Getting to know... Serge Santos

In the latest instalment of Bdaily’s Getting to know… feature, which looks at the person behind the business profile, serial entrepreneur, investor and mentor Serge Santos talks about his transition to the entreprenerial world, the joy he takes from helping businesses thrive and how time in the Swiss military helped him appreciate the true value of peace.

We know you as a serial investor, entrepreneur and business owner, but who is the person behind the title? Tell us a little about what makes you tick…

The journey is what drives me; not the destination, not the exit, not the title. 

I am motivated by working on projects that are genuinely interesting and meaningful, surrounded by people I can learn from.

I look for challenges I have not tackled before and problems that require me to think differently.

In my experience, that is where the real growth happens, both for the business and for the person running it.

The deeper motivation is building something that outlasts me. 

This is why I work across several businesses, rather than one.

Did you always want to be an entrepreneur and business owner?

Not at all. It took a redundancy in 2013 to push me off the edge. 

I was in my early 40s with no entrepreneurial experience whatsoever.

What I did have, though, was a strong foundation.

I had worked for great companies alongside great people, and that taught me more about business, finance and decision-making than I realised. 

I had enough savings to give myself a few years of runway, and my first venture was a financial intermediary that I built entirely through my network and hard work. 

It was a success, and the capital it generated gave me the platform to acquire companies and pursue the projects I work on today.

What’s the best bit about your job? And the worst?

The best part is the directness of the feedback loop. 

In business, the market does not lie.

If you make poor decisions, clients leave.

If you make good decisions consistently, the business grows and financial success follows.

Equally, I enjoy the ability to shape what I do and build teams of talented people working toward the same objective.

A company is a collective effort, and the best outcomes arise when you focus on the greater good, rather than personal credit.

The worst part is that you always have a boss, even when you are the business owner. 

There are always forces beyond your control that require compromise. 

Learning to navigate constraints, without losing your strategic coherence, is one of the hardest parts of the job.

What do you consider to be your greatest achievement?

Starting from nothing in entrepreneurial terms and building something real. 

The milestones matter: a successful exit, several acquisitions to build a strong industrial engineering business, building a fintech company from scratch that now employs more than 20 people and is performing strongly after only five years. 

These are tangible results and I’m proud of them.

But the achievement I value most is what happens when I look at the businesses today and recognise their success is only partly because of me. 

The teams are running these companies. 

I hired good people, put them in the right seat and gave them the culture, values and strategic direction to work with. They took it from there.

How do you relax outside of work?

I have learned over the years not to carry stress the way many business owners do. 

When things go wrong, and they do, I focus on what I can control and let the rest go.

That is a mindset, not a personality trait.

Physically, I take care of myself: exercise, good food, proper sleep. 

I do a lot of yoga and other sports to stay sharp.

Beyond that, I am genuinely curious.

I am still a physicist at heart, so I keep up with developments in physics, and I am fascinated by emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. 

I read widely across history and politics. I recently took an improv class to work on public speaking and I love dancing salsa too.

And I genuinely enjoy people. Friends, new acquaintances, unexpected conversations.

That human connection is how I recharge.

Tell us something about you we didn’t know…

I think of myself as a citizen of the world. 

I am Swiss by origin, Portuguese by heritage and British by choice. 

I became a British citizen in 2022 because I feel genuinely part of this country and I want to contribute to its economy to the best of my ability. 

Each of those identities has shaped how I think and lead. The Swiss precision; the Portuguese warmth and love of people; the British pragmatism.

I also served in the Swiss military, spending a little under a year in the artillery.

It was compulsory, and at the time it felt like an interruption.

Looking back, it taught me more about group dynamics, discipline and working across social boundaries than almost anything else I have done.

It also gave me a deep conviction that peace is far more valuable than most people appreciate. 

Having been trained for conflict gives you a visceral understanding of what is at stake.

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