte, challenges were present all throughout the life cycle of the company. Bryton shared that the first step of the design cycle — brainstorming the product — was particularly grueling as the team had to carefully analyze what kind of information farm owners need the most, and what the simplest yet most effective model to deliver this information would be.
After reaching a consensus on product design, Aquabyte members also had difficulty marketing their product. Since the team ventured into fish pens in Norway and Chile where farmers are often conservative and prefer traditional farming methods, it was a challenge to convince them about the potential of a simple camera. However, through persistence and determination, the team managed to implement their product for the first time in Norway’s net pens and soon saw widespread endorsement all over the country.
Setbacks, disappointments, and failures are inevitable parts of an entrepreneur’s life. A successful one chooses to embrace these rough patches in their career and find a way to get through them.
5. #RISK-SEEKING
When asked what it takes to be an entrepreneur, and what he usually looks for in a team member, Bryton shared that he always welcomed those who “genuinely want to be there,” “have more energy and see [risk-taking] as a lifestyle.” Since being in a startup means more autonomy and less restriction, an entrepreneur needs to be able to operate with drive, vision, and creativity.
In Bryton’s words, every day is another day of figuring out what you want to do with virtually no boundaries whatsoever. Since the operation of a start-up is full of surprises and uncertainties, it depends on the entrepreneur, or risk-seeker, to not only choose which paths they want to go down, but also to draw up the various paths they can take.
6. #GET SET, GO
Entrepreneurship is widely understood as “doing something new.” Nevertheless, according to Bryton, it does not have to be the only definition. Oftentimes, students are apprehensive of the idea of entrepreneurship because it suggests an all-or-nothing, either-or process.
For that reason, Bryton believes that joining a startup before founding your own can be an equally great way to start. Simply being part of a young company means being able to learn the ins and outs of the startup, the challenges and rewards of the job without having as much at stake. “You will learn just as much as if you were doing it yourself,” Bryton reflected on his own experience working with CEOs of startups before gaining enough insights to found his own company.
In fact, Bryton shared that one thing he wished he had done more: truly learn from those around him. Through unsuccessful efforts to become a “true” entrepreneur, Bryton realized that it was the mentorship he received from more experienced founders that enabled him to grow in ways that he alone would not have been able to.
When I asked if he envisioned Aquabyte’s technology eventually being deployed in developing countries like my own — Vietnam — where aquaculture plays a major role in our economy, Bryton confirmed his rather global ambition of making the product accessible to more and more countries where the product can be valuable.
“Our vision is eventually we will be able to serve any kind of fish farming around the world, any species, any place,” Bryton said.
I hope that by this time, the six hashtags from Bryton’s story will have empowered you to take that first step in your own entrepreneurial journey!
Bryton can be contacted via LinkedIn and more on the Aquabyte story can be found on their official website.
